EMBA Forum: Public Speaking is as Simple as Cooking
¡@¡@This was Mr. Ng Ming Lam's opening anecdote at the last EMBA Forum. The EMBA Forum was organized by The Chinese University of Hong Kong's EMBA Programme and supported by the University's Asia Pacific Institute of Business. ¡@¡@Making a speech is like preparing a dish: decide on the title, get the ingredients (main body), the seasoning (some jokes), the correct timing (appropriate length) and you have a potential winner. ¡@¡@Speeches should not be too long, he stressed. The worst mistake is to make your audience wish they were somewhere else. ¡@¡@Try to weave stories and jokes into your speech for added interest. Stories and jokes can be collected from Readers' Digest or the Internet. ¡@¡@Remember also that how the speaker looks and sounds is more important than what he is saying. Skills such as tonality and gestures are equally important. ¡@¡@The content should be supported by credible argument; the speaker's own sincerity and should appeal to the audience's emotions. ¡@¡@Elaborating on the need for sincerity and responsible behaviour, Mr. Ng referred to the incident of contaminated Coke in Belgian, where the company spokesman's opening statement "My apologies to the people of Belgium. I should have spoken with you earlier" immediately won his audience's hearts. Similarly, immediately after the oil spill in 1999, the British Petroleum's CEO scored points for saying: "Our lawyers tell us it is not our fault, but we feel like it is our fault and we are going to act like it's our fault". ¡@¡@What the above incidents demonstrate is that no matter what, timely and responsible action is the best way for damage control. As U.S. President Truman said: "The buck stops here." People are simply tired of buck-passing. ¡@¡@A journalism graduate of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Mr. Ng joined the media in 1969 and became the News Controller of RTHK in 1983. He has been the anchor-presenter of many popular radio and television programs, including the City Forum, Headliner, Today in Legco, Hong Kong Today and a phone-in program, the Nineties. He is currently host of a number of news and public affairs programs at Metro Finance, including China Focus, Corporate Expo and Ming's Teahouse. ¡@¡@Mr. Ng has extensive experience in media skills training. Since 1985, he has conducted more than 350 workshops for business executives and senior government officials. ¡@¡@Mr. Ng was a Jefferson Fellow of the East West Center in Hawaii where he studied political and economic developments of the Pacific Rim countries (1985). He was also trained in BBC, London (1974) and in 1976 he was awarded a scholarship to study Financial Journalism at the Thomson Foundation in Cardiff. ¡@¡@The above EMBA Forum featuring Mr. Ng Ming Lam on October 15, 2003, was the second of a series of similar talks for the 2003/4 academic year by business leaders in Hong Kong. The EMBA Forum is organized by the EMBA Programme of The Chinese University of Hong Kong and is open to students and alumni of the University's EMBA and MBA Programmes. ¡@¡@The EMBA Forum with Mr. Ng Ming Lam was also co-sponsored by the Asia Pacific Institute of Business, the executive education arm of the University's Faculty of Business Administration. Mr. Ng Ming Lam |