The Essentials of Public Speaking

By Erwin Parengkuan

The beginning of 2026 has opened with a lot of commotion in our country, starting from the Mens Rea program on Netflix, the case of Mas Minister who was finally given the opportunity to speak out and then silenced so he could not speak, especially to the media, is a series of accumulated events from previous years which are increasingly happening in this country.We speak, we speak, voicing opinions in public is the right of every citizen.Having the freedom to speak and convey whatever we want to convey to this country is once again freedom of speech.

Public speaking skills have indeed become a requirement for someone to be able to express their opinion without any intervention from any party, in this article I want to highlight in particular the content and values ​​that a person must have in their speaking ability.In general, there are senders and receivers.Sender is the sender of the message and receiver is the recipient of the message.A public speaker is certainly required to be able to fully understand all the messages he wants to convey well and be able to take responsibility for everything he conveys.Meanwhile, the listener must of course know to whom this message will be conveyed.The content or content of the message must be adjusted to the interlocutor's ability to capture/absorb information, which includes 2 important aspects: context and content.Context is the main purpose of material while content is the description or content to strengthen the context.

As a message sender or communicator, sometimes the aspect of understanding the person you are talking to or knowing the extent of the listener's capacity to capture the message to be effective is often overlooked.We have a tendency to want to convey everything at once but forget the side of the recipient of the message.Different audiences require different content approaches, so awareness is needed in setting the tempo and selecting the content to be conveyed.In preparing content, of course everything we want to convey refers to facts and data, not assumptions.Imagine someone who often speaks based on his assumptions alone will certainly not be noticed/ignored by the person he is talking to.

There is another thing that I think is very essential in conveying a message, namely a word;Honesty!When what we convey is honest and true, of course all the content conveyed will relate to the audience.The communication/public speaking skills of most of our current officials are far from honest, and are not even based on accurate data.So the commotion that is happening is getting more and more intense on social media and creating a contrast gap between two words, namely: honesty and lies.We also understand and know more about whether a narrative is conveyed based on aspects of honesty or fabrication!and it is increasingly clear to us how the government and even our leaders have become defensive in responding to their people's freedom of speech.Instead of protecting them, they curb freedom of speech, even though they can live and rule thanks to us the people.

It's a shame that all the events that have occurred and been reported to the public have shown that our government is increasingly closed.An action that silences people's freedom of speech and makes the level of public trust in our current government even lower.We will never be silent, we will continue to speak, we will continue to speak the truth, not lies, which is the essence of public speaking.