Shae is the assistant manager at a coffee shop near the campus where she is going to school part-time to complete her bachelor’s degree in Marketing. She has been asked by the store’s manager to train all the employees on a new line of iced coffees that the store will be selling for the summer season. The store’s manager schedules the training Shae will lead for an all-staff meeting.
Shae is anxious because this is the first time she has had to present information like this to the entire staff. She decides to start by explaining why the new iced coffee is being introduced, then demonstrate the steps involved in making it for the customer, after which she’ll pass around samples to all the employees and ask them for feedback on what they think about the new coffee and how to sell it to customers.
The training goes well and the employees appear enthused about the new product. Shea is relieved and her manager tells her she did a great job and says, “Would you like to do more trainings in the future?”
Shae’s presentation is an example of what is called informative speaking. When we explain how to do something to an audience or educate them about new information we are engaged in informative speaking.
You probably are called on to present information to an audience more often that you realize. In this module, we will learn how to give informative speeches to an audience. What we learn and practice here are skills we can transfer right away to other situations in our school, personal, or work lives.
