Quora Answer: Do You Think Some People are Born to be Excellent Public Speakers?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Do you think some people are born with a talent to be excellent public speakers?  Or, is this mostly learned?”

The art of public speaking requires several diverse skills, from a command of language, to psychology, to having wide general knowledge.  People may be born with one or more faculties or inclinations, that may advantage them over others, but it does not make them public speakers of calibre without the hard work, and experience of mastering the variety of skills needed.  According to Aristotle’s “Rhetorike”, rhetoric is based on the foundation of a triad: ethos, pathos and logos.

Ethos is the credibility of the speaker, such that when he speaks on a particular subject, he has the gravitas and the life experience to back what he says.  A man who has never married would not be taken seriously, if he were to speak on the difficulties of marriage, for example.  As such, it is always important that a speaker only address issues he is familiar with, and not claim authority on issues beyond his ken.  This credibility, once destroyed, is difficult to restore.

Pathos is the understanding of the psychology of the audience.  Whilst ethos is about knowing yourself, pathos is about knowing the crowd you are addressing.  Again, no one knows this innately.  It takes a lot of experience and currency of knowledge to judge a crowd, and to understand their emotive anchors, what outrages them, what makes them sentimental, what moves them to melancholy.

Finally, logos is the ability to formulate a cogent, coherent argument for, or against a position.  No matter how good an argument is, how sound the logic, how compelling the case, without a sound ethos and pathos, it will be dismissed.  The process of thinking is, perhaps, the most difficult to learn.  Education has not equipped people to think, and they need to rediscover this skill.

In summary, whilst some may be advantaged in certain areas, no one is born a good speaker.  No matter how sharp your mind, how secure your command of language, how apparent your charisma, the entire process of rhetoric involves a lot of hard work, and practice.