Archive for April, 2010

Do First Impressions Count When You Are Speaking?

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
Image Credit
Yes, Your Appearance Can Work Against You

Yes, Your Appearance Can Work Against You

I’m not sure if this falls into the “good news” or “bad news” category, but it turns out that your audience may have already made up their mind about listening to what you have to say even before you open your mouth to speak. Do I have your attention now?

What The Researchers Have Discovered About First Impressions

We’ve always been taught that the opening of a speech is the most critical part of any speech because it is at that time that you have everyone’s attention and they are trying to make up their minds as to whether or not to listen to you. However, researchers are now telling us that that decision is being made even earlier.

In fact, the audience started making up their minds about you as you got up and started moving towards the podium. What happens is that everyone makes a first impression about you upon seeing that you are the speaker (yeah, I know it’s not right, but it’s what we all do so get over it) and then that first impression is used to interpret everything that you do after that.

This conclusion is not without its detractors. There are some that say that the first impression is not as strong as many believe. Others believe that we get a chance to form a second first impression after the first meeting. This may be true, but as speakers we may never get that second chance so we should be careful to make the best first impression possible.

How Can A Speaker’s Words Make A Good First Impression?

A million years can pass from when the person who is running the meeting starts to introduce you to when you actually take the stage. During that time a lot can happen and you need to make sure that it’s all positive. The title of your speech is the first place to start: does it grab the audience’s imagination and excite them to hear what you are going to say?

How you take the stage is the next step. If you shuffle onto the stage with your head hanging low looking like you’d really rather be anywhere else in the world than there, your audience will start to wish that they were there also. However, if instead, you project confidence as you stride up and take the stage then your audience will sit up and take notice.

Once you’ve taken the stage, we’re now back to that issue of the first words that will be tumbling out of your mouth. Here’s an interesting thought: how much time do you spend on the first sentence in your speeches? I’m going to guess that the answer is not enough. This is the million dollar waterfront real estate in your speech – it’s worth the investment of time to get it right. You want your words to start a fire in your audience’s mind – your opening needs to promise great things to come in the rest of your speech.

If Looks Matter, What Can A Speaker Do?

So clearly people will be making snap judgements about you simply based on how you look. Pick your clothes carefully. You want to look sharp and polished. The rule of thumb when giving a speech is that you always want to be the best-dressed person in the room.

Make sure that when you start to speak you speak in a loud clear voice. This will tell everyone that you are very confidant and that they should listen to what you have to say. Make sure that your body language is in agreement with the words that are coming out of your mouth. Finally, never forget to smile. When you smile your audience can’t help but smile back at you and that will go a long way in winning them over to your side.

What All Of This Means For You

As speakers we like to imagine that our speeches start when we open our mouth the first time to start speaking. Research has shown that this is not the case: our audiences are forming first impressions of us long before we reach the stage.

What this means is that we need to make sure that we dress the part and project an air of self confidence even before we reach the stage. Once there, the first words of our speech need to be crafted in order to capture our audience’s attention and hold it.

The bad news is that our audiences are prejudging us before we have a chance to show them how good of a speaker we are. The good news is that now we know that they are doing this and with a little effort, we can use this knowledge to make sure that we get them to make a positive first impression and then we’ve got them right where we want them to be.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills

Question For You: What do you think is the most important thing that you can do to make a good first impression with your audience?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Congratulations – you’ve been asked to give a speech. Got one to give? Unless someone has asked you to deliver a speech that you’ve already given multiple times, you’re probably in the spot that most speakers find themselves all too often – standing in the middle of tracks while the train known as your speaking date comes racing towards you. What’s an accidental communicator to do?

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This Speech Will Be Delivered In (Good) English

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
Image Credit The English Language Can’t Be Completely Learned In School

The English Language Can’t Be Completely Learned In School

I’ve always spoken English. I never really spent a lot of time thinking about what it took to speak “good English” because it’s my native tongue. However, when I started working with speakers for whom English was not their first language, I quickly came to understand just how hard it is to give a good speech in English if it’s not your first language. That’s “hard”, but not “impossible”…

The Challenge Of Speaking In English As A Second Language

While working with clients, I’ve often been asked “so how can I improve my English speaking skills?” The people asking me this are generally well-educated and do an ok job of speaking English in personal conversations, it’s just when it comes to giving a speech that things seem to fall apart for them.

I always have to break it to them that there is no magic “silver bullet” to improving one’s English. So much of the language is based less on the words themselves and rather on how the words are used. Given this limitation, I offer them the following three suggestions:

  1. Dive In: the best way to pick up on how any language is being used in real life is to immerse yourself in it as much as you can. This means that you need to break out of your circle of friends who speak your native language and spend more time with English speakers. No it’s not going to be easy, but this is one of the best ways to learn.
  2. Read, read, read: I’m not talking about spending time with the classics of English literature, but rather taking the time to read the daily newspaper and weekly magazines (USA Today, Time, People, Rolling Stone, etc.). These media sources are written to be read by the masses and by studying how they communicate, you’ll both build your vocabulary and you’ll shape how you use your words.
  3. Get A Role Model: there’s got to be someone in your life that you believe does a very good job of speaking English. TV personalities are just fine for this task. Spend the time studying them, repeat what they say, and work to “become” them. This will not only improve your English language skills, but it will also give you the confidence that you’ll need the next time you are giving a speech.

Ways To Hide Any English Problems That You May Have

English is a goofy language. It has been built from so many other languages that it can be very difficult to master. Since it will take time to improve your English speaking skills, one of the things that you can do right away is to change how you give a speech in order to hide any English challenges that you are having.

The first thing that you can do is to start to use more one-syllable words. All too often I see my clients attempting to use complex multi-syllable words in order to impress their audience; however, since these words can be harder to pronounce correctly they just end up taking away from the impact of their speech. Using short words gives your speech a “punch” that will connect with your audience.

Next, you need to keep your sentences short. All too often non-native English speakers tend to create long and involved sentences that just seem to go on and on. The right thing to do is after you’ve created a speech take the time to go back and break-up any long thoughts into multiple short thoughts. This way you’ll be able to speak more clearly and connect with your audience better.

Ways To Improve The English That You Use In Your Speeches

There are several things that a non-native English speaker can do to improve a speech. Once again, these are probably best introduced over time as the speaker becomes more comfortable with using them:

  • Stories Are Good: every audience loves a good story. Taking the time to build a story that paints a vivid mental image will capture your audience’s imagination and will allow them to overlook any language issues.
  • Incorporate Places: the more that you can include places that your audience can visualize, the easier it will be for them to follow your speech. If you stumble over some words, it won’t matter because your audience is already picturing what you are talking about.

What All Of This Means For You

English is a fantastic language – so much can be expressed in it. However, it is among the most difficult of languages to learn. Learning to apply what you’ve learned about another language when you are delivering a speech in English is hard to do, but the results make it well worth the effort!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills

Question For You: What do you think the most effective way to learn a new language is?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

I’m not sure if this falls into the “good news” or “bad news” category, but it turns out that your audience may have already made up their mind about listening to what you have to say even before you open your mouth to speak. Do I have your attention now?

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Posted in language | No Comments »

Technical Talks: Is There Any Way To Make This Stuff Interesting?

Monday, April 12th, 2010
Image Credit Oh No! Not Another Technical Speech!

Oh No! Not Another Technical Speech!

I don’t know about you, but more and more I’ve been finding myself being asked to deliver speeches that have technical information in them. I’ve got a great deal of self confidence; however, having had to sit through more than my share of boring technical presentations this is the one type of speech that scares me the most. There’s got to be a better way…

You Need To Know Your Purpose

Dr. April Andreas has looked into the problem of why technical speeches are so hard to do well and she’s discovered that one of the reasons is that all too often we have no idea what we are doing.

Every presentation, including technical presentations, is given for a reason. Before the first word comes out of your mouth, you need to decide why you are standing up there talking. Are you trying to teach your audience? Are you trying to explain your results to them so that they can use them? Are you trying to find that one member of your audience who shares an interest in what you’ll be talking about so you can find ways to work with them? Or perhaps your goal is to get people talking about what you’ve presented and maybe scare up your next job offer.

Be Basic

Congratulations – if you’ve prepared for your speech, then you really are the smartest person in the room. However, the problem is that not everyone else is as smart as you are. This means that you need to make sure that you don’t lose them from the get-go. Dr. Andreas suggests that you make sure that everyone in the room, no matter what their background is, can follow the first 1/3 of your speech. This way when you are done everyone will have gotten something out of listening to you.

How About Some Examples?

Depending on what topic you are talking about (room temperature fusion perhaps?), when you are giving a technical talk things can get pretty detailed very quickly. In order to keep as many people on board for as long as possible, take the time to relate what you are talking about to examples that your audience can find in the real world.

In the case of room temperature fusion, one thing to talk about would be the temperature that fusion normally takes place at which is 119,999,727 degrees Celsius. You could compare this to the temperature at the surface of the sun which is about 6,000 Celsius. Clearly fusion is hot stuff.

Pictures Are Good

When you are trying to convey information during a technical presentation, it can be tempting to show your audience lots of equations. When possible, don’t!

Instead, use pictures to make your point or, if possible, animation. Yes, it might look a bit hokey, but you’ll do a much better job of creating a long lasting mental image if you do it this way.

Stop With The Equation Reading

This one should be simple. If you must show an equation to your audience please don’t make the mistake of reading it out to them. Either they’ll get it or they won’t, but your reading of it out to them won’t help matters.

What Does All Of That Data Mean?

This is the cardinal sin of technical presentations: blasting your audience with too much data. If you have to present a lot of data to make your point, then at least include a box somewhere that summarizes what it all means. At the end of the day this is what your audience will remember.

What’s Your Bottom Line?

Speaking of summarizing, you should do the same thing at the end of your speech: tell you audience why what you just told them was important. During any technical presentation your audience can get lost or caught up in the discussion and forget “the big picture”. Help them out by bringing it all together at the end so that everyone will leave having reached the conclusion that you wanted them to get.

How To Get Ready

Preparing to give a technical presentation is just a little bit different from getting ready to give any other type of speech. One of the most important things that you need to do is to very carefully practice how long your speech is going to take. All too often technical presentations can run long and nobody likes that…

You’ll also have to prepare yourself to deal with questions once you are done. The whole purpose of a technical presentation is to convey information and this always generates questions. Practice your answers before you need to give them and you’ll always come across sounding smarter.

Finally, you need to make sure that you show some excitement about what you are talking about. The technical presentations that I remember the best are the ones where the presenter clearly had a deep love for their topic and it showed. If you can convey this to your audience, they’ll listen to your every word.

What All Of This Means For You

There is no need to fear giving a technical presentation; however, you do need to respect it. It’s all to easy to make this type of presentation boring and uninteresting. Taking the time to do it right is easy to do and the results make it worth your time.

You need to make sure that you make your presentation understandable to your entire audience as you start out. Help people stay with you by taking it easy on the equations and using as many pictures as possible. Where possible, relate what you are talking about to real-world things that your audience will know about.

Just having a great technical presentation is not enough, you also need to prepare to deliver it. This means making sure that you’ll be able to cover your topic in the time provided and that you’ll be ready to answer the questions that always come after one of these types of presentations. If you can do all of this, then you just may start to look forward to delivering your next technical presentation.

Question For You: Do you think that a technical presentation should be “dumbed down” so that you don’t lose your audience or should you deliver complex material and lose some of them?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

I’ve always spoken English. I never really spent a lot of time thinking about what it took to speak “good English” because it’s my native tongue. However, when I started working with speakers for whom English was not their first language, I quickly came to understand just how hard it is to give a good speech in English if it’s not your first language. That’s “hard”, but not “impossible”…

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Never Be Lonely Again: How To Include Your Audience In Your Speech

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
Image Credit
Friends Don’t Let Friends Speak All Alone

Friends Don’t Let Friends Speak All Alone

Why Does Giving A Speech Have To Be So Lonely?

Let’s face it – anyone can give a speech. However, not anyone can give a good speech. It sure seems as though if you’re going to go to all of the effort of preparing and delivering a speech, you sure would like to do a good job of it. That means that you’re going to have to find a way to really connect with your audience. Guess what – it turns out that this is actually pretty easy to do. The trick is that you have to start to use more “people words” when you speak…

It’s All About How You Say Things

Once you understand what I’m talking about this is going to be a simple concept – it’s just that it may be a bit difficult for me to explain. Let’s start our discussion by thinking back to the last time that you sat down to create a speech. I’m sure that what was front and center in your mind as you wrote your speech was the point that you were trying to make by giving the speech. There’s no problem with this.

Where we run into problems is when you sit back and take a look at the speech that you’ve written: I’m willing to bet you that it’s pretty cold and impersonal. Don’t get me wrong, you’ve probably did a great job of getting your main point across; however, it’s not going to be an effective speech because you’re not going to be able to connect with your audience.

The way to fix this problem of great speech / lousy connection is to go back and plug in more “people words” . These types of words are very clear references to human beings just like you, me, and your audience. The more of these types of words that you can include in your speech, the warmer your speech will appear and the easier it will be to connect with your listeners. Oprah does this all the time.

Kevin Johnston and Tennille-Lynn Millo are writers who use this technique in their work. The most effect technique that they’ve found to use is to start to ask the question “who” when you are reviewing your speech. What you will be trying to do is to replace the impersonal “the sales department” with “Mike and the rest of the team in the Sales department”. See how much warmer that is?

The Problem With Statistics

I can already see some of you rolling your eyes – look Dr. Jim, my speech is filled with facts and stats – there’s nothing warm and personal about it. Well, you’ve got a point there but never say never. Even this type of speech can be warmed up with some more people words.

Take an ugly stat: about two thirds of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese. Ouch, but who cares – that’s cold and impersonal. How could you warm this one up? Simple, say something like “If you and your two best friends were in the room with us today, statistics say that that at least two of you would be either overweight or obese”. Much better!

Does Anyone Have A Body?

One of the reasons that so many speeches fail to connect with their audience is because what’s being discussed is not human – and so your audience tunes the discussion out. If you take the time to apply human words to non-human things you’ll be able to get your audience’s attention back.

The classic phrase “take a bite out of crime” is known by everyone. You can apply the same technique by saying “we’ve got to kick the competition” or “we want to stop crawling towards our goals and get up and start to run.”

It’s Name Time

The final way to warm your speech up and make a better connection with your audience may be the simplest of them all: start name dropping. When you are looking over your speech, search for places where you reference a position or a role and instead of saying “the company’s treasurer”, replace it with “Tom, the company’s treasurer”.

If you want to take this up a notch even more, if you can insert names of people who are in your audience you’ll score even more points with them. This is one of the reasons that the great speakers show up early for a speech and chat with the audience – they are collecting names to use later on in their speech.

What All Of This Means For You

It’s all too easy to write a cold and impersonal speech. It might do a good job of discussing our main topic; however, it’s going to be a waste of your time to deliver it if you can’t connect with your audience.

Taking the time to review the speech that you’ve written and working in “people words” will provide you with the opportunity to warm your speech up. Every speech can benefit from this kind of attention including speeches that have lots of statistics.

The more names that you can use in your speech, the more of a connection you’ll be able to establish with your audience. If you can work the names of actual audience members into your speech, then you will be well on your way to becoming a great speaker…

Question For You: Do you think that it would be possible to make a speech too warm – should some speeches not connect with an audience by design?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

I don’t know about you, but more and more I’ve been finding myself being asked to deliver speeches that have technical information in them. I’ve got a great deal of self confidence; however, having had to sit through more than my share of boring technical presentations this is the one type of speech that scares me the most. There’s got to be a better way…

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Posted in connecting with your audience | 1 Comment »