Archive for the ‘audience’ Category

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Tough Tasks: How To Present To Children

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
Image Credit Think That You Can Handle This Audience?

Think That You Can Handle This Audience?

Getting up in front of an audience to give a speech can be a nerve racking experience. If most of the members of that audience are under the age of 10, it can be downright terrifying. There’s no reason to fear the younger set, you just need to adjust both your speech and how you give it in order to be successful. I’m going to tell you how to do both…

It’s All About What They See

When we talk to an adult audience, we focus first on what we want to say and then if we have time, we’ll think about how we want to say it. When we’re addressing an audience that is made up of kids, this thinking needs to be flipped.

Kids at a young age are primarily visual creatures. If you stand in one place and talk at them, they’ll never pay attention. Talking without doing anything else for more than a couple of minutes will result in your losing your young audience.

Instead, you’re going to need to use visuals as a part of your speech. We’re not talking about just brining along one thing to hold up at some point during your speech. Rather, you are going to have to have to bring along a whole group of visuals. This also means that while you are rehearsing your speech, you are going to have to plan out what visuals you’ll be using and when you’ll use them.

In This Case, Speed Does Not Kill

As presenters, we try to make sure that we don’t overwhelm our audiences. One way that we do this is to present our information in a measured, moderate pace that we’re sure that they can all keep up with.

However, when you are presenting to a young audience, this is going to be the kiss of death. For kids, slow means boring and boring means that I’m going to be spending my time thinking about other things, not what you are saying.

As speakers, we need to pick up the pace when we are talking to kids. Nothing that we talk about can last for very long. When you are telling a story, you need to quickly get to the point and move on. Kids are not going to sit around waiting for you to build up to your big payoff.

A subtle but very important point is that all of this pick up the pace talk does not mean that you need to talk faster. As adults we talk at about 150 words per minute. However, studies have shown that our young audiences can only process about 124 words per minute. If you speak too quickly, your audience is not going to be able to understand what you are saying and they’ll drift off.

What All Of This Means For You

The good news is that it is possible to give a speech to kids and emerge with your life. However, you can’t give the same type of speech that you would give to an adult audience if you want to be successful.

An audience made up of little kids is fundamentally different from an adult audience. This means that you need to change not only what you say, but also how you say it. Kids tune in and pay more attention if you can make your speech more visual – use props and move around more. They will never permit you to deliver a slow speech – you need to keep things moving quickly.

Although speaking to a young audience may seem like a risky thing to do (so much can go wrong), it’s well worth the effort. Speakers who can develop the skills to do this well are able to improve their overall speaking ability and this shows every time they give a speech…

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

Question For You: How long do you think your speech should last if your audience is very young?

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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Being asked to give a speech is a great honor. Being asked to give a speech that is going to deliver bad news to part or all of business is not such an honor. However, in order to be a truly good speaker, this is exactly the type of speech that you need to be able to step up and give. The keys are knowing how to organize this type of speech and what not to say…

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How Speakers Can Help Other Speakers Be Their Best

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
Image Credit Even The Best Speakers Sometimes Need Assistance

Even The Best Speakers Sometimes Need Assistance

When we think about speaking in public, we normally think about one thing – ourselves. However, it turns out that that we really should be thinking bigger: how can we help other speakers do better? Since we know what it’s like to stand in front of an audience and try to give a speech, we have a special obligation to use this knowledge to make the speeches that we attend become better speeches. Read on and find out what your new assignment is…

Keeping Calm When Nobody Else Is

As speakers we all know that there are many things that can happen during a speech that are out of control of the speaker. These can include such distractions as audience members’ cell phones going off, fire alarms sounding, microphones that stop working, or any one of a number of different laptop related issues.

When you are the speaker and you have an event like this happen, your stress level can start to go through the roof. I mean you are already under a great deal of pressure to give a good speech, and now you have to deal with these additional challenges.

As speakers who are sitting in the audience, we can help a speaker get over these types of unplanned events simply by not reacting to them. Speakers feed off of the mood of their audience. When things start to go wrong, often times the audience will start to become restless or upset. When this happens, it’s very easy for the speaker to start to get upset also – he or she is simply reflecting back to the audience the mood that they are picking up on.

When you are a member of the audience and these types of events start to happen, you can help out the speaker by not getting upset. Let your cool, calm demeanor influence the people sitting around you and help to keep them from becoming restless. The more people that you can influence this way, then the more positive energy will flow up to the speaker. This can significantly help them to stay on track and still give a good speech no matter what goes wrong for them!

Helping Out With The Old Q&A

No matter how clear a speaker is, there will always be questions that the audience has once the speaker is done talking. The audience may have thought up a question early on and has held it until the end of the speech, or perhaps based on their personal experiences they’d like to know how to apply what the speaker was talking about to their life.

The Q&A part of any speech can be a life & death proposition for any speaker. They complete their speech and then ask the audience if they have any questions. The sound of crickets that all too often greets them takes away from whatever they just got done talking about. As an audience, we tend to judge the quality of a speech by the quantity of questions that the speaker gets asked after they are done – more questions must mean that the speech was a good speech.

As speakers in the audience, this is a simple place for us to step in and lend a helping hand to the presenter. We need to listen very closely to the points that they are making in their speech. Then, when the Q&A portion of the speech is announced, we need to immediately raise our hand.

This quick response to the request for questions will minimize the amount of time that the speaker is “hanging” waiting for a question. Next, the question that we ask has to also help the speaker out.

We can make our question help the speaker by making sure that the question reinforces their main point. Questions that contain words like “If I understood your point correctly, …” or “How could I apply that to my situation…” are great ways to do this.

Make sure that our question keeps the speaker on track and allows them to further expound on their main point even as they answer our question. The speaker will be forever grateful to you for allowing them to do this!

What All Of This Means For You

Giving a speech is never easy for anyone. As a speaker, since you know how hard it can be to give a good speech, you have a special obligation when you attend someone else’s speech to do everything that you can to help their speech go well.

Since each speech is a unique performance, you can never be sure just exactly what is going to happen during the speech. That means that you’re going to have to stay alert and look for ways to help out. One way that you can help is by keeping calm if things start to spin out of control during the speech. Another way to help is by being ready to ask good, topical questions if the speaker has a Q&A session.

I firmly believe that by helping out other speakers you can start to build a reputation as a friend to all speakers. When this happens, something magical will start to happen when you give a speech. Other speakers will be motivated to make sure that your speech goes well just like you have been doing for them. Do this often enough, you’ll eventually have your entire audience working to help you deliver the best speech ever!

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

Question For You: Do you think that you should make contact with a speaker before they give their speech to let them know that you’re them to make things go well for them?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When you start a speech, you know that the first few words that come out of your mouth have to be interesting to your audience. However, I’m going to take that thought one step further – your first words have to “hook” your audience’s interest. What you say has to catch them off guard, has to intrigue them, has to make them want to hear more. This isn’t easy to do, but I’m going to show you how…

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Public Speakers Need To Know How To Work A Room

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010
Image Credit
Before You Speak, A Crowd Needs To Become Your Friend

Before You Speak, A Crowd Needs To Become Your Friend

Getting up in front of a bunch of strangers can be a challenge for even the best public speaker. The really good ones realize that there is something that they can do about this: change strangers into friends. The challenge is that they don’t have a lot of time to pull this off. This is when your ability to “work a room” can really come in handy…

Ya Gotta Have A Goal

So there you are. You’ve arrived at your next speaking engagement early enough to mix & mingle with the audience before everyone files in and sits down. Why? If your goal is to convert this group of strangers into raving fans, then you’re going to have to have a goal.

Depending on your personality type, the event, the type of people in the audience, etc. your goals will probably be different from event to event. There is no one “correct” goal to have – this is a very personal decision. Possible goals can include trying to meet everyone in the audience, trying to make a few deep connections, trying to convince people to ask good questions during the Q&A session, etc.

What’s Your Message?

Long before you show up for your next speaking event, you need to decide what the key message that you want to share with people before the event will be. The most important thing that you need to keep in mind is to not just repeat what you’ll be talking about from the stage.

Instead, the message that you share with people before you begin your talk should lead up to whatever you will be talking about. If your speech is the solution, then your message beforehand needs to be about the problems that everyone is facing. By using this time to show people that you understand the problem, you’ll be assured that you’ll have their attention when you start to talk about how to solve the problem.

You’ve Got Two Ears – Use Them!

As important as it is to get your message across to the people that you meet before your speech, it is just as (and maybe even more) important for you to show them that you are a good listener. Taking the time to listen to your audience during these discussions is the best and easiest way to show them that you really do care about them.

Keep in mind that doing a good job of listening doesn’t mean that you just stand there with your mouth shut waiting for the other person to be quiet so that you can start to talk again. Rather, you want to actively listen and ask questions based on what you hear them say. This is how you develop real connections that will cause the person to whom you are listening to pay attention to you when you are speaking.

Details, Details, Details!

The whole purpose for you taking the time to show up early and talk with your audience is to try to win them over to your side long before you take the stage and open your mouth. What’s going to really make this happen is your attention to the little things.

When we first meet someone, we quickly size them up. If they come across as phony or shallow, then we discount them and move on to interact with others. You can prevent this from happening to you if you take the time to make good eye contact with people when you first meet them (yes, eye contact is important in one-on-one conversations just as in giving a speech).

Additionally, take the time to always be smiling. Would you want to approach someone and talk to them if they weren’t smiling? This simple gesture can really help you to connect with a lot of people very quickly.

What All Of This Means For You

As speakers, we all want our next speech to go well for us. One of the biggest challenges that we always face is trying to win the audience over to our side. It turns out that there is an easy way to make this happen: show up early!

Making the time to socialize with your audience before your big speech can go a long way in helping them to connect with you. In order to do this, you need to come prepared. You need to have a goal, a key message, and you need to take the time to listen to what people tell you.

When you finally take the stage, just imagine how much more confidant you can be. Having taken the time to turn an audience of strangers into a room full of friends is an investment that will pay off over and over again…!

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

Question For You: How early do you think that you should show up for your next speaking opportunity?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

The voice of authority is one that any audience will respond to. However, all too often you and I just don’t represent enough of an authority figure to command that level of respect from an audience that didn’t know us before we started to speak to them. If we want to wrap up our speech in a way that will leave a lasting impression with our audience, we need to find a way to use a voice of authority to deliver our last few words to them…

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Good Speakers Know How To Work A Room

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
Image Credit Meeting Your Audience Is The First Step In Connecting With Them

Meeting Your Audience Is The First Step In Connecting With Them

Speakers who want to be successful know that they have to connect with their audience. How to do this is the ultimate question that we’ve struggled with for years. I’m not claiming that I have all of the answers, but when I recently gave a keynote speech I had a chance to practice my “working the room” skills…

Arrive Early, Make Friends

Making a connection with your audience starts with you taking the time to meet them. In my case, I had been invited to deliver the keynote speech at ProductCamp Chicago and the event was scheduled to start at 9:00 am.

I showed up at 8:30am – pretty much the same time as the folks who were setting up the event started to show up. This gave me a chance to meet the organizers before attendees started to show up and things got really crazy.

Since I was there I also had an opportunity to meet just able everyone who came when they arrived. This was no more than a handshake and a quick greeting. However, what it did was to transform me from “the keynote guy” into somebody that they actually know.

Talk, Talk, Talk

Once everyone had arrived, I really started to work the room. You’ve probably heard this phrase before, but knowing what it means is the trick.

In my case, I took the time to move around the room where the audience was assembling. I’d approach a group of two or three attendees and start to chat with them. Instead of saying “hi, I’m the keynote speaker” (that’s all about me), I’d say hi, ask for their names and ask them what they did for a living (all about them) . Most of the time we’d end up talking about what they did and why they were there and who I was or what I was doing there often didn’t come up.

Add Local Content To Your Speech

If you want to make the words that you say during your speech really connect with your audience, then you need to make sure that those words are words that they can relate to.

One of the simplest ways to make this happen is to work local content into your speech. I think that I can provide an example of this. During the discussions that I had with audience members before giving my keynote, I happened to discover that a number of them happened to be working in the casino gaming industry.

I was able to use this information to add local content to my speech. I worked a number of comments about “placing your bets” and “spinning the wheel” etc. into my speech. This was a wink and a nudge to the folks who were in the gaming industry and they all understood the references.

Leave Last, Make More Friends

All too often speakers think that when they stop speaking, their job is over. It turns out that this is not true. What folks don’t realize is that your opportunities to connect with your audience continue long after the actual speech is done.

When my speech was done, I attended other speeches that went on that day, ate lunch with folks, and generally tried to make myself as available as possible. I met some great people and also made myself more approachable to just about everyone who was in the audience.

What All Of This Means For You

The success of any speech that you give will be judged by the connection that you are able to make with your audience. The words that you use during your speech are important, but they don’t do the entire job.

To make a good connection, you need to make yourself available to your audience. This means showing up early, chatting with your audience, working local content into your actual speech, and hanging out after your speech is done to further connect with your audience.

As speakers it’s how you are going to be remembered by each audience that really matters. You control how this is all going to turn out. Take the time to really meet and interact with your audience and you’ll be remembered in a positive way long after your speech is over and done with.

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

Question For You: If you can’t arrive early, what do you think that you can do to connect with your audience?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Will these Internet crazes never end? Just in case you’ve been living under a rock someplace and haven’t heard about the “Twitter” revolution, guess what: it’s arrived and this time around as a public speaker you should be an active participant.

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How To Rig A Speech To Get The Outcome You Want Every Time

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Image Credit If You Stack The Deck, Then You'll Win Every Time

If You Stack The Deck, Then You'll Win Every Time

You can’t always do it all by yourself. If you want to make a lasting impression on your audience, then sometimes you just gotta bring in some help to pull it off. Speakers who are ready to move up to the next level in their speaking often come to me and ask for advice. Now that they’ve gotten over their fear of speaking, they want to move on and start to make more of an impact with their audience. It’s time to bring out an advanced speaking skill – rigging a speech.

The Setup

If as a speaker you can put aside your ego long enough to admit that sometimes if you really want to make a lasting impression on your audience, then you are going to have to allow others to help you, then you’ll be half-way there.

An advanced speaking technique is to work with an outsider to act as a “plant” in the audience. Having somebody in the audience who you control gives you enormous power as a speaker when it comes to steering the audience’s mood and reactions.

The most important part of stacking the deck is to make sure that you take the time to rehearse what you want to happen with your partner in crime – these things don’t just happen by themselves.

The Action

When you rig a speech, you need to make sure that you’ve carefully scripted what you want to happen. The three most common uses of a plant are to generate anger, humor, and questions.

Having a member of your audience stand up and angrily shout something out or accuse you of something is a fantastic tool; however, it’s just about as dangerous as nitroglycerin. This is an unexpected action – your audience will not be expecting it and so it will wake them up and grab their attention. I’ve used this one when I knew that what the audience would be thinking at a certain point was directly opposite to what I was telling them. Since you knew that it was coming, you have a fantastic response ready for them, this calms your angry audience member down, and everyone else is very impressed with you. That’s exactly what I did and it took the tension out of the room.

Humor is difficult enough to try to do by yourself let alone with a partner, but if you can pull it off you’ll be able to make a lasting impression on your audience. As with all types of humor, timing is everything here. One of my favorite techniques is to have my plant ask a question and then we end up getting involved in a very fast back-and-forth dialog that amazes and entertains everyone. Once upon a time I answered my plant’s question by saying that something would take 1 year, they replied with 2, I said “3″, they said “4″ and so on.

Finally, one of the worst things that a speaker can do is to wrap up a speech by asking “does anyone have any questions” and then be greeted by dead silence. This is when having a plant can save your life: have them stand up and ask an interesting or controversial question just to get things going. Since you know what they are going to ask, you can structure your speech so that your answer to that question is really part of your speech.

What All Of This Means For You

When you are ready to take your speaking skills up to the next level, starting to “seed” the audience with your trained agents is a great way to ensure that you are able to control how the speech will flow. These agents can control the audience’s mood: get them angry, make them laugh, or ask the questions that they are all thinking about.

As with all tools, the planted agent requires skill to use. You have to take the time both to structure your speech in such a way as to accommodate your plant and to rehearse what each of you is going to say before the big day. Do it right and you’ll have left your audience with a positive lasting impression.

Under what circumstances do you think it would be a bad idea to plant someone in your audience?


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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you could wish for just one thing before you give your next speech in public, what would it be? Sure we’d all like to be able to talk like Tony Robbins, move a crowd like Zig Ziglar, or even have a powerful story to tell like Rudy Giuliani. However, I’m willing to bet good money that after considerable thought, we’d all settle for spending our wish on making sure that there were no hecklers in the audience.

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