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Speakers Need To Know What Their Emotional Intelligence Quotient Is

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
Image Credit Speakers Use Their Emotional Intelligence To "Read" Their Audience

Speakers Use Their Emotional Intelligence To "Read" Their Audience

Have you ever been giving a speech when all of a sudden you thought to yourself “I wonder what they are thinking?” I mean, you’re standing up there running your mouth and the audience is sitting out there looking at you, but do you really know what’s running through their heads right then? If you did know, how would that change what you were saying? It turns out that the best speakers DO know what their audience is thinking and they DO adjust their speeches to match this. You can do it also – you just need to have emotional intelligence…

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

So I’m sure that we all at least think that we know what emotional intelligence is, but do we really know? From a top-level view, emotional intelligence is simply the a speaker’s ability to be aware of their own emotions and the emotions of those who are around them.

It turns out that emotional intelligence is very important in our overall success. Somewhat surprisingly, studies have shown that a person’s emotional intelligence can be a bigger factor in their overall success than their intellectual aptitude. In fact, some say that up to 90% of the success that you’ll have in your life can be directly tied back to your emotional intelligence.

The author Daniel Goleman who wrote the book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
believes that there are four “pillars” to your emotional intelligence:

  • Self-awareness: understanding what you are feeling at any point in time
  • Self-management of behaviors: the ability to control your emotions including your body language, facial expressions, etc.
  • Social Awareness: the ability to be aware of what people around you are feeling.
  • Relationship Management: the ability to develop and foster relationships with others.

The good news about emotional intelligence is that these types of skills can be taught and learned. One of the key skills is for you as a speaker to become adapt at reading facial expressions.

As a speaker, in order to truly connect with your audience you are going to want to create the correct mood between you and your audience. This means that you are going to have to be able to identify what their current energy level is so that you’ll know how to steer it going forward. Based on your opening comments, you should be able to read your audience’s facial expressions and using your emotional intelligence you should be able to determine what their mood is.

This ability to “read” your audience and adapt to their mood is what can turn a good speech into a great speech. Audiences really respond to a speaker who seems to fully understand where they are at. If you can use your emotional intelligence to connect with your audience, then you will be well on your way to becoming a great speaker.

What Does All Of This Mean For You?

The goal of any speaker is to find a way to connect with their audience while they are delivering a speech. A powerful tool that we have to do this is called our emotional intelligence. This skill is simply our ability to be aware of how we are currently feeling and how our audience is feeling.

Once we are aware of the power of our emotional intelligence and know how to use it, we can change how we give speeches. Being able to sense how our audience is feeling gives us the ability to adjust how we deliver a speech on the fly. We can adapt our message to how our audience is currently feeling.

Speakers who are able to connect with their audience are the most powerful. They have the ability to change the world just a little bit with each speech that they give. Use your emotional intelligence to connect with your audience and watch what happens!

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

Question For You: Do you think that it is possible to prepare to adapt your speech before you start to give it?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Hopefully everyone knows who Nelson Mandela is – he’s the South African leader who’s tireless efforts helped to get rid of his country’s oppressive apartheid policies. What is less known is how he marshaled world opinion in order to support the change that he wanted. It turns out that one way he made this happen was by giving speeches that uniquely connected with his audiences…

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Customized Presentations: How To Make ‘Em

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
Image Credit
Every Presentation You Make Must Be Fitted To Your Audience

Every Presentation You Make Must Be Fitted To Your Audience

Let’s say that you were going to go out and buy a new car. Now lets say that you didn’t get to make any decisions about what that car was going to look like. You don’t get to choose the color, the accessories, or even the type of car. When the car got delivered to you, how would you feel? I’m willing to bet that you’d have almost no connection to that car – it had not been customized for you. What this all means is that if you don’t take the time to customize your speech for your audience, then you’re going to get the same reaction: they aren’t going to feel any sense of connection with you.

Gather Your Information Before The Speech Starts

Somebody very important once said that “… all news is local.” The same thing can be said about any speech that you give: your audience really wants to hear about themselves, about what’s going on in their lives. If you have a generic speech that works for anybody, the truth is that it probably works for nobody.

In order to strike a balance between what you want to tell your audience and what they want to hear, you need to take the time to customize your speech for them. In order to do this correctly, you are going to have to do some work before your speech starts.

What you need to do is to take the time to meet some of the members of your audience prior to giving your speech. The reason for doing this is simple: you want to interview them. What you are looking to find out is why they are there, what their issues and concerns are. Everyone has a different story to tell, you want to get people to tell you theirs and then you want to either write it down or remember it.

Work The Information Into Your Speech

Once you’ve collected the information that you need, now it’s going to be time to work it into your speech. The goal here is not to dramatically change your speech or its main message. Rather what you are going to be trying to do is to add a “local flavor” to your speech that will allow your audience to feel as though the speech was created just for them.

One of the best places to add this local flavor is in the beginning of your speech. You can do this by adding a reference to an issue that someone that you talked to brought up. What you want to do is to tell your audience that you were talking to so-and-so and they mentioned that such-and-such was an issue. Then let everyone know that you’ll be addressing this issue during your talk.

The second place that you can locally customize your speech is on the backend. As you are wrapping your speech up, you can revisit the local issues that you brought up in your opening and assure everyone that they have been covered. By including local content in your closing statements, you leave your audience with the feeling that they’ve just heard a speech that was handcrafted for them.

What This All Means For You

As speakers, it can be all too easy to fall into the trap of giving the same speech over and over again – I mean, why not: you’ve gotten good at giving it. Doing this means that you are missing a fantastic opportunity to connect with your audience.

Take the time to meet members of your audience before you start to speak. Ask them about their cares and concerns and what they’d like to get out of your speech. Then use their input when you are delivering your speech and refer to them by name. Doing this changes what could be another generic speech into a customized learning experience for your audience.

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

Question For You: Do you think that it is possible to over customize a speech for a given audience?

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P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Communicator Newsletter are now available. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Have you ever been giving a speech when all of a sudden you thought to yourself “I wonder what they are thinking?” I mean, you’re standing up there running your mouth and the audience is sitting out there looking at you, but do you really know what’s running through their heads right then? If you did know, how would that change what you were saying? It turns out that the best speakers DO know what their audience is thinking and they DO adjust their speeches to match this. You can do it also – you just need to have emotional intelligence…

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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?

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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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Act Up Or Sit Down!

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Photo CreditIf You Aren't Acting While You Are Speaking, Then Sit Down

If You Aren't Acting While You Are Speaking, Then Sit Down

When I come to hear you speak, no matter if it’s at a departmental project status report or at a local restaurant or even if it was at a convention, the worst thing that you can do is to waste my time. What are you going to do about this?

Why So Many Speakers Suck

Let’s be frank here – most speakers that you listen to really aren’t that good. In fact, the ones that we think are good may not really be all that good – they may just be better than the ones who are really bad! What’s going on here? It’s actually pretty simple, most speakers are boring. Who wants to listen to that?

All too often a speaker will focus exclusively on what they are going to be saying and spend little or no time thinking about how they are going to say it.

If you need an analogy to clear things up, this would be like a chef who worries about what ingredients go into a meal without spending any time thinking about how to actually cook the thing. Sure he’ll be able to make something, but it’s not going to taste very good.

Fixing The Problem Of Your Boring Speeches

You are in a rut. You’ve found a particular speaking style that you believe suits you (that means that it worked once and you’ve stuck with it ever since) and you have become what we all fear the most – a boring speaker. How are we going to fix this problem?

You are going to have to take action. You are going to have to start to experiment with the unknown. You are going to have to step into the world of theater.

Birgit Starmanns has spent time in both the world of speaking as well as the world of theater. She points out that actors spend their time working hard to allow the audience to feel what the actor is currently feeling. In order to make this happen they use six tools:

  • Quotes: quotes are a powerful way to invite someone else into your speech. All too often speakers just stick any old quote into their speech in order to give themselves credibility – don’t do that. Instead, make sure any person that you invite into your speech by using their quote helps to move your speech along and gives you more creditability with your audience.
  • Roles: It’s just you up there and that can get pretty boring for your audience. How about if you stop being you for a bit and turn into someone else? You need to make it very clear to your audience that you are doing this, otherwise they are going to think that you’ve all of a sudden lost it. I’ve used this during internal status reports in order to bring the voice of other departments (e.g. finance) into my presentation.
  • Props: This is one of the simplest things to use, and yet all too few speakers take the time to think about what props would help them get their point across. In the past during presentations to sales teams, I’ve used marketing brochures from their competitors that they instantly recognized in order to drive a point home.
  • Staging: I hate it when a presenter acts like a block of stone and stands in one place during an entire presentation. You’ve got the entire stage / front of the room / etc. – use it! In fact, as you move from section to section in your speech, move to a different spot to speak and your audience will understand that you’ve moved on in the speech.
  • Costumes: Ok, so you’ve got to be careful here depending on your audience, but you should at least consider it for every speech that you give. I’m not talking about a full on Hollywood costume, but rather wearing something that will enhance your message. I’ve used a chef’s hat during a presentation to show that we were “cooking up” some new products to sell – you get the point.
  • Audience Participation: Do you feel lucky? Well, do you? Bringing someone from your audience up on stage during a presentation is a huge risk. However, it’s a great way to capture everyone’s attention – they will all be breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn’t them that got picked. If you are ready to interact well with you victim, I mean volunteer, then your speech definitely won’t be boring.

Final Thoughts

Anyone can give a boring speech – don’t let it be you. You’ve got to realize that no matter the setting in which you’ll be presenting in, be it a boardroom or a convention hall, you are ultimately putting on a performance for your audience.

Not everybody is a born entertainer, but that’s ok. Where you’ll really tick me off is if you don’t at least try. Theater actors have to connect with their audience every time they put on a show. In order to do this they pull out all of the stops and use every device that they have available to them in order to make their performance unforgettable.

You need to learn from them, research their techniques, and then apply them to your next speech where appropriate. You may not turn into the next Robert De Niro or Glenn Close, but that doesn’t matter. You won’t be giving boring speeches anymore and that’s all that matters…!

What’s the one thing that you can do to make your next speech unforgettable?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Bored audiences will get up and walk out of your speeches. How would you keep the attention of 400+ engineers who were attending an industry dinner event that they didn’t really want to be at on a weekday evening? I recently had the opportunity to be the master of ceremonies at such an event – great gig, tough crowd.

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How Boys Can Talk To Girls (And Visa Versa)

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Reaching An Audience Of The Opposite Sex Can Be Difficult (c) - 2008 by Steve Hopson

Reaching An Audience Of The Opposite Sex Can Be Difficult (c) - 2008 by Steve Hopson

Man, as though giving a speech wasn’t hard enough already, then you go ahead and throw that gender thing in there and all of a sudden it gets that much tougher! It can be a challenge when you are asked to talk to an audience made up of members of the opposite gender. How can you not screw-up this speech?

Boys Talking To Girls

Male presenters need to adapt their speeches when they are presenting to a primarily female audience. Neil Chethik has a great deal of experience presenting to female audience and he points out that even in the enlightened age in which we are living, there are still differences between the sexes and a skillful presenter has to know about these differences and find ways to steer around them.

  • R-e-s-p-e-c-t: A male presenter needs to treat his female audience with respect if he wants to have any chance of the speech going well. Women are generally willing to learn from a male presenter; however, they have to feel as though they are being respected.
  • Down To Earth: A man who starts off his presentation by telling his audience how wonderful he is will instantly lose the connection with his female audience. There’s no problem with you being an expert in your area, you just don’t want to come off as being a know-it-all. You can connect with your audience by telling a story that points out a personal failing or error and a female audience will connect with you.
  • Evidence Counts: One of the biggest errors that male presenters make when they are speaking to an all female audience is that they give an emotional presentation and leave out all of the facts. Yes, women do like stories; however, they won’t believe what you are saying unless you can back it up with hard evidence – facts & stats.
  • Humor: talk about a minefield! Many a good speech to a female audience has gone wrong when the male speaker tried to interject some humor. Your best best is to let the humor naturally flow from the stories that you are telling. Trying to work in one-liners can only lead to disaster.

Girls Talking To Boys

Yes, men have it rough when they try to address an all female audience. However, women have it at least as rough and perhaps even rougher when they are called on to present to an all male audience. Once again, there are several ways to make sure that this type of speech goes well:

  • Stand Up: One of the simplest issues for a woman to solve when she’s addressing a male audience is to make sure that they can see her. All too often,  a lectern can overwhelm a speaker and hid her from her audience. Stand on something if needed and adjust the mic so that it works correctly for your height.
  • No Expression Is Good: Often women speakers will become flustered because no matter what they say, the expressions on their male audience won’t change. It turns out that this is very normal – men don’t tend to display their emotions.
  • Be A Straight Shooter: Whereas women tend to enjoy hearing lots of stories, men tend to be more “to the point”. Clearly communicating your main points and making sure that any stories that you do tell quickly come to the point will help to hold their attention.
  • Be A Professional: Men do a good job of dealing with other men. They will struggle with any presenter who comes off as being too “girlish”. This impression can be caused by clothing, gesture, or even a vocal tone that takes away from what you have to say. Ask a male friend that you trust for help in order to make sure that this is not a problem.

Final Thoughts

Giving any presentation can be a challenge. When it is complicated by the additional challenge of having one gender present to the other gender, it can get even more tricky.

The key to making this type of speech a success is for the presenter to acknowledge the situation and adjust the presentation to match it. Men have to make sure that they show respect to their female audience and women need to not get flustered by their male audience’s lack of outward emotions.

Speakers who take the time to adjust what they are going to say and how they are going to say it when addressing the opposite gender will be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Stop. How funny was the last speech that you gave? What – you were talking about how best to diversify a 401k basket of investments in order to incorporate more foreign exchange funds & there’s nothing funny about that? Wrong. You’re not trying hard enough. Stop being not funny.

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