Dr. Jim Anderson investigates how a speaker can persuade an audience to take action.
Dr. Anderson reveals the secrets that you can use during your next speech to get your audience to agree that there is a problem that they need to take action to fix.
To get more tips and techniques for creating and delivering great speeches, sign-up for the free The Accidental Communicator newsletter at: http://goo.gl/GJ2Z1
Editor’s Note: This article has been selected to be included in Angela DeFinis’ “Public Speaking and the Holidays” Blog Carnival. If you aren’t familiar with blog carnivals, they are a compilation of blog posts from numerous authors on a given topic that are housed on a central blog.
Enjoy this article and be sure to check out the other ones at Angela’s blog.
It’s the holiday season once again, a virtual minefield of social speaking opportunities. I can just see it now: you’re at the office Christmas party, there will probably be some sort of food served, drinks will flow, and then someone will do it – they’ll stand up and give a toast. Oh, oh – now it’s your turn to do the same thing. How are you going to do this without looking like a fool or destroying your relationship with the person(s) of honor (your boss perhaps?)
First off, get rid of any plans that you might have to say something naughty. Rarely this might go over well; however, more often than not it falls flat on its face and so just say “no”. Michael Varma is a professional speaker who has seen his fair share of toasting disasters and he’s got some advice for all of us.
Michael says that when you are giving a toast, you should always start out by introducing yourself – in a crowd of people, there are probably a bunch of folks who don’t know who you are. Also spell out how you are related to the person(s) of honor because this will help to make your toast clearer. Michael suggests that your actual toast have three characteristics: make it brief, make it bold, and then be done with it.
A toast is NOT a speech! Mark Twain probably said it best when he recommended that toasts should never be longer than 1 minute. The longer your toast, the less impact that it will have. The “air time” that you are taking for your toast belongs to everyone and you need to use as little of it as possible.
When you are giving a toast, this is not the time to be shy. You are probably talking to a noisy room in which people may be eating, drinking, and having their own side conversations. You need to speak up! Your goal should be to speak loudly enough that everyone in the room, including the folks in the back, can hear you clearly.
When you are done speaking, shut up and sit down. Yes you’ve just given a performance; however, this event is not all about you so don’t do any bowing or waving. Shut your mouth and sit down so that everyone can once again return their attention to the person(s) of honor.
If you want your toast to be memorable, then the trick is to tell a story. I must once again reemphasize a key point – keep it clean! You shouldn’t tell stories about old girlfriends at a wedding and you shouldn’t tell stories about stealing office supplies at the annual Christmas party. Instead, tell a story that shows the person(s) of honor in a good light. Oh, and keep it to under a minute.
My recommendation is to get a little sappy, a little funny, and hopefully that will be just right for a toast at any holiday gathering.
Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.
What is the best way to become a better public speaker? The problem with most approaches is that they take time. Too much time. A much better way to quickly improve is to find a professional speaker who is doing it right and ask them how they do it…
The Clothes That A Speaker Wears Are A Powerful Speaking Tool (c) - 2008
The purpose of giving any speech is to be able to reach out and connect with your audience. No matter whether you are trying to inform them, entertain them, or convince them to take some action, none of this can be done unless you are able to make a connection with them. What you say is an important part of doing this, but did you know that what you wear also plays a role?
I’m hoping that most of us already know enough to “dress up” when we go to give a speech. If you pick up any popular book on public speaking, you’ll find advice like “be the best dressed person in the room” and such.
What’s interesting is that it’s probably too much of a simplification to think of our clothes as being just that – clothes. Instead, Karen Hudson who retired from the movie business says that we should think about what we are wearing as being costumes that are “scenery on the move“.
Now I can already see some of you starting to roll your eyes – I mean really, costumes? Give me just a minute to explain. Your time with your audience is limited - 15, 30, 60 minutes, right? You need to grab their attention, hold it, and make a difference in their lives.
What tools do you have to do this with? Sure your words are important. Probably how you say the words (pitch, tone, etc.) also play a role. However, what else do you have? Not much! If you can start to think about what you are wearing as being yet another speaking tool, then all of a sudden you’ve got another “lever to pull” to get your audience to connect with you.
Not all speeches are the same. In fact, you need to be aware of what type of speech you will be giving and then you need to dress appropriately in order to lend even more power to your speech.
When you are speaking to inform your audience you will be presenting either lots of information or technical concepts in order to make your point. When doing this type of speaking, first impressions are quickly made by your audience when they are trying to determine if they are going to make the effort to listen to what you have to say.
For this type of speech your goal is going to be to establish your credibility in the field in which you are going to be talking about at first glance. You have two things that you want to quickly accomplish: you want your audience to understand that you are an expert in this field, and you want them to accept your credibility for speaking to them. What all this means is that your clothes have to convey a sense of strength, power, and leadership to your audience.
Things change when the purpose of your speech is to inspire your audience to take some action. What you are trying to do is to relate a story to your audience in a way that will provide them with a new point-of-view that will cause them to make a change.
For this type of speech, you are not trying to overpower your audience with your credibility. Instead, what you really want to do is to be able to inspire your audience. This means that you want your audience to reach out to you – to accept your ideas as theirs and to then grow because of these ideas.
This means that you want to come across as being three things all at once: credible, authoritative, and accessible. From a clothing point-of-view, this means that you are going to want to be less formal than you would be for a speech in which you were speaking to inform. Your clothing should present your audience with a softer, more conversational image of you.
Arguably you have the widest range of clothing choices when you are giving a speech that is designed to entertain your audience. Ultimately you are going to be telling your audience a story and you hope that by doing this you’ll be able to grab their attention and hold on to it throughout your entire presentation. In the end your goal is to allow them to fully enjoy what you have to tell them.
Your clothing can be a key part of how you go about doing this. Depending on the story that you are going to be sharing with your audience, your clothing can set the stage before you even open your mouth. You can go all out and dress up in a full costume, or you can simply add a particular accessory to what you would normally wear (e.g. an Abraham Lincoln top hat) in order to make your audience eager to hear your story from the moment they first lay eyes on you.
Hudson points out that when she was taking a screenwriting class, she learned that each character mist contribute to the outcome of the story. You can say the same thing about the clothes that you wear to give a speech: each item must contribute directly to the telling of the story and its final outcome.
This leads to the three key guidelines that control what we wear when we are speaking:
Take the time to pick the clothes that you wear to match the speech that you will be giving and you’ll be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.
Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.
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?
Persuading Your Audience Requires More Planning Than Yelling At Them
If you think about it, there are a lot of different types of speeches that we can give: humorous, informative, motivational, and of course, ones that are designed to get your audience to start thinking a particular way. Oh yeah, this last type just may be the hardest type of speech to give…
At it’s very heart, persuasion is the art of getting your audience to see the world the same way that you do. As all of us speakers know, no matter if you are talking to a graduation or a business gathering, an audience is not a single entity – it’s a lot of different people sitting out there who all have different opinions on any given topic. Your job as a speaker is to win over as many of them to your side as possible.
John Coleman is an author and a former U.S. national speech champion who knows a thing or two about how to build a speech that can persuade. Coleman points out that before you can have any hope of persuading an audience, both of you need to agree that there is a problem in the first place.
As obvious as this may seem, you could talk until you are blue in the face and it would all be for naught if your audience didn’t agree with you that there is a problem. In order to get your audience to agree that there is a problem that needs to be solved, you need to do three things:
Have you ever heard that phrase “You can’t boil the ocean”? When it comes to persuading an audience it applies – you need to make sure that you pick a problem that you can actually do something about. Scope down a bigger problem (“world hunger”) to something that your audience can do something about (“hunger in our town”).
Well, don’t run but you do want to convince your audience that they need to take action. Just talking about a problem isn’t enough to cause your audience to actually agree to DO anything. Somehow you are going to have to lite a fire underneath them so that they will end up taking some action (that’s why it’s called “persuasion”!).
Assuming that you’ve been able to convince your audience that there is a problem, your next step is to make sure that you bring it home – you’ve got to relate the problem to their lives. This is going to require that you have an understanding of who your audience is so that you can describe to them how this problem is going to affect them in terms that will motivate them to take action.
Speeches that persuade are not easy speeches to give. However, as with so many things in life – it’s the ability to do the hard things that make us more valuable. If you take the time to understand how to prepare to give an effective persuasive speech, then you’ll have a powerful new speaking tool and you’ll be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.
Have you ever had to give a persuasive speech? Was the problem too big, too small, or just the right size? How did you convey that the problem was urgent? Did your audience come away believing that the problem related to their lives? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.
Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.
Not all speeches are the same. Graduations, weddings, corporate pep-rally’s – those are all pretty straightforward. One of the most difficult types of speeches to give is one in which you have been brought in to convince an audience of something. As difficult as this type of speech is to give, if you can become good at doing it, you will seen as being a very valuable speaker indeed!
More Information
George Halvorson Gave A Keynote Speech That Can Teach Us All A Lot
We can talk about how to be a better communicator all we want, but in the end it comes down to learning – and we all do this in different ways. One great way to discover what a speaker should (or should not) do is to watch ‘em in action. This time around we’re going to take a look at how a powerful CEO, George Halvorson, did during a recent keynote speech.
Halvorson is the Chairman and CEO of the Kaiser Permanente health system. There’s no question that he knows his stuff, the challenge will be to discover how well he can communicate it.
While attending the recent HIMSS health care show up in Chicago, I had an opportunity to watch Halvorson in action as he gave a keynote speech. How did he do? Overall – not bad, but it could have been better. Let’s find out how.
We can practice our public speaking by ourselves as much as we want, but having the opportunity to watch and learn from others is, as the folks at Visa tell us, priceless.
How do you like to get introduced – is there any multimedia involved? Do you have the courage to use your personal sense of humor in your speeches? How much effort do you put into having a great speech opening? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.
Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.
Even if you don’t work in the world of high-finance, you surely know who Alan Greenspan is. He was the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. There’s no question that this guy is smart, but can he deliver a good keynote speech…?
|
Click Here To Follow Dr. Jim Anderson On Twitter! |
