http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUB0PYL7H9U

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.

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Related posts:

1. Video: PowerPoint Tricks: Banish Boring, Invite Fun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K56O2wmj9gk   Dr. Jim Anderson shares 3 web sites that...
2. Video: Just How Does One Create A Keynote Presentation? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6DAdunyM94 Dr. Jim Anderson explains how he went about creating...
3. Video: How To Use Your Mental TV To Memorize A Speech (or Anything) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HJ6J6iOSP8 Dr. Jim Anderson shows how a speaker can memorize...

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A Poorly Given Toast Can Burn A Relationship

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.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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…

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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?

What Your Clothes Say About You

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.

Different Speeches Require Different Types Of Clothes

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.

Speaking To Inform

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.

Speaking To Inspire

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.

Speaking To Entertain

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.

Final Thoughts

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:

1. The clothes should never take the focus off of you, the speaker.
2. No matter what you wear, you will need to be able to perform comfortable and effectively in the costume and accessories.
3. Time is of the essence – your costume should not tell more story that you have time to present.

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.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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?

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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…

Where Do You Start When You Want To Persuade?

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.

Pick Your Problem

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:

• Isolate it & limit its scope
• Make it urgent
• Make it significant

You Got To Keep ‘Em Isolated

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”).

Run!

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”!).

It’s Only A Problem If It’s Significant

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.

Final Thoughts

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.

Questions For You

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.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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

• Lisa Braithwaite has discussed how TV commercials do/don’t use persuasion.

• Guy Kawasaki has also spent some time talking about how to change someone’s mind.

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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.

• Nerves: First off, this was a big presentation. In the audience were approximately 10,000 – 12,000 eager listeners. We all talk about getting butterflies in our guts before we talk, but just image how Halvorson must have felt?
• Introduction: That being said, the lead in to Halvorson’s speech was spectacular. A professionally produced video and well done sound track listed all of his accomplishments. It was rock show quality stuff and everyone was pumped up and ready for a good speech by the time he took the podium.
• Opening: That’s when the ball got dropped. The first words out of your mouth have to be grabbers – they have to convince your audience to pay attention to what you are going to be saying. Halvorson’s were, unfortunately, forgettable. He started by thanking people and commenting on the convention – pleasant talk that went nowhere.
• Humor: It turns out that Halvorson has a great sense of humor. Although this was a high-stakes keynote speech, he was able to work his humor into it and this really allowed him to connect with his audience. He came across not as an aloof CEO, but rather as a real guy who is trying to solve problems.
• Notes: Reading from your notes is always a bad idea. Halvorson did a lot of this and it showed. Now I’ll grant that this was a big speech and there were multimedia issues – he had to synch up with the folks who were controlling the slide show. Still, when you read your speech word-for-word you lose that connection with your audience.
• Hands: what to do with your hands during a speech is always a big question. Halvorson did pretty well, but he still struggled at times. As we all have a tendency to do, he put his hands on the podium and even leaned on it at times. When he made gestures with his hands, they were down low and couldn’t be seen by the people in the back of the room. However, there was one point in time in which his right hand was used in a hammering gesture that drove home the point that he was making.

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.

Questions For You

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.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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…?

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A Speaker's Voice Contains Many Tools Than Can Be Used During A Speech

When you find yourself giving a speech, you quickly realize that what you are missing is any sort of tools with which to give the speech. If you were a painter, you’d have a canvas, brushes, paints, thinners, etc. with which to make your creation. However, when you are giving a speech it’s just you and your audience. Make you feel sorta naked, doesn’t it?

It turns out that you actually do have a toolbox with which to create your speech – the words that you’ll be using. It turns out that not only the words that you choose to use, but the way in which you speak these words can cause a powerful reaction in your audience. Debra Johanyak is a professor of English at the University of Akron and she has come up with a list of different ways that we can use our voice to make our point during a speech.

Let’s take a look at the different verbal delivery “tools” that Dr. Johanyak has come up with:

• Words That You Accent: It turns out that not all words are created equal – you have the ability to emphasize certain words. As an example, consider the sentence “After cutting the green wire, a sudden silence descended over the entire bomb squad.” Simply by pronouncing the word “green” differently, you can draw your audience’s attention to it.
• Slow Pitch Speaking: The pitch of your voice controls how high and how low your voice goes. This is a powerful way to communicate emotion during your speech: “Once I saw that the cage was empty, I knew that the 6′ snake could be anywhere in the house.” The word “anywhere” can be said in a higher pitch than the other words in order to draw attention to it.
• Just Be Quiet: The most powerful speaking tool is also the simplest – just be quiet. When we add periods of silence to our speeches, it adds emphasis to the words that came before and sets the stage for the words that are to come next.

There you have it – now your speaking toolbox is actually looking rather full!

When you give a speech do you use your voice to its fullest? Have you ever ever accented words or varied your pitch to make a point? Are you able to remember to use quiet pauses to make a point? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Politicians Use Stories To Win Their Audiences Over

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, politicians are by and large fantastic communicators. If you take a look at their technique they may be lacking; however, they sure seem to be very good at getting their point across and wining audiences over. Wouldn’t it be great if we could figure out how they do that?

There are a number of speaking techniques that politicians use, but the one that packs the biggest punch is our old friend the story. Caren Neile has done some research into just how politicians use stories and she’s discovered some things that we can use to make our presentations even better.

Ronald Reagan was known as the great communicator due in a large part to the numerous stories that he would tell. He wasn’t just telling stories to fill space in his speeches, rather he was trying to make points and emphasis parts of his speech.

For politicians, there are four main story-lines that they use over and over:

1. We take care of our own.
2. We must protect ourselves from our enemies.
3. We can’t trust the people who are running government and business.
4. Anyone can succeed.

The reason that these four story-lines are used is because they are time tested – politicians know that they work, audiences respond to them every time.

For us speakers, we can take advantage of the years of research that politicians have done for us and start to use more stories. We can use the four story-lines that have served our leaders so well for so long and create our own stories that flow in these well-worn ruts. By doing this we almost assure ourselves of being successful with our audiences.

Do you use stories when you give a speech? Have you ever told a story that fit one of these story-lines? How was it received? Do you have stories that you could make fit these story-lines? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Should Presenters Use Street Language In Their Speeches?

If you are under 18 (or if you were at one time), please cover your ears as you read this posting.

Let’s talk about naughty words. What words do I mean you say? I’m talking about all of the common ones like $^#!, *&@^, &%$#, and of course &#&@. Just for good measure we should also throw in some of the up-and-coming modern phrases like $&^%$#@!%&.

If you watch TV, go to the movies, listen to top 40 music, or even read books that are on the top seller lists then you are being exposed to what we can call “offensive language” all the time. The big question is if there is so much of this in our daily lives, can we now start to work it into our presentations?

I say that the answer is “no“. I believe that there are several reasons why.

Gene Perret was Bob Hope’s head writer for 12 years and he’s spent a lot of time thinking about the use of street language in comedy and presentations. I agree with a lot of what he has to say.

The #1 reason why presenters should not use offensive language in our presentations is because it is the equivalent of taking the easy way out. Offensive words shock our audience when they hear them. It’s the same as if you zapped them with an electrical charge. However, it’s momentary and then it’s gone. It’s much harder (and more fulfilling) to use non-offensive words to capture and hold their attention.

Here’s an example: once upon a time Winston Churchhill was at a party when a woman who didn’t like him came up to him and said “Winston, if I were your wife, I would poison your tea.” Churchill responded by saying “Well, you can just go $%#@ yourself”. Oh, wait. No he didn’t. Instead, what he said was “Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink it.” If he had responded the first way, this incident would have been quickly forgotten. However, because of the words that he did use, it has been remembered to this day.

So the next time you are crafting a speech and you’re tempted to throw in some street language just to to show how hip and cool you are, don’t. Instead spend the time and find a way to instead show your audience how memorable you can be.

Have you ever used street language in one of your presentations? How did it go over? If you could give that presentation again, would you use the same language? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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The Super Memory System For Presenters

I recently had an opportunity to deliver a 45-minute keynote as part of a training session kick-off for a group of IT Mangers. I decided that in order to boost my creditability with this hard-nosed group, I needed to stay in eye contact with them and not be looking at my notes. This meant memorization.

Here’s how I did it:

• I broke the speech up into sections – my speech resulted in 9 sections.
• I then broke each section up into “ideas” – basically sentences.
• I then picked a place that I had lived in the past (a school or any place that you know well would have done fine also). The only requirement was that it had to have multiple, distinct “locations” – in this case rooms.
• Then I pictured myself in a room such as the kitchen. I could see myself sitting a the table in a particular chair.
• Next I came up with a picture AND an action for the first idea / sentence that I wanted to memorize.

Here’s how I had written my speech to start out:

“I’d like to start out our time together today by asking you a simple question: where do you want you want to be at in your career 5 years from now? That will be 2014 – it’s just 1,825 days from right now. I have no idea what you will be doing in 5 years, but there is one thing that I know with 100% certainty – the job that you are doing right now will no longer exist.”

• I basically had three image / actions to create. Remember, these are highly personal – what you come up with just has to work for you.
• My first image was of 5 calendars: one each being stuck to each of  the fingers on my right hand. I was shaking that hand very hard and they all flew off.
• My second image was of a stack of those one-a-day calendar tear-off sheets in a really, really tall pile sitting before me. Just to make it more vivid I pictured it as being sheets from the Dilbert: 2009 Day-to-Day Calendar. I then pictured a card in front of this stack that said “1,825 days” and the stack falling over and making a real mess on the floor.
• Finally, on the table in front  of me behind the stack of calendar sheets was a very small model of a worker in a cubicle typing away on a computer. All of a sudden a trap door built into the table swung open and the little cubicle vanished.

There you have it. When I went to give my speech, I didn’t even try to recall the words that I had written down. Instead, I had three pictures flash in my head – calendars stuck to my fingers, a stack of calendar pages, and a disappearing cubicle. Without looking at any notes, I was able to quickly and easily recall what I wanted to say without having to look at any notes!

Have you ever had to give a speech without using notes. How long was the speech? How did you memorize what you had to say? How did it go? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Presenters Need A Way To Memorize Their Speeches

Congratulations – you’ve been invited to speak for 30 minutes. Remember – don’t use any notes! If you got this offer could you do it?

As though standing in front of a group of people was not scary enough,  now you have to find a way to shove 30 minutes (that’s 1,800 seconds) worth of information into your head – and recall it under pressure. Given that we all talk at about 150 words/min, you’re looking at memorizing 4,500 words. Good luck!

I recently had an opportunity to deliver a 45-minute keynote as part of a training session kick-off for a group of IT Mangers. I decided that in order to boost my creditability with this hard-nosed group, I needed to stay in eye contact with them and not be looking at my notes. This meant memorization.

Now let me make a confession – I hate it when people memorize their speeches. When they do this, they have a tendency to deliver them in an automatic robot-like manner that has virtually no emotion because they are trying so hard to remember what they want to say next. I was determined to avoid this!

Here’s what I did to get ready for this speech:

• I wrote the speech out word-for-word. This allowed me to create a 6,750 word speech (45 minutes) so that I would exactly fill my time slot.
• I then “tuned” the words trying to drop in as many memorable phrases as possible. This is the real advantage of writing your speech out completely.
• I then memorized the speech.

… and that’s what you really want to about. But, I’m out of space for now so I’ll share all of the secrets about how I memorized this speech with you next time.

Have you ever had to give a speech without using notes. How long was the speech? How did you memorize what you had to say? How did it go? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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