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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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.
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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!
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Alan Greenspan Gave A Keynote Speech At The HIMSS Conference
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?
While attending the recent HIMSS health care show up in Chicago, I had an opportunity to watch Greenspan in action as he gave a keynote speech. Now you have to understand that he was speaking on the third day of a 3-day conference and generally the crowds would have thinned out by now, but that wasn’t the case. The hall in which he gave his speech had a seating capacity of between 15,000 – 20,000 and it was pretty much full.
What caught my interest was that people were not showing up because they thought that Greenspan was a good speaker. No, they were showing up because they wanted to hear the information that they thought that he would be communicating: how did the current recession come about and when will it end?
The lead up to Greenspan’s keynote speech was a spectacular Hollywood introduction. Lights flashed, the speakers boomed with an announcer’s voice, and a brief film played that showed all of Greenspan’s many accomplishments. This was followed up by the Chairman of the HIMSS organization coming on stage and reading a prepared introduction for Greenspan. What speaker could ask for a better intro?
So I know that the question that you are dying to have answered is “how did he do?”. The answer is that Alan Greenspan is not a very good keynote speaker; however, the audience hung on his every word. Perhaps some explination is needed here:
I had been very excited to listen to Greenspan speak – he is basically a rock-star in the world of finance. I came away from his keynote speech feeling just a little bit let down. On one hand, I was amazed at just how powerful a reputation can be in drawing people to come to a speech just to hear what the speaker has to say. Substance over style so to speak.
On the other hand, the reading word-for-word from notes really disappointed me. Then an interesting thing happened, I think that I figured out why he did it. Greenspan seemed to be a perfectly competent speaker. I don’t think that he NEEDED to read his speech from his notes. However, I now think that he is such an important person that the words that come out of his mouth can still move markets.
This means that, just like the President of the Unites States, he has to be very careful about what he says (and how he says it). If he had said that “… the recession is going to last for another 5 years…” then the stock market would have plunged the next day. Perhaps reading his speech was a way to protect us all from words that are too powerful…!
Have you ever attended a speech because you really wanted to know more about what was going to be talked about? Did you attend because you knew that the speaker was good or despite who the speaker was? How did it turn out – did you get what you wanted? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.
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The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.
One question that I keep getting asked over and over by speakers that I am working with is if storytelling is such a powerful communication tool, then why isn’t it used more in business settings? It’s a good question, but the answer is a little bit complicated…
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