Posts Tagged ‘presentation’

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Al Gore Teaches Presenters A Very Convenient Truth

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
Al Gore Knows How To Reach An Audience<br>(c) - 2007

Al Gore Knows How To Reach An Audience(c) - 2007

Interestingly enough, this post has nothing to do with global warming. I really don’t care which side of the “warming / not warming” argument you find yourself on right now. The one thing that I think that we can all agree on is that there is quite a debate going on right now – somebody has done a good job of talking this topic up!

Grass Roots Speaking

Carl Duivenvoorden cares deeply about global warming issues and has spent time learning about how he can give speeches talking about this topic. If you want to be effective, you go to the source – in this case you go to Al Gore.

Al Gore wrote the book “An Inconvenient Truth“. He is a skilled and effective public speaker – after all, he’s a politician. Lately he has been going around teaching folks how to get the word out about global warming – this means teaching them how to effectively speak in public.

A Speaker’s Three Budgets

Al Gore teaches speakers to remember that when they take the stage, they start to spend from three different budgets at the same time. They need to accomplish the goal of their speech and get off the stage before they exceed any of their budgets. The three budgets are:

  • Time: the clock starts ticking when you open your mouth. You always need to respect your audience’s time and make sure that you finish on time no matter when you started.
  • Complexity: there has to be a purpose to your speech – you are not just talking to make people think that you are smart. You have an obligation to make it so that both yourself and your information will be understood (and retained) by your audience.
  • Hope: this is one that we all too often overlook. We need to carefully plan out the way that our speech will end. We need to make sure that we leave our audience with a sense of being able to change things no matter if we are talking to them about finances or global warming.

Extras That Make A Speech Work

Just doing a great job of speaking often isn’t enough. Al Gore teaches that if you want to maximize the impact of your message, you’ve got to add three additional “extras” to your speech in order to make the whole thing work:

  • Use Powerful Visuals: no, this doesn’t mean that you need to creat 400 PowerPoint slides. Rather, you need to carefully create just enough visuals to enhance your words – the visuals should echo what you are saying and make your message stick in your audience’s mind.
  • Organize Your Visuals: this should be second nature, but people still do it wrong so it’s good to bring it up again: in your visuals, flow your concepts from left to right and top to bottom, use as little text as possible, and give your audience time to focus on the visual as you speak – don’t just be whipping through a lot of slides.
  • Worry About The Transitions: The “flow” of your speech is almost as important as the words that you use. You need to create smooth transitions between the different “chapters” in your speech so that your audience can stay with you from start to finish.

Final Thoughts

No matter what subject you are talking about, you are going to have to use emotion in order to make your message stick. Ultimately your goal is to reach out and touch your audience’s hearts. In order to do this you are going to have to use vocal tones to draw your audience to you and use your conviction and passion to connect with your audience. Learn to do this right and you’ll be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

Questions For You

How good of a job do you do managing the three budgets that Al Gore says you need to stay on top of? Which one is the most difficult for you to manage? Are you happy with the visuals that you use? What could be done to make them more effective? Leave me a comment and tell me what you are thinking.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

I would like to be allowed to see more PowerPoint slides. Ok, not really. In fact I could probably live the rest of my life without seeing another PowerPoint slide – I think that I’ve seen my limit! Since I probably can’t avoid seeing more slides, then perhaps at least we can talk about what we can do to make them more fun…

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Posted in connecting with your audience | 2 Comments »

How To Appeal To Your Audience: Greek Lessons

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Aristotle Knew A Thing Or Two About Appealing To Audiences<br> (C) - Michael Schmalenstroer

Aristotle Knew A Thing Or Two About Appealing To Audiences (C) - Michael Schmalenstroer

If you are going to go to the effort of creating and delivering a speech, doesn’t it make sense that you’d want to be able to reach your audience and somehow appeal to them? No matter if you are trying to persuade them or educate them, ultimately the goal is find a way to successfully appeal to them. Good news – how to do this has been known for the past 2,500 years!

Aristotle Knew Everything

Robert Oliver has been doing some research and he’s discovered that most of what we are trying to accomplish in our speeches today is exactly what the ancient Greeks were trying to do oh so long ago.

You’ve got to remember that there for awhile the Greeks were at the height of their civilization – they had invented democracy and really had nothing else to do but sit around and give speeches. This meant that they got interested in what made a speech appeal to an audience (and what didn’t).

Having listened to a countless number of speeches,  Aristotle came to the realization that there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” speech. Instead, if you want to appeal to a given audience, you’re going to have to pick the type of speech that will work for that audience. Thankfully, Aristotle went one step further and discovered the three different types of speeches that worked best for appealing to your audience: logical, pathetic, and ethical.

  • The Logical appeal is an appeal to reason that you use to convince your audience that your argument is correct.
  • The Pathetic appeal is an appeal that works on the emotions of the judges themselves.
  • The Ethical appeal involves playing on the audience’s sense of admiration for you.

How To Arrange A Speech To Maximize Your Appeal

Just picking the correct type of speech to use in order to appeal to your audience isn’t enough. You’ve got to take it one step further. It turns out that how you arrange your speech will have a big impact on your ability to reach and convince your audience.

Once again Aristotle found that there were three basic ways to arrange your speech. Each one was a powerful tool – you just had to pick which would work best with your speech and your audience. Aristotle’s suggestions for the three ways to arrange a speech in order to win your audience over are:

  • The Narrative: this is the story format that all of us Accidental Communicators know and love. It doesn’t always have to be a “Once upon a time…” story, rather it can take the form of a parable, an anecdote, a story that is well known to your audience, or even a personal story.
  • Linear Argument: this is the classic courtroom drama style where the facts are laid out from start to finish where a final conclusion is reached. One point to remember here is that the if you are going to use this arrangement style, then just like a jury your audience is going to have to become and stay fully engaged.
  • Dialetic: this is just a big word for a compare and contrast story. You lay out your argument step-by-step but at each step you compare your way to another way to show why your way is better. Careful – if you don’t watch out, this can slide into a negative presentation. Just a note: Aristotle thought that this was the most effective way to present information.

Final Thoughts

As though giving a speech isn’t hard enough by itself, if you want to make an impact on your audience then you’ve got to design your speech correctly. Aristotle had the time back in the day to think about what worked.

His three types of arguments as well as his understanding of how to arrange your speech in order to appeal to your audience still work today. Listen to what the guy from Greece is trying to tell us and you’ll be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

Questions For You

Do you think that you do a good job today of appealing to your audiences? Which type of speech to give more often: logical, pathetic, or ethical? When it comes to organizing your speech, do you like to tell stories or present facts in order? 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.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Interestingly enough, this post has nothing to do with global warming. I really don’t care which side of the “warming / not warming” argument you find yourself on right now. The one thing that I think that we can all agree on is that there is quite a debate going on right now – somebody has done a good job of talking this topic up!

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Posted in speech writing | 4 Comments »

Persuasion Power – How To Win Over An Audience

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
Speakers Who Can Persuade An Audience Are Powerful Indeed <br> (C) - Jason Cross

Speakers Who Can Persuade An Audience Are Powerful Indeed (C) - Jason Cross

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!

Persuasion Starts With Small Steps

You can assume that the audience that you’ll be speaking to will be be made up of a mix of people who already support your position, who have not make up their minds yet, and who are dead set against whatever you are going to say. Good luck with that presenter!

Clearly the first step in winning any audience over is for you to do your homework BEFORE you are facing the audience. One key area to research is to find out what arguments “the other side” has made. If there is a person or a group that represents “the other side”, then this is pretty straightforward. If there is not a clear “other side”, then you’re going to have to spend some time researching the flip side of what you want to persuade your audience about – because some people will have decided that that is what they want to believe.

One sure-fire way to start to win your audience over to your way of thinking is by using something called strategic agreement. When you do this  you agree with parts of the other side’s position. Automatically this will start to make the audience view you as a reasonable person. They may not completely agree with you, but they will start to warm to your view point.

Show Up Ready For A Fight

Well, maybe that’s putting it just a little bit too harshly. How about if we say that you need to show up ready to address your audience’s objections. Whatever you have been asked to convince them about, there will be objections to it. Before you give your speech, you need to once again do your homework. In your speech you need to make sure that you address these each of these objections.

Sometimes we like to shy away from sticky arguments that we don’t feel that we have a good response to. However, you must be careful to not do this. It turns out that if you don’t address an objection, then your audience will assume that it is a valid objection because you didn’t talk about it.

This Is A No Dumping Zone

I am probably more guilty of dumping than anyone else that I know. When I’m giving a persuasive speech, I want to make sure that I get my point across. This means that I’ll do a lot of research and, if I’m not careful, I’ll “dump” all of that research on my audience during my presentation. This is a bad idea.

Instead, you want to do the research, pick out the points that are going to be the most important to your audience, and then cover just these few points in detail.

What It Takes To Make A Good Argument

You would think that we’d all know this by now, but when I’m coaching speakers I keep discovering that they know WHAT they want to say to make their point, but they don’t know HOW to say it. It turns out that there is a simple formula that allows you to create a complete argument in order to support your position:

  • First: Make An Assertion – you’ve got to tell your audience what point you are going to be trying to convince them about. Without this, they’ll never know what you are talking about.
  • Next: Tell Them Why – this is where you need to explain to your audience why YOU think that your position is correct. This is the meat of your point and you really need to come across as convincing.
  • Finally: Show Proof - the fact that you believe something is great, but not enough. You need to wrap up your point by sharing evidence with your audience that will back up your position.

Final Thoughts

There is no doubt about it – winning people over to your way of thinking is just about the hardest type of speech to give. Ask any politician. However, it can be done. What it requires is that you do a lot of homework in order to prepare your arguments with an understanding of the facts and what your audience is currently thinking.

Public speaking is never an easy thing to do. Developing the skills that are needed in order to rally a crowd behind a new idea, a change in policy, or bold new idea is time well spent for a speaker. If you can do this, 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 speech where you had to persuade the audience? Did you do enough homework to prepare for the speech? Did you find out what the audience was thinking before you gave your speech? How did it turn out? 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.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you are going to go to the effort of creating and delivering a speech, doesn’t it make sense that you’d want to be able to reach your audience and somehow appeal to them? No matter if you are trying to persuade them or educate them, ultimately the goal is find a way to successfully appeal to them. Good news – how to do this has been known for the past 2,500 years!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in persuasion | 1 Comment »

Persuade An Audience Using 3 Secrets Used By Presenters

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Persuading Your Audience Requires More Planning Than Yelling At Them

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.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

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

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Posted in persuasion | 3 Comments »

Handling Hecklers: 5 Ways That Presenters Can Restore Order

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
All Speakers Need To Find Ways To Deal With Hecklers

All Speakers Need To Find Ways To Deal With Hecklers

How does that children’s rhyme go?

“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me”.

Bull! If there is one thing that presenters dread more than forgetting their lines, it’s having someone add to their speech without an invitation. Unlike President Obama we don’t have a flock of Secret Service agents at our beck and call who can fan out into an audience and cart off an unruly heckler.

What should you do when someone in the audience starts to deliberately take away from your carefully rehearsed speech? Start crying and go home is always a possibility; however, I’ve got some better ways to deal with this situation for you…

What Is Heckling?

Maybe a good place for us to start this discussion is to make sure that we both fully understand just what heckling is. There are two types of heckling that you WILL have to deal with during one or more of your presentations: active and passive.

Active heckling occurs when someone in the audience starts talking back to you right in the middle of your speech. For a public speaker this often feels like you’ve just hit  a speed bump in your speech while you were going 80 miles an hour. Talk about surprising!

Passive heckling is much closer to disrespect. This often shows up as people having their own conversations during your presentation. Normally this is their own call and you don’t really care, but if they are loud enough then it becomes your problem. Talking on  a cell phone or having a huddle at the back of the room are common ways that this shows up.

No matter if you are speaking at a wedding, a graduation, or a business function, hecklers will ALWAYS be in the audience and it’s just a matter if they decide to speak up. First off, we should talk about what you should NOT do…

What Should You NOT Do?

I sorta like to think of this as the North Korea problem – man they are annoying, but they are so small as to not really count in the big scheme of things. Likewise, when you are faced with either an active or a passive heckler, you need to make sure that you don’t come out with guns ‘a blazing. Here are a few things that you should NOT do when you are trying to deal with a heckler:

  • Don’t try to be funny: this is the #1 response that trips up most presenters. They spend too much time trying to come up with a funney response to the heckler on the spot and it falls flat. A serious response will shut him/her up most of the time.
  • Don’t Lose Your Temper: I don’t care if you were just coming to that point in your speech which causes everyone to burst into tears and now this rude heckler has spoiled the moment. If you lose your temper, then you’ll never be able to get back into your speech after the moment has passed.

How To Correctly Handle A Heckler

Some hecklers are a one-shot deal – they make one comment and then they’ll go away forever. However, depending on what they’ve said, even this type of heckler needs to be dealt with. Dealing with all types of hecklers correctly is the key to being a successful public speaker. Here are 5 ways that you can deal with hecklers during your speech:

  1. Silence: Somewhat surprisingly the simplest solution is often the most effective. If you stop speaking and turn and stare at the heckler, everyone else will turn to see what you are looking at. In 95% of heckler cases this kind of social embarrassment is all that it takes to shut a heckler up.
  2. Tie Your Response To The Event: This is a clever way to remind the heckler why everyone is at the event. For example, if you were speaking at a breast cancer awareness event and started to have problems with a heckler, a great response would be “Hey, I’m talking here – unless you’ve discovered a way to beat breast cancer, how about if you just remain quiet”.
  3. Add The Heckler To Your Team: This technique turns an unexpected interruption into what appears to be a planned part of your speech. After the heckler has said what they are going to say, pause for a moment and thank your “speechwriter / joke writer / etc.”. The audience will laugh with you, the heckler will beam with pride, and you can go on.
  4. Give Them The Mic: This is a fairly drastic tactic, but it can pay great dividends. Walk over to where the heckler is sitting and offer to hand them the mic. Generally they will decline the offer and will get the point that this presentation is not all about them.
  5. Think Outside The Room: Certain hecklers, such as loud groups at the back of the room, can resist all efforts on your part to overcome them. This calls for innovative thinking. One way to handle this is either for you or your audience to move. You can move out into the center of your audience and deliver your speech “in the round” or you can have them move their chairs in order to be closer to you.

Final Thoughts

When I’m starting a speech, I always try to keep in mind that there are two groups in the room - me and everyone else. A heckler poses a unique problem in that if not dealt with correctly, he/she can drive a wedge in between me and my audience.

Ultimately what a great speaker tries to do is to separate the heckler from the rest of the audience so that there are three groups in the room: you, the audience, and the heckler. If you can accomplish this, then you’ll be able to silence the heckler while at the same time intimately connecting with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

Questions For You

How big of deal are hecklers for you during your speeches? Have you ever had to deal with active / passive hecklers? How much “force” did you have to use? Did it work? 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.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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…

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Posted in heckler | 6 Comments »

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