Respect | The Accidental Communicator

Posts Tagged ‘respect’

Speaker Alert: Make Me Laugh — Or Else

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Audiences Who Laugh Remember What You Say

Make Your Audiences Laugh And They'll Remember What You Say

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.

Learn To Be Funny From A Politician

Every speech counts. Especially if you are trying to get elected. If there was any group of speakers who needed to find a way to get people to remember them & their message, it would be politicians. They have three goals every time they give a speech:

Promote their policies
Boost their accomplishments while minimizing their opponents
Impress people with their moral upstanding character & leadership skills

Politicians know that humor is a powerful speaking tool. They use it to both make a point as well as to illustrate that point for their (or your) audience.

In the end, it’s all about getting votes. You’re probably not running for anything right now, but why waste a speech?

Why Humor Is So Powerful When You Are Speaking

Every speech that you give is your next chance to change the world. Adding humor to your speaking style isn’t something that you can put off until “sometime”, you’ve got to do it right now.

The reason that humor works so well comes down to five basic “levers” that every audience has. Gene Perret who won several Emmys for his work in television has spent a lot of time researching what these levers do to an audience:

Humor Makes You More Likable: I don’t care how much of a jerk you are in real life, if you start to work more humor into your speeches your audiences will start to like you better than your family does. Perret points out that it’s really hard to laugh with a person if you don’t like them – make your audience laugh and they’ll love you forever.

Build Credibility Using Humor: Who are you to talk to anyone about anything? Somewhat amazingly, audiences associate the ability to be funny with wisdom. When you can joke with your audience about 401k plans, they’ll settle back and say to themselves “gosh, if he can joke about this stuff then he must know it really well”. Whether or not you really do know it really doesn’t matter any more after this.

Get Respect Using Humor: Some of the worst speeches that I’ve ever had to sit through were ones where the speaker was too full of himself / herself. I quickly tuned them out – I don’t have time for blowhards. When you kid around with your audience you’re telling them “I’m one of you”. When they understand that you “get” them, you will have hooked them and they’ll pay attention to you for the rest of your speech.

Make People Want To Listen Using Humor: When you say something funny, people laugh. If they’re not listening, then they miss out. Nobody likes to miss out on something that’s funny. When you work humor into your speeches and people start to laugh, then all of those other people who are busy reading email and sending text messages will start to look around and wonder what they are missing out on. Very quickly those iPhones and Blackberry’s will go away and you’ll have their attention.

Make People Remember What You Say Using Humor: Stay home if you are going to give a speech that nobody is going to remember. Why bother? What humor does is it creates the possibility that people will remember the joke, and if they do then there’s just a chance that they might remember what your point was that you made the joke about.

Final Thoughts

Stop wasting my time. If you want to get up there and give a dry, lifeless speech that has no humor in it then you may as well stay at home and just send me an email with your main points.

If, however, you want me to walk away thinking that you know what you are talking about and remembering what you said, then that’s another story. The only way that that’s going to happen is if you start to work some humor into your speech. No, you don’t have to turn into a stand-up comedian; however, you do need to make me crack a smile or at least chuckle. Get me to do that and you’ve spent your time well.

Do you think that there is any type of speech that can’t have humor added to it? (Hint: eulogies are great candidates for humor so don’t even bring that up)

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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?

Tags: change the world, credibility, Gene Perret, humor, informative speeches, Likable, Listen, Politicians, presentation skills, public speaker, Remember, respect, soft skills, speech, speech writing
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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

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,Ã‚Â 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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