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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We Need To Watch Others In Order To Become Better Ourselves
We can talk about how to give better speeches until we’re blue in the face, but in the end it’s what we see that will really change how we give speeches. With that thought in mind I’d like to share with you a critique of a keynote speech that I had a chance to see the other day. Listen and learn from the efforts of others…
Anyone who gets picked to deliver a keynote has got to be a good speaker, right? This speaker was a good speaker and it showed in a number of the ways that he gave his speech.
His work experience came from the gas and oil exploration industry. What this meant is that he had a lot of very good stories. However, that’s only the half of it – he was also a very good story teller. Throughout his speech he worked in personal stories that reinforced the point that he was making. Soon the audience was anticipating his next story.
His delivery style came across as being strong and confidant. His voice boomed out from the podium and there was no problem hearing him as he spoke. Clearly he had given this speech before and his delivery style was polished, not hesitant.
As he gave his speech, he looked at and spoke to the audience. He may have been using notes, but it sure didn’t show. His eyes remained on the audience during the entire speech and every member of the audience was left with the feeling that the speaker had been talking directly to him during the entire time.
No speech or speaker is ever perfect and, of course, this speaker was no exception. One of the biggest mistakes that he made was that he was unsure of where to stand during his speech.
The stage setup was a bit unusual for this speech. The podium was off to the left of the stage and the rest of the stage was taken up by a row of chairs that had tables in front of them – it was set for a panel discussion.
The speaker desperately wanted to pace while he was talking. This is exactly what he ended up doing. However, from the audience it was a bit odd to see the speaker walking back and forth behind a row of chairs and tables. What he should have done was to remain behind the podium so that we would not have been distracted.
What to do with your hands is always a question that every speaker has to deal with. This speaker did an effective job of using his hands to make gestures that supported what he was saying. However, when he wasn’t making gestures he had the bad habit of putting his hands into his pockets. I was sitting off to the side and this was pretty distracting.
Finally, although the speech was good, the ending seemed rushed. We were traveling along at 60 miles-per-hour and then all of a sudden we pulled off to the side of the road and stopped — the speech was over. The speaker needed to have done a better job of winding the speech down and making his final points.
As speakers, we would do well to learn from the efforts of other speakers. Every time we see someone else give a speech, we should watch them carefully and take good notes.
In the case of the keynote speaker that I had an opportunity to watch, he did a number of things very well. Chief among these were the compelling stories that he told – when he was doing this he was able to completely hold the audience’s attention.
There were several areas that he could have improved on. The one that stood out the most was the fact that he didn’t know where to stand while giving his speech – he ended up pacing back and forth behind chairs on the stage which was very distracting.
No speech is ever perfect. We’d all like to find ways to make our next speech be better than the one that we gave last time. One of the best ways to make this happen is to take the time to truly watch other speakers do their best to deliver a speech. By learning from others we can become better ourselves…
- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™
Question For You: Do you think that you should ever offer suggestions on how to improve to a speaker that you’ve just gotten done watching?
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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!
Getting up in front of an audience to give a speech can be a nerve racking experience. If most of the members of that audience are under the age of 10, it can be downright terrifying. There’s no reason to fear the younger set, you just need to adjust both your speech and how you give it in order to be successful. I’m going to tell you how to do both…
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 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.
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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?
Speakers Need To Realize Their Audience May Be Different From Them (c) - 2008
When you think of the perfect speech in your mind, what do you see? Do you see yourself up on a stage giving a speech, reaching the end, and then having everyone stand up and applaud until their hands grow tired? Nice picture. However, all too often that doesn’t happen. There are lots of reasons for this, but one big one is because we don’t take the time to fully know our audience…
Why give a speech in the first place? There always has to be a reason for us to give a speech – are we there to entertain, inform, motivate, etc. We won’t be able to do this if we don’t connect with our audience. We won’t be able to connect with our audience if we don’t know who they are.
It’s way too easy for a speaker to make assumptions about the audiences that we are talking to. The biggest mistake is to assume that they see the world the way that we do. Craig Harrison points out that by presuming that the audience thinks the way that we do we risk offending them – perhaps without even realizing it.
The right way to go about getting an audience on your side is to tackle three big issues right off the bat in any speech that you are giving:
Giving a speech is a tough job. Giving a good speech is even tougher. You need to have your audience working with you, not against you if you want to have any hope of making an impact. The first step in accomplishing this is realizing that your audience is different from you.
Once you acknowledge this, then you need to work to include them and dispel any preconceived ideas that they may have about you. Learn to do this well and you’ll be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.
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Have you ever heard the expression “one size fits all“? Something that too many public speakers don’t realize is that you need to create different speeches for different size audiences. There is no such thing as the one-size-fits-all speech.
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