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.

To get more tips and techniques for creating and delivering great speeches, sign-up for the free The Accidental Communicator newsletter at: http://goo.gl/GJ2Z1

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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...
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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…

What The Speaker Did Right

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.

What The Speaker Did Wrong

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.

What This Means For You

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!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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…

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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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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 Bother?

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.

It Takes A Village To Give A Speech

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:

• Acknowledge Differences: What makes you different from the majority of your audience? You realize this and your audience realizes it. Deal with it in a way that shows respect. If you are an older speaker talking to a much younger audience you could start out by saying “I realize that you are out there looking at me and thinking to yourself that I may be old enough to be your parent; however, don’t worry – I won’t be telling you that you should visit your mother more, that you really should be getting more sleep, or asking when you’ll finally be getting married. Instead, how about if we talk about…“

• Include Everyone: Not only are you an outsider to your audience, there is a good chance that a lot of people in your audience are outsiders to the rest of the audience. Use the opening of your speech to unite everyone together at least on a single issue. An example might be “I realize that we all live in different neighborhoods, go to different schools, and attend different churches, but the proposed change in how property taxes are calculated will affect us all and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about tonight.“

• Mind Your Reputation: Before you even open your mouth, the audience has pre-judged you. It might be based on the information that was used to advertise the event or perhaps you are known for some past deed. Dealing with this right off the bat will allow your audience to get by it and start to listen to what you have to say. One way to do this would be “I come from the sunny state of Florida where you might think that just about everyone is retired and just living off of Medicare. However, there are a few of us who are still working and we care just as much, if not more, about the current debate over healthcare reform…“

Final Thoughts

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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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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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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!

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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.

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

• 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.

No related posts.

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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Have you ever sat through a dry an boring speech? Of course you have, we all have. Did you spend any time trying to figure out why the speech was so dry? I’m going to bet that at least one of the reasons is that the speaker didn’t connect with the presenter – the speech content itself was impersonal. Did you know that it’s possible for a speaker to go too far in the other direction also?

A Speech That Nobody Wants To Hear

Once upon a time I had the misfortune to attend a speech that was being given by a presenter who had been married four times. Now the fact that he had been married so many times was no big deal, but the speech was on how to choose the correct investment plan for a 401k. During the speech, the speaker must have “revealed” aspects about his four different marriages at least 30 times. To this day I really couldn’t tell you anything about the different funds that one could use as part of their 401k plan, but I can vividly recall aspects of each of this guy’s marriages. This was a clear case of TMI: too-much-information. No the speech wasn’t boring, but the amount of personal information that was being shared overpowered the message. There’s got to be a balance.

So Where Do You Draw The Line?

All of us desperately want to avoid giving boring speeches. However, we also want to make sure that our speeches have an impact – and if we’re sharing too much personal information this isn’t going to happen. Here are some tips on how to draw the line between too much and too little personal information correctly:

• Match Your Speech Type: certain types of speeches naturally lend themselves more readily to having personal information included in them. Speeches in which you are trying to persuade or entertain your audience are great vehicles for more personal information. Speeches to inform are not.
• Match Your Audience: Who is in your audience (and why are they there)? If you have a business audience who are looking for ways to keep their business afloat during a severe economic downturn, then your childhood stories are not going to be appropriate. However, if your are speaking to a Garden Club filled with mothers, then perhaps a childhood story might be the perfect way to establish rapport.
• Stay On Topic: Sharing personal information just because it makes a great story (like my 401k presenter did) is a bad idea. You need to make sure that the story ties in with what your speech is all about. If it doesn’t, then skip it.
• Listen To Your Audience: In the end, it all comes down to what your audience wants to hear. If, while you are giving your speech, you start to detect that your audience is not staying with you, then cut back on the personal information and instead focus on your core content.

Final Thoughts

This is one of those tough areas where you are going to have to rely on your speaker’s judgement. Sometimes you’ll get it right and sometimes you might be off the mark and include either too little or too much personal information in one of your speeches. However, keep at it and refine each speech the next time you give it. In the end, you’ll know how much personal information to include in order to be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

Questions For You

When was the last time you sat through a boring speech? Why was it boring? Would it have been better if the speaker included more personal information? Have you ever attended a speech where too much personal information was shared? How did that make you feel? 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 there is one thing that presenters dread more than forgetting their lines, it’s having someone add to their speech without an invitation. 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…

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Dennis Quaid Gave A Keynote Speech That Missed The Mark

I just got back from spending the better part of a week up in Chicago at a big health care conference (HIMSS09). This was an amazing opportunity for me to sit back and watch somewhere in the neighborhood of about 100 different presenters get up and do their very best job at communicating. One of these presenters was Dennis Quaid – the actor.

What was Dennis Quaid doing at a fairly boring health care IT conference you ask? Well it turns out that he has a heck of a story to tell about how his newborn children were given the wrong medicine. Everyone attending the conference knew about the story, and so roughly 15,000 – 20,000 folks showed up to hear Dennis give his speech.

So how did it go? Well, in all honesty, not that well. I mean, it was ok – but not what everyone was really hoping for. Generally when you show up for a keynote speech, you are expecting a great speech. When the speaker is a famous actor, your expectations are that much higher. Things didn’t start as well as you would have hoped that they would have.

Dennis was introduced by a slick video that reminded the audience of all of the movies that he has been in. He then came out and took control of the podium. This is where things started to fall apart. His first few statements dealt with how he’s not really a doctor and how he really has never played a role in the health care industry. These are all true things, but what a lousy way to start a speech to folks who ARE in the health care industry!

Add to this a great deal of hemming and hawing, playing with his hands, and just all around nervousness and you end up with a speaker who is distracting his audience away from what is a very powerful message. So what was going on here?

I’ll never know the exact answer, but here are a few guesses. Dennis Quaid is an actor. He sure seems to do a great job of performing for a camera – in front a film crew of about 40 people or so. Put him in front of 20,000 folks sitting in chairs in a massive convention hall and he may feel the same way that any one of us would feel – incredibly nervous.

One other contributing factor may have been that the story that he was there to tell was a VERY personal story. It’s entirely possible that each time he tells it, the emotions that the story stirs up in him causes him to fall apart.

No matter what the cause, the effect was the same – a less than expected speech. Us mere mortals can learn much from Dennis Quaid’s challenges. First, practice, practice, practice – no matter how good you think you are, everyone is going to be able to tell if you try to “wing it”. Secondly, practice in front of people that you know – their feedback can tell you things that you can’t see yourself.

Questions For You

Have you ever seen a famous person give a speech? How did they do? What do you think that they could have done better? 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

Just in case you’ve forgotten it, the #1 question on the minds of any audience that is seated and waiting for you to begin talking to them is “Why should I even bother listening to you?“. This means that in order for you to have any hope of making an impact on this  audience, you’re going to have to answer this question right off the bat. But how…?

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