Posts Tagged ‘speaking style’

The 4 Parts Of Your Speaking Style That You Need To Control

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
Image Credit
Your Audience Will Respond To Your Speaking Style

Your Audience Will Respond To Your Speaking Style

Speakers who are facing a challenging speech or challenging audience often ask themselves what they could do in order to be more successful. Sure, there are a lot of tricks out there that one can use to capture an audience’s attention and make them laugh a few times. However, if you really want to deliver a successful speech then you are going to have to share the true you with your audience – you’re going to have to show them your personal speaking style…

Just What Is A Speaker’s Personal Style?

No two speakers are the same. What makes each one of us different is our own style of speaking. It’s your style that your audience will both experience as you speak and will remember longer after you have left the stage.

We modify our style based on how we feel about the audience that we are talking to. Just like every person out there, we have a deep set need for approval from our audiences and we want to be accepted by them.

All too often speakers will try to modify their speaking style in order to change themselves into what they think that their audience is looking for. The problem with doing this is that all of a sudden we are trying to share a personal style with our audience that is not authentic and it’s going to show.

What Makes Up Our Speaking Style?

Our speaking style is a complex thing: it’s made up of a number of different interconnected parts. Because there are so many different aspects to a speaker’s style, we all have different and unique styles.

You do have control over your style. Once you are aware of what makes up your style, you can work on individual parts and transform your style into an even more authentic representation of you.

Here are the components of a speaker’s style that each of us can control:

  • Tension: How tense are you? The more relaxed you are as a speaker, the more relaxed your audience will be as they listen to you. Some tension is a great way to get off to a good start, but too much will take away from your message. Find ways to relax and deliver a great speech.

  • Make Sure You Are Smiling: as speakers we often forget just how much we communicate to our audiences through our facial expressions. Smiling is a huge part of this. You’ve heard the expression “smile and the world will smile with you” – it turns out that this is true. By smiling we relax our audience and put them at ease. Do it more!

  • Focus, Focus, Focus: as we build our speeches it can be all too easy to get caught up in our own words. Don’t let this happen. Make sure that you communicate your points in as few words as possible – it’s less likely that you will lose your audience this way.

  • Look At Me: We all know that maintaining eye contact with your audience is a critical part of making a connection with them, but are we doing it? Looking at your audience is a key part of connecting with them. By doing a good job of this you are showing them that you don’t have anything to hide

What Does All Of This Mean For You?

In order to win over your next audience, you’re going to have to share the real you with them. This means that you’re going to have to show them your speaking style.

Your speaking style is not something that you can just point to. Instead it’s a whole series of personal characteristics that come out while you are delivering a speech. Being aware of what makes up your speaking style allows you to refine it so that it will work for you during your next speech, and not against you!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: Which component of your personal speaking style is the most important to you?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When we think about speaking in public, we normally think about one thing – ourselves. However, it turns out that that we really should be thinking bigger: how can we help other speakers do better? Since we know what it’s like to stand in front of an audience and try to give a speech, we have a special obligation to use this knowledge to make the speeches that we attend become better speeches. Read on and find out what your new assignment is…

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What’s More Important: What You Say Or Who Is Saying It?

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Image Credit The Right Speaker With The Right Words Can Win Wars

The Right Speaker With The Right Words Can Win Wars

So here’s a question for you to ponder: what is more important – the words that you say or how you say them? This is one of the classic questions that gets asked about public speaking. Could you pick up a fantastically written speech and deliver it in a way that would create the same (or better) reaction in the audience that the original presenter got?

It’s All About Teamwork

In the end, it turns out that this is really a trick question. The answer is that you can’t have one without the other. It’s the combination of both the material and the speaker who presents the material that causes the desired reaction in the audience.

One thing that too many speakers don’t take the time to realize is that each speech needs to be tailored to meet the unique needs of the speaker who is delivering it. You have your own unique style (you are loud, you are quiet, etc.) and nobody else presents a speech the same way that you do.

The one thing that we need to be careful to not do is to try to present someone else’s speech. Trying to deliver a speech that was created for someone else will be just like trying to wear clothes that were custom tailored for somebody else’s dimensions. It just won’t look good.

How To Match Your Next Speech To Your Speaking Style

If you can accept the idea that it takes both a good speaker and a good speech to deliver a winning presentation, then the next obvious question is how can you do this successfully?

Gene Perret spent his career writing television shows and comedy material. He knows a thing or two about tailoring the material to the presenter. He has three suggestions on what you need to do in order to ensure that your next speech connects with your audience in a powerful way:

  • Be True To Your Speech: A speaker who is talking about a subject that he/she either doesn’t believe in or doesn’t care about will never be able to connect with the audience. I don’t care how great of an actor you think that you are, if you don’t believe in what you are saying then it will eventually show through to your audience and they will dismiss your message. If you don’t believe me, then think back to some of those corporate speeches that we’ve all seen when executive management tries to convince the staff that everything is ok and that there’s nothing to worry about. That message never flies!
  • Match Your Words To Your Style: I have a friend who is a very flamboyant speaker – he’s all over the stage and his arms are always waving in the air. Once upon a time I happened to see him deliver a very somber speech about a sad set of circumstances that had caused a business to fail. The speech went over like a lead balloon. My friend’s normal speaking style had to be greatly restricted because of the speech’s subject matter and so the audience got conflicting messages – they saw a lot of bottled up energy, but were hearing and seeing a very low energy speech. Don’t make this mistake – when you give a speech, make sure that the material that you are presenting matches your style of speaking.
  • Stay Competent: we all have areas of knowledge that we are strong in. Either we’ve spent the time studying in order to understand this area or we’ve worked in a related field. That being said, there will be occasions that we’ll be asked to talk on a topic that we know nothing about. Don’t do it! We all do certain things well, and a bunch of other things not so well. If you end up talking about a topic that you don’t know well, then all of your weak points will show up during your speech and you won’t be able to connect with your audience.

What All Of This Means For You

A speaker by themselves or a speech by itself has very little value. It’s only when the two are brought together that the real magic of an effective presentation can happen. As speakers, we need to understand that we have our own unique style and we need to make sure that we never try to present a speech that has been created for someone else because it just won’t work.

In order to harness both the power of a speech and our personal style, we need to make sure that we believe in what we are saying, matching our speaking style, and only talk about topics that we know something about.

Combined with the right speech we can move audiences. Now all we need to do in order to make sure that our next speech is the perfect combination of words and style is to practice, practice, practice…!

Do you think that you can tell when a speaker is talking about something that they don’t really believe in?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Just imagine your next presentation. Just a few minutes into your speech, you become aware of someone, gasp, talking. We’re not talking about quiet whispering here, we’re talking about someone in the audience standing up and shouting things at you. Congratulations, you’ve got a heckler…

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