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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Hopefully everyone knows who Nelson Mandela is – he’s the South African leader who’s tireless efforts helped to get rid of his country’s oppressive apartheid policies. What is less known is how he marshaled world opinion in order to support the change that he wanted. It turns out that one way he made this happen was by giving speeches that uniquely connected with his audiences…
Nelson Madela spent 27 years in prison before he was released by the South African government. When he got out, he quickly started to give speeches that all had one common message: support his African National Congress (ANC) party in their attempt to create a new government.
It was important that Mandela work his key message into every speech that he gave. No matter where in the world he was, no matter who he was speaking to, his message was always the same: lend your support to the ANC.
This meant that he really had to give the same speech over and over again. However, he couldn’t just show up and say the same thing each time – he would quickly lose the interest of his audiences. He needed to find a way to deliver his message in such a way that it would appeal to his audience while at the same time allowing him to incorporate his main message: please support the ANC.
It turns out the Nelson Mandela is a good speaker – he has a lot of natural ability. However, it was the realization that he needed to find ways to connect with his audience each time that he spoke that turned him to a great speaker.
Nelson Mandela connected with his audiences by taking the time to customize the words that he was saying. He knew that the core of each of his speeches needed to remain the same, support the ANC, but that he could modify the rest in order to reach out to and connect with the audience that he was addressing.
William Stevenson III has spent time studying the speeches that Mandela gave and he has been able to document the ways that the speeches were customized for various audiences.
When Mandela traveled to the United States, he gave a speech to a huge crowd in New York City’s Harlem area. During this speech he changed it to include statements about how his struggles in South Africa were similar to the struggles of the Harlem residents to overcome their economic and social challenges.
Later in the same trip, Mandela addressed the U.S. Congress. During this speech he invoked the struggles that had been incorporated into the U.S. constitution and he related that to what he was trying to accomplish in South Africa.
Nelson Mandela is an accomplished political leader who successfully overthrew the oppressive apartheid polices that were holding his country back. One of the key skills that he used to do this was his ability to deliver powerful speeches to diverse audiences.
The only thing that the audiences that Mandela talked to had in common was that they were so very different. Mandela talked in multiple countries always sharing the same message: support my effort to cast out the current government of South Africa. In each country he would talk to different types of audiences. He would talk to common people in the street and leaders of government.
The way he was able to make his message connect with each of these audiences was by customizing his words to match what was important to them. He would use this type of tailored speech to capture the attention of his audience and then once they were connected, he would share his main message with them. We need to learn from Mandela and use his knowledge to reach our audiences so that our messages will make a lasting impression on them…
- Dr. Jim Anderson
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Question For You: How much customization of a speech do you think that you should do for a given audience?
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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…
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…
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.
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:
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”).
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”!).
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.
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.
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.
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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!
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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…
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…
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:
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:
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.
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.
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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…
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?
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.
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:
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.
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.
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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