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.

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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.

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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…

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…

No related posts.

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…

No related posts.

Presenters Need To Learn How To Use Bragging To Establish Their Creditability

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?

The Art Of The Brag

I’m afraid that we’re going to have to talk about the “C” word – “credibility“. As a presenter, it’s your job to establish your credibility in the minds of your audience. This is where bragging comes in.

John Spaith has spent some time thinking about how to do this correctly and he’s got some good suggestions. Spaith points out that you always have competition when you give a presentation. This doesn’t mean that you have to deal with other speakers (although sometimes you do), but rather your audience has a lot of other things on their mind and if you don’t grab their attention and hold it by establishing your credibility, then they won’t pay attention to what you have to say.

A Plan For Self-Promotion (Bragging)

The best way to establish credibility with your audience is to have the person who is introducing you do it for you. However, for a variety of reasons this may not always be possible. When you find yourself in situations like this, you need to do your bragging yourself. Here’s what Spaith suggests that we think about:

• Make It Relevant: If you are addressing a sales team, then spending time talking about the amazing singing career you had in the past won’t buy you any credibility. Instead, make your bragging relevant – tell them that you survived a trip down the Amazon and that you’ve been shot four times. Survival bragging would work well with this group.
• It’s All Relative: The accomplishments or talents that you are bragging about have to be something that your audience can relate to. Telling everyone that you are an award winning professional ballroom dancer is great, but who can relate to that? If you tell everyone that you spent 10,000 hours on your feet in uncomfortable shoes practicing to become an award winning professional ballroom dancer, now that’s something that we can relate to.

How To Brag

Once you’ve established WHAT you’ll be bragging about, you need to nail down just HOW you’re going to go about doing it. First off, you need to get your bragging done at the start of your presentation – credibility is something that you need right off the bat. Next, you need to keep it long enough to build that credibility, but not too long. I’m going to say that a minute should be long enough and you might want to keep it even shorter.

You are going to want to write out and memorize your bragging words. It is so important to get these words just right – not too boastful, but at the same time not too self-deprecating.

Final Thoughts

Some of you might be a bit shy about bragging about yourself – get over it. You owe it to your audience to deliver the best presentation that you can and taking the time and effort to make sure that your message sinks in is part of this. Using carefully designed bragging to establish your “street cred” is an important part of any presentation that you give.

Questions For You

When you give a presentation, do you include bragging about yourself? Have you ever “gone over the top” and done too much bragging? Have you ever done too little bragging and not gotten the audience’s respect? Have you ever seen an introduction that established just the right amount of credibility for the speaker? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll To Be Talking About Next Time

When we are given an opportunity to address a group, we spend a great deal of time preparing what we are going to say and how we are going to say it. This is all well and good, but we may be forgetting one critical factor: our audience may not be able to hear us speak…

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Jack Welch's Speech Writer Knows What Made Jack A Great Communicator

So just about everyone out there knows who Jack Welch is – he was the CEO and Chairman of GE who lead them from a market valuation of $14B when he took over to a valuation of over $410B when he stepped aside. What many people may not know is that Jack is a great communicator.

Bill Lane who was Jack Welch’s speech writer for over 20 years while he was at GE has written a book called Jacked Up: The Inside Story of How Jack Welch Talked GE into Becoming the Worlds Greatest Company. In it, Lane spills the beans on just how Welch got to be so good at getting his message across.

Probably the most important lesson that Jack Welch taught his speech writer was that self-confidence was the #1 attribute of a leader. With self-confidence you could go out and do nearly anything that you put your mind to. Now this was truly impressive when you realize that Welch had started out as a guy who both stuttered and was very shy. Needless to say, in the beginning Welch HATED to speak in public.

The speeches that were being given at GE when Welch took over were the standard types of speeches that you hear at any company gathering: boring reports on the success of such and such a team / department / division. One day while coming up with the list of speakers for an internal event, Welch called a stop to everything. He spent a few moments thinking to himself, and then he announced that going forward all speeches would be ones that told people what they ought to be doing.

From that point on in GE, everything was changed. All speeches needed to contain a learning point, a warning to others, some sort of insight, or something useful like a new technique or the speech didn’t get made.

There was an amazing side benefit to this new speech policy. Almost across the board the presenters at these internal events became much better speakers. Why? Probably because they knew that they had something interesting to say. When they knew that the audience was going to be interested in what they had to say, they were filled with self-confidence and this just naturally made them better speakers.

So what does all of this mean to us accidental communicators? Simple, we need to stop giving boring speeches that are simply reports on what we’ve been doing. Instead, we need to look inside ourselves and discover what our audiences really want to hear about.

Keep in mind, what people want to hear most is your stories. The stories that tell them what you know, what you have done, what you have see, and what they might find useful in someway. Not only are your stories interesting to them, but hearing a story also helps people to remember and retain what you have told them. Instead of having your message go in one ear and out the next, now it will actually stick!

Lane makes one final point in his book: Jack Welch always insisted that speakers give their audience the very best of their thinking. If you can do this, then your audience will respond by taking your message to heart.

When you get up to give a speech, do you feel as though you are filled with self-confidence? How does this impact the quality of the speech that you are giving? Do you talk about things that you’ve learned or are you just giving reports to your audience? What could you do differently to make more of an impact? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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