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.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

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?

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…

No related posts.

Stories Can Be A Powerful Part Of Any Business Presentation

One question that I keep getting asked over and over by speakers that I am working with is if storytelling is such a powerful communication tool, then why isn’t it used more in business settings? It’s a good question, but the answer is a little bit complicated.

Where Did All The Stories Go?

I can’t tell you how many business presentations I’ve sat though that at the end I couldn’t have told you what was talked about if my life depended on it. It’s not that the speaker was necessarily bad, it’s just that nothing that they said caught my imagination and so nothing stuck.

This is where stories come in – people remember stories long after you get done talking. We remember them because it’s a fundamental way that humans have exchanged information for as long as we’ve been around.

For some reason, people have decided that stories don’t have a place in the environment of business – perhaps they don’t think that they are “grown up” enough and that facts and figures should only be used. This is completely wrong.

What Is The Value Of A Business Story?

Dr. Caren Neile has been looking into the use of stories in the workplace and she reports that Makingstories.net president Terrence Gargiulo has identified 9 key values to using a story in a business presentation:

1. They empower the speaker.
2. They can be used to create a particular environment.
3. They can be used to bond individuals together.
4. They can help your audience to engage in active listening.
5. They can be used to resolve differences between both individuals and groups.
6. They can encode information.
7. They can act as tools to help with brainstorming.
8. They can be used as weapons.
9. They can be used to start or enhance a healing process.

The professional storytellers define the act of storytelling as being “… a face-to-face oral narrative that employs non-verbal communication and imagination“. One side effect of this definition is that when stories are told in a live business setting, they are much more powerful than when they are just written down.

What Kind Of Stories Work In Business Presentations?

Dr. Neile reports that Annette Simmons, who is the president of the company Group Process Consulting, believes that there are six types of stories that can be used in a business environment:

1. Who I Am: this type of story is used to gain an audience’s trust by having the speaker explain where they are coming from.
2. Why I Am Here: this story type is a way to communicate your agenda to your audience.
3. The Vision: this story paints a vision of the future that the audience can see and can then decide that they want to be a part of it.
4. Values-In-Action: this story shares the good things that can happen when the audience has shared values and the bad things that can happen when those values are violated.
5. I Know What You Are Thinking: this story shows how connected the speaker is to the audience and that he/she has their best interests in mind.

How Can We Use Stories During Business Presentations?

Stories that your audience can relate to are the best kind of stories to use. This means that you need to spend the time to uncover the true stories that already exist within the organization: the successes, the failures, and people behaving both badly and wonderfully.

The power of business stories is that they provide one of the most effective ways to achieve agreement about how to resolve issues and meet goals. It’s  no longer a question of IF they should be used, but rather a question of HOW MUCH they should be used.

Questions For You

Have you ever used a story in a business presentation in order to make a point? How was it received? Did you feel awkward using a story? Does your senior management use stories when they are discussing the company’s vision and goals? Does this make you buy in to what the company is trying to accomplish? 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

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…

No related posts.

Speaker Training Will Happen At PresentationCampLA

I was quietly minding my own business the other day when Lisa Braithwaite from the blog Speak Schmeak reached out to me via email and asked me if I’d be willing to help her to get the word out about some upcoming (almost) free public speaking training that’s going to be held up in Los Angles, California on June 20th, 2009.

I’m always a sucker for (almost) free training, so I asked her for more information.

The History Of Presentation Camp

So if you’ve ever been to a conference or some sort of training in the past, this event is nothing like those events. To understand how this all got started, you need to go back to BarCamp.

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. The first one of these was held on August 19-21, 2005 – so you can see that its not really been around for all that long.

PresentationCamp is a specific type of BarCamp – this type of conference focuses on Public Speaking topics.

How Does All Of This Work?

This might seem just a bit chaotic when I describe it to you, but folks who have attended these things swear that it works. If you’ve ever been to a big formal conference, then you know that you are handed a pre-printed agenda at the door and you know exactly what’s going to be discussed where and when. PresentationCamp works just a bit differently.

The first difference is that everyone who attends PresentationCamp is asked to participate either by presenting or facilitating a session – no dozing in the back of the room here. Additionally, the conference doesn’t start with a pre-planned agenda.

Instead, the sessions are proposed and scheduled each day by attendees. You start to get a feel for how dynamic this is. If you’ll trust me that this actually works, you can see that hot topics and issues of great concern to all bubble up to the top. Likewise, there really are no boring sessions – they get voted away.

What’s Going To Happen At PresentationCampLA?

First off, the reason for going would be to learn about and discuss the most current topics facing people who speak in public today. This is going to be (hey, it’s in LA – what do you expect?) an intense ad hoc gathering of speaking folks to share, present, network, learn, laugh, and discuss.

As we’ve discussed, there is no agenda. Instead, everyone who is interested in leading a session provides a brief (that’s about a minute) pitch in the morning before things start.  Attendees then vote and those sessions receiving the highest votes are put on the schedule and groups form for intense learning. This will ensure that the participants get the most out of their experience.

The organizers will be keeping a close eye on who shows up. Depending on the mix of folks who are there and the participants’ skill level and interest, they may set up separate tracks for: Fundamentals, Advanced Skills, Professional Speakers, Coaches.

What’s interesting to me is that this is not the first time that this has been done. PresentationCamp has been successfully hosted in San Francisco , Seattle and Palo Alto.

I’m Interested, Now What Do I Do?

The best things in life are not free – to attend this event is going to cost you $10.  If you are going to be in CA, SoCal or the LA area on June 20th (or if you can get there), then here are the details that you need to know:

PresentationCampLA
Saturday, June 20, 2009 | 10am-6pm
BlankSpaces | 5405 Wilshire Blvd. |  Los Angeles, CA  90036

If you’re going to go, then they need to know that you’re coming so go ahead and register. You can get all of the details on this event by visiting their web site at:
http://http://barcamp.org/PresentationCampLA

Final Thoughts

Hey – it’s only $10, just how much thinking does this take? If you are even half way considering going – DO IT. The info that you get will be great, but the contacts that you can make will be even better.

Have a great time!

No related posts.

Presenters Need To Take Action In Order To Prevent Their Training From Slipping Away

Ok, so it’s time to talk about an ugly little secret that nobody who does presentations really like to talk about. What’s the secret? Most of the time what we tell our audience goes in one ear and out the other. It just doesn’t stick.

In fact, if you are presenting training or a new way of doing business to an audience, some studies have shown that only 10% – 40% of what you tell your audience will ever be used by them on the job. Ouch! What are we doing wrong?

Dr. Harry Martin teaches at Cleveland State University in (of course) Cleveland. He is an expert in both management and labor relations. He’s got some thoughts on what is going wrong here…

Take heart – it’s probably not all about you. When we try to train our audiences, we are really talking about having them change their lives. Change has the unfortunate side effect of creating anxiety in our audience and they will actively seek to avoid change at almost any cost. So is this a losing game?

Good news – the answer is no. However, you’ve got to start doing some additional work. You need to make sure that a workplace environment that will actively encourage your audience to continue to change is set up and exists long after your presentation is over. In a nutshell, this means that the training can’t end when your audience walks out the door. So what’s the trick to doing this?

It turns out that there are five simple things that you can either do during your presentation or cause to occur after your presentation is over that will dramatically boost the use of the information that you delivered:

• Write It Down!: Everyone should recognize this one from all of those goal setting / time management programs that we’re always studying – just getting your audience to write an action plan on how they are going to use what you’ve covered makes it more likely that they’ll do it.
• This Will Be On The Test: If you tell your audience that they are going to be tested on the material that you’ll be talking about, then they are much more likely to use what you are talking about. The test doesn’t have to be a written test, it can be as simple as having them observed and given feedback on their performance. I like it best when the audience is measured before your presentation and then two times afterwords – this always seem to produce the greatest results.
• Peer Pressure Is Good: It turns out that having your audience get back together in “peer meetings” is a great way to have them self-motivate to use what you’ve taught them. What’s even more interesting is that this works even better when your audience’s management is only lukewarm in their support for your message.
• Boosting Bosses: Having managers who are both supportive and actively involved does a lot to increase the odds that your audience will retain and use what you’ve taught them. This, of course, means that you are going to need to make sure that the bosses are involved in your training.
• Ask The Expert: Finally, having the ability to reach out and ask an expert for help in solving a sticky issue or resolving a problem goes a long way in helping your audience use what you’ve told them. More often than not, you are the expert – make sure that you make arrangements so that you can be contacted after your presentation is over and done with.

When you’ve been to a training class, did you feel as though you were able to apply what you had been taught? What helped / stopped you from applying your new knowledge? What would have made it easier for you to do more with what you had learned? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

No related posts.

How You Dress Can Have A Big Impact On How Effective Your Presentation Is

Remember when your Mom said that looks don’t matter? She may have been right then; however, now is now and the better you look, the more impact your presentation will have.

Whether you realize it or not, you are always being judged by your audience. What you need is some advice to make sure that you come out on top when they judge you. If you take a moment and think about, you are representing a brand in how you act, walk, and talk. Your wardrobe plays a big part in the impression that you make.

Carmine Gallo is a communications coach who has spent a lot of time thinking about this topic. Here are some of his suggestions that will help you do this correctly:

1. You MUST Look Better Than Everyone Else In The Room: If you remember nothing else from this post, then remember this – great presenters should always dress just a little bit nicer than everyone else who is attending the event. The classic example of this was Ronald Reagan (“the great communicator”) who always stood out because he was always the best dressed person in the room.
2. Make Sure That Your Clothes Fit Correctly: How many of us wear clothes that are too short, too long, too tight, or even too loose? If you’ll take just a moment and list to what George Zimmerman, the founder of Men’s Wearhouse, says you’ll understand that you are making a mistake. Zimmerman says that the #1 most important decision that you need to make when buying clothes is that they give you a proper fit.
3. Make Sure Your Clothes Say Nice Things About You: Make sure that you choose clothes that complement you – your skin tone, hair, and your eye color. The key here is to make sure that your clothes complement you, not fight you. Feel free to mix and match – just make sure that they look good together.
4. Are You Well Heeled?: Assuming that you are not a puppy, it is still important that you pay attention to your shoes. It turns out that people really do notice the shoes that you are wearing. Make sure that you spend as much time on picking out your shoes as you do the rest of your outfit.
5. Quality Is Worth It – Spend More: It turns out that you are not just paying for a fancy designer label. High quality fabrics and shoes not only look better, but they also last longer. Go ahead – spend more for better quality clothes and you’ll not only look nicer, but you will save money in the end because your clothes will last longer.

There you go – it’s not that hard to look great. Take the time to look good and your presentation will have that much more impact.

Do you take the time to look your best before every presentation that you give? Have you ever been giving a presentation when you realized that there was something wrong with your outfit? What did you do about it? Leave me a comment and let me know what’s on your mind.

No related posts.

Understanding How Adults Learn Is The Key To An Effective Presentation

Some presentations are designed to simply motivate your audience. Some are designed to educate them. It’s this second batch that is tricky to do. It’s probably not that your presentations are lacking in educational material, but rather it’s the way that you are delivering it that really matters. You need to find a way to deliver the information in the way that adults learn…

So here’s the answer to this question right off the bat: research shows that adults learn best when information is presented interactively, using role-playing, and peer-to-peer dialog. The lectures that most presenters use are really only good for passing information along to an audience.

The last thing in the world that you want is for your next presentation to remind your audience of a high school or college class. Having you stand at the front of the room and drone on with no chance for interaction is not what today’s audiences are looking for.

The secret to making your presentation “stick” with your audience is to realize that the more active your adult audience is during your presentation, the more they will learn because they will be tapping into the knowledge and experience of their peers.

At different times during your presentation your role as the presenter should really be to be a “guide on a side” who facilitates discussions among audience members and offering feedback as needed.

We’ve all heard about left-brain / right-brain stuff. Our left-brain is set up for the way most presentations are delivered – logical, analytical, and subjective. It’s our right-brain, our visual & creative side, that is not being fed during most presentations.

Much of what it takes to make sure that a presentation appeals to how your adult audience learns has to do with how the presentation event is set up. Here are some key suggestions on how you can make your next presentation a powerful adult learning experience:

• Use Round Tables: having your audience sit at round (or half round) tables that seat 8 or 10 people helps your audience to interact easily.
• Schedule Break Time: make sure that your audience has time both before and after your presentation to meet and discuss what they are going to learn and what they have learned.
• Use Comfortable Seats: Rarely do we have control over this, but if possible the more comfortable the seats are, the more learning will happen.
• Lose The Lectern: This can be done as simply as making sure that you have a wireless microphone so that you are not tied to one spot and can move around and interact with your audience.
• Handouts & Downloads Are Good: You audience is hungry for information that they can take back to the office. Giving them something that they can touch and hold is one way to do this.
• More Brian Food: This is my favorite. Most food that is served during a presentation can be sugar or carb-heavy. If possible, provide healthful food options.

At the end of the day, you go to a lot of effort to get ready to deliver a presentation. You want your audience to be impacted by your words and you want them to be able to absorb and learn from the information that you are presenting. If you follow these tips, your audience will have a better chance of learning and retaining what you have to say.

What do you do today to help your audiences learn what you are presenting? Do you feel that you do a good job of getting your audience to retain what you are presenting? What was the best learning presentation that you have ever attended? What was it so successful? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

No related posts.

Presenters Need To Make Sure That They Look Good During Their Presentation

When we deliver a presentation, we need to make the best use of all of the tools that we have at our disposal. These tools include things such as hand gestures, using pauses, and vocal variety. All too often we forget that we have one more tool for us to use: our personal style.

Life is busy and all too often too many of us just don’t take the time to look our best when we venture out into public. The reasons for this are many – we don’t expect to meet anyone that we know, we don’t think that we’re going to be out for long, or maybe we just don’t care.

It turns out that this kind of thinking opens all sorts of doors for us as presenters. If we take the time to look our best then we’ll end up being the best looking person in the room. What this means is that everyone will be looking at us. If they are already looking at us, then we’ve got half of our task taken care of!

Carmine Gallo is a communications coach who has spent a lot of time thinking about this topic. Here are some of his suggestions that will help you use this tool to it’s fullest extent:

• Keep The Bling To A Minimum: Over time we all build up a collection of accessories. Women have a collection of flashy necklaces and too-big earrings. Men have (also) too flashy necklaces, tie holders, bracelets, etc. Remember that accessories are designed to add value to your look – not to distract from the overall package. The rule is to keep it simple and suitable for your outfit.
• Get Some Culture: This should be something that your research for any presentation reveals to you. A suit is always appropriate – except when it’s not. Make sure that you dress in a way that matches the event or the culture of your audience. Have your dress match the expectations of your audience.
• Smile For The Camera: As long as you are going to the effort of getting all gussied up for your big presentation, take the time to make sure that all of the photographs that are taken of you show how good you look. We can never have enough photos of ourselves when we are looking our bests. Find a professional photographer and get a formal picture taken of yourself – this will be invaluable to you later on.

All too often we end up spending all of our time researching what we want to say, how we want to say it, and what we want our audience to be motivated to do once we are done talking.

If we take the time to plan out how we are going to look for our next presentation then we’ll be ahead of the game before we even show up. Sometimes just taking the time to look at ourselves in the mirror before we head out the door can do wonders for making our presentation that more effective…!

Have you ever discovered that you owned any accessories that were too distracting to wear while presenting? Did you ever deliver a presentation where you were not dressed to match the culture of your audience? Have you ever had a bad photograph of you taken while you were presenting? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

No related posts.

Presenters Need To Use Their Personal Stories About Facing Challanges To Reach Their Audiences

Today’s audiences are a jaded bunch. In fact, a Gallup Poll shows that just 16% of us have a favorable opinion of business executives. With all of the Wall Street failures and auto maker bailouts that are currently going on, this number will probably keep going down. What’s a presenter to do in order to cut through the fog of cynicism that we are all existing in?

One way that presenters are doing this is by sharing their own stories of adversity. These stories seem to be able to reach out to audiences and somehow make the presenter much more “real” than just another glib business success story.

If this is what your audience wants, what can you do to meet their needs? We all may not have survived a wild bear attack, but we may be able to find other types of material in our lives that will allow us to connect with our audiences:

• Audiences Love Adversity: The bigger the challenge that you faced, the more they love it. Erik Weihenmayer is a mountain climber who is blind. He over came lots of adversity and ended up climbing Mt. Everest. His story shows his audience how to overcome adversity in their lives.
• Tales Of Survival Match Today’s Business Environment: Today’s business environment is harsh and unforgiving and surviving is what most of your audience is trying do every day. Trisha Meili
  was assaulted and left for dead in New York’s Central Park. She now speaks to audiences about what she had to go through in order to recover.
• Find The Metaphor: What your audience is really looking for is hope. They will be interested in your story no matter what you tell them, but it will have a real impact if they can understand that what you went through is similar to what they are currently going through. The fact that you survived (and hopefully thrived) is what is going to give them the courage to keep on trying.
• Tie Your Story Into Business: A great story will keep your audience on the edge of their seats – but what happens when you stop talking? John Amatt survived a mountain climb 20 years ago that killed three of his climbing teammates. The only way that he survived that disaster and made it to the top of the mountain was to  make radical changes to his climbing route and tactics. This story is very well received by business people who are facing major changes in their business environments.
• Use Humor Where Appropriate: These topics can be pretty heavy – life and death struggles are rarely something that anyone wants to joke about. That being said, if your entire presentation is dark and scary, then your audience will just be happy when it’s all over. Instead, use humor at the start and at the end in order to start and end on a lighter note. You audience will appreciate it and this will allow your message to sink in further.

We have not all faced life threatening situations. However, what your audience is really looking for is a good story that they can relate to. If you look back over your life, I’m sure that you can find points in which you were faced with a challenging situation that looked impossible at the time. Then all you have to do is weave a story that will grab your audience’s attention…

No related posts.

Presenters Use Acting Tips To Keep Their Presentations From Becoming Boring

Previously we had discussed the fact that any presentation that you give is really sort of like a one person show – if you know how to act, then you’ll be more effective.

The challenge, of course, is that very few of us have been trained to be an actor. Additionally, we tend to think of actors as being “over the top” types of performers (sorta like Heath Leger in that Batman movie).  The truth is actually much different – acting is simply knowing what to say or how to move in order to influence your audience in some way. We’d all like to be able to do that, right?

Here are five acting tips that you can start using in order to improve your next presentation.

Speak In The Moment: In order to make your presentation more powerful, you need to fine tune it to your audience and their current mood. Great actors don’t just memorize their lines, they “stay in the moment” and are constantly reacting to what’s going on in their scene. You need to be constantly reacting to your audience’s feedback and using this to modify how you present your information.

Keep It Fresh: There is the old saying that “variety is the spice of life”. This is especially true when it comes to presentations. Anything that you do for too long will start to bore your audience. Today’s audiences have very short attention spans and you need to be constantly changing your presentation in order to keep them engaged. Ways to change your presentation include emphasis, movement, volume, energy level or material being presented.

Risky Business: If you are not taking any risks in your presentations, then you are not providing a dynamic presentation – it’s going to be the same every time and that’s boring. Trying out new things, interacting with audience members, these are all things that carry an element of risk. Risk keeps things interesting for both you and your audience.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Commitment: When you decide to add some acting to your presentation, do it full throttle. The worst thing that you can do is go at it half speed. It’s your passion and your commitment that will win your audience over in the end.

Concentration Is The Key To Relaxation: If you aren’t careful and you let your mind wander, then you will end up focusing on just how nervous you are. Do what actors do: focus your mind on how you have prepared, the words that you want to say, and your audience – basically anything but your nerves.

There you have it, all of the tips that you need in order to start using the skills that actors use in your next presentation. I can’t promise that you’ll bring home a golden globe award, but the greatest complement will be if your audience can’t wait to see your next show!

How do you vary your speech to keep it interesting for both you and your audience? When was the last time that you took a risk with a presentation? What risk did you take? How do you work to relax before starting a presentation? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

No related posts.