Hi brandon artisan president of champion strategies with our ongoing series of public speaking.
Why you’re on the front lines, you did not want to be on the front lines, but maybe you were forced into it so now, you’re, somebody’s supervisor or manager, maybe you’re, that first-year teacher in front of the babies or maybe you wanted to always do public speaking And now, since the virus, everything is done in this little box.
So how do i compete with all these powerful people? Well, there’s organizations like i tell you that will take public speaking as part of the overall communication and you can get degrees two four-year degrees in that, naturally, you would have to pay.
There are organizations that just focus on public speaking, but once again, there’s a fee for that.
What we are doing is offering the alternative to those people who just like to go through the internet and see what they can find as far as content or video.
That can assist them with their needs and efforts.
I’m assuming on this end that you know the discipline of practice.
So with that said today we want to talk about you being in front of the room and the key thing as a speaker.
What are you responding to, as you see the audience, come into the area, whether it’s an auditorium or an open space, respond to what you see, but you need to watch them as they come in many speakers are very self-focused and when they’re on stage most of The time this is not intentional, but speakers want to do a good job, so they focus on the job.
They feel is most important, the words and the slides.
Now, if you focus only there, you will lose the attention of the audience, because there’s no connection a good speaker knows how to capture a room at all times.
Are people paying attention to what you’re saying or your slides? Do they seem to look bored? Are they engaged who’s laughing? Who is it and who seems to agree or disagree with you if you feel the room agrees or doesn’t agree for an example act on it tell them.
I see some people disagree and that’s fine.
Here’s why i feel it is like this.
The mere fact that you’re responding to the movements shows you care and caring means connection.
Look at people a bit longer it’s common advice for speakers to look at all parts of the room and focus on some people.
Great advice, but you need to be careful with this.
If you glance over the audience too much, they will feel neglected.
They feel you don’t see them.
What you want is real connection now this means looking people in the eye.
In fact, look at some people a bit longer than others, not too long.
They can get creepy, but long enough to get the connection.
Get a smile or watch them even lean in closer smile and have some fun smiling is one of the most underestimated parts of public speaking.
If you want to connect the audience must feel you like them, and if you’re not smiling, how will they ever get an opportunity to see if you’re part of what they do now, once your show and you’ve enjoyed yourself is on stage and it’s over the audience? Will become part of that and they will feel closer to you now we talked about this numerous times when it comes to jokes, how to make people smile if we want to get them to come to us.
Sometimes you can do this with the joke, but i warn you being funny: does not help if you can make an audience smile, they will fall closer to you now, there’s a danger here.
If your joke backfires, you can’t lose all the connection so think about the jokes that you want to offer up.
Don’t offend people don’t make fun of specific groups, be lighthearted, be funny.
The best person to joke about out of everyone in that room is yourself also be personal, which brings to me a very important part of your presentation.
You have to make any presentation, you do personal people bond with people, let them bond with you, not the presentation.
So as soon as you can make part of the presentation, personal, you will get closer to the audience now.
This doesn’t mean that you have to keep telling stories about yourself or about your kids all the time, but it does mean that you want to connect to the content of the presentation and make that personal show.
The connection between you and what you’re trying to get across people will love you for that and they’ll do one other thing: they’ll talk about once the event is over and refer to what they already know.
So if you talk about stuff that people can’t relate to you make it harder for them to sit as an audience and try to grasp what you’re saying it can almost be like you’re talking to them in a foreign language.
How do you feel when you’re part of a conversation between two people speaking a language, you don’t understand? Naturally we feel left out, so you want to avoid feeling like that.
Even when you’re talking about difficult topics, you want to sometimes bring it back to the basics.
The best way of doing this is to refer to things.
People already know.
Sometimes this is an analogy.
Sometimes it’s going back to something everybody knows.
If you refer to what people know, you give them trust, and you do one other most important thing.
You get them closer to you and that’s what we’re trying to do with the audience.
There’s no way they can hear that explosion or really understand that takeaway piece that you want them to go back and implement unless they feel closer to you once again, brandon hardison president of champion strategies with our ongoing series on public speaking hope.
You got something out of it, so, as always in parting, you go out.
