One of the secrets of great speakers is their use of time.
They know that if they have been given a time limit for their speech or presentation, that they will stick to that.
Why?
There are four very good reasons for us all to do the same, if we want to be successful.
Sticking to time forces you to be very clear in your message – no waffling, no beating around the bush. And that sort of focus really adds power to your message. If you want an outcome – for your audience to do, be or think something as a result of your presentation, make that message very, very clear.
Someone may have been hired you to speak – an event organiser, the program co-ordinator for an organisation. If you want to be re-hired, you need to keep that organiser confident that you can deliver the goods and make their job easier. If they have to step in to haul you off the stage, or if their whole schedule is upset because you spoke too long, then – unless your content went through the roof in terms of outcomes -they will not be terribly enthusiastic about re-hiring you or recommending you to their colleagues.
Really this is just common courtesy, not just a selfish, calculated piece of behaviour. You, me, us, extending courtesy, thinking of how we impact other people. It should be part of our value system, deeper and stronger than any need to hustle or sell or manipulate. It feels right. And of course, how we treat people will be part of your brand, part of the impact you make, and part of the way you will be remembered, because the behaviour indicates the deeper values. We are, after all, creating relationships which will bring in returns in multiples, far easier than trying to get business or results from every single stand-alone speaking gig.
Your audiences will form an opinion of you as well. As Stephen Keague said, ‘No audience ever complained about a presentation or speech being too short‘, but they will complain if you speak for too long.
Cuban President Fidel Castro is known for having delivered the longest continuous speech ever given in the General Assembly of the United Nations. Delivered in September 1960, it lasted for 4 hours and 29 minutes. He also spoke in a New York church, at a gathering of supporters, people who supported Cuba and its policies and having a closer relationship with the United States. He spoke for 4 hours and 16 minutes. After three hours, and the presentation of statistics from wads of paper, some of his audience had fallen asleep in the pews. Others walked out exhausted, leaving the church half full by the end of his speech. And these were enthusiastic supporters!
None of us wants the audience falling asleep like that, or walking out; after all what we want (and need) is their attention. Because something else that all speakers want (and need) from their audiences is to be remembered, to be reiterated around the water cooler the next day, quoted in memories of the event, and requested for the next conference or training day. To be remembered.
At Gettysburg in 1863, Edward Everett delivered a 13,607 word speech, that clocked in at 2 hours. The world has forgotten those 13,607 words, but not the three-minute address given by President Abraham Lincoln – famed and certainly not forgotten.
The value is not in how much you say but in what you say – your message.
And I know from experience that when you have not prepared properly, not honed your message to fit the time allowed, you find yourself racing through, speaking quickly just to fit it all in. University professors might have wanted a display of all the knowledge I had, but my audiences just want what is relevant to them and what they need to learn or believe or use. The curse of T.M.I. (Too Much Information) is very real. And if it results in a speedy delivery, then you will have lost the advantage of being able to add power to your words with a variety or pace, and the use of pause. It can also result in having no flexibility, no space to answer unexpected question, deal with interruptions or change with changing time slots. Knowing exactly the message and main points allows for all of those things.
It may be useful to you to time your speech. Practise it beforehand and time it. Or if you write it out beforehand, (I’m not sure why you would do that, but there may be good reason), you can use the fact that people tend to speak at 110 to 140 words per minute. That will allow you to work out how long the speech will take. Of course if you speak faster or slower than that, you will need to adjust. But be prepared enough to know how much time you have and how much time you will take. Winston Churchill said, “I’m going to make a long speech because I’ve not had the time to prepare a short one” and undoubtedly that was not to his advantage. Preparation counts!
I couldn’t resist reminding you of another famous quote of Winston Churchill’s “A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt, long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.”
So while it may seem a cool, confident thing to be relaxed about the time you take, it’s better to build the habit of being aware of time and using it well. You create a focussed powerful message, you increase the chances of building favourable outcomes for your event coordinator and audience and you are free to speak with flexibility and engaging, memorable power. Watch the clock and you will have added another success tool to your speaking tool kit, and be a speaker who is remembered and rehired.
Who cares?
Do you?
Does your audience?
What about your speaking success? Do you care about that?
If you care about being successful, you are going to have to consider your audience. Success is all about them.
Consider your audience if you want to be successful.
Show them you care.
They have to feel that you have their best interests in mind, not just your own agenda.
While you are speaking to them, it has to be apparent that you care about them and what they want and need.
Otherwise you lose their trust, and the chance to entertain, inspire, persuade, compel.
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Do you care that what you say aligns with your values and your truth …
about speaking with integrity?
Because if you aren’t in alignment with what you are communicating, saying, you will suffer, feel strange, removed, uncomfortable. You will have to fight it.
I spent years speaking successfully in competition, and yet feeling just that way, as though what I was doing was outside my reality somehow. It’s only since I stopped competing and started helping/inspiring/teaching with my speaking that I have realised the disconnect – I was speaking to win (success). Certainly the content was from within my own values and what I wanted to communicate, but there was always the dual interest, my audience and my success – and so the interest was divided between audience and success instead of focused on that audience.
It is sooooo much easier to show you care – genuinely.
And if you don’t, then I can only say find a way that you do, and use that as a frame for all that you present.
Use your speaking skills to create the connection with your audience and engage them. Use stories and humour. Interact with them. Call back to incidents or people they know. You have to have engagement, anyway, in order to begin the process of persuasion. And it will make it easier for you to feel in flow and connected …
and caring!
We fit in. We fit in with society, with our families, with our peers.
From a very young age, and from way back in the mists of history, we have been shepherded by our families, our tribe, our peers into conforming.
There was a time, and perhaps there are still times, when our very survival depended/depends on it.
So the urge to conform is strong in us,
especially in situations where we may not know what is appropriate, expected and safe.
I felt it when I attended a presentation early in my days in business.
He had already used various techniques that had me on edge, uncomfortable, aware of the not-so-subtle attempts at persuasion.
He had audience members becoming more and more excited.
“Raise your hand if …” and up went the hands.
Say “Yes” if you agree. And they were shouting “yes”.
“Who wants my freebie?” And before he had finished describing the thousands of dollars’ worth, two gentlemen were running to the stage for his USB.
“Everyone who belongs to my tribe run to the back of the room to sign up.”
And they did.
He had started with a room full of people. Many had left, but the numbers were still quite large.
I had no desire to buy.
I was very aware of what he was doing.
It was unsubtle and ugly,
and yet still I felt an outsider, uncomfortable, boring!
The power of belonging to the herd is incredibly strong.
And more recently, I attended a multi-level-marketing presentation.
I was late, partly because I was reluctant to attend, having agreed to make up numbers for a friend, and found myself sitting in a front row on a chair while about ten people sat on lounge chairs and padded chairs in an arc behind me.
And here again …
“Raise your hand if you want to live your dream.”
And the hands went up.
“Who’s excited by this offer?” And they very nearly shouted “Hallelujah!”
Then the presenter started inviting people to give testimonials and it became fairly obvious that there were only three of us who were not already members of the scheme.
Lovely to have so many people forming a community and supporting my friend who had hosted the event.
And while I felt uncomfortable sitting at the front, the herd force wasn’t as powerful as my first experience because I had gone in without any hopes.
At the earlier event I had been drawn by a particular suggestion in the marketing.
The herd instinct is a strong force for persuasion, especially in the unsure or vulnerable.
Have you been in an audience and felt the force of it?
Perhaps you have been a shepherd, using the force – hopefully with more subtlety and integrity than those I experienced!
There never has been security. No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner;
if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavour.
Eleanor Roosevelt.
Harsh words, those, especially for those of us who like to be prepared.
“Never.” … “There never has been security.”
Still, we try to achieve it as much as we can,
prepare for all eventualities,
do our best to avoid the embarrassment of fumbling for an answer, for forgotten words, for a prepared logical flow.
And yet we know, underneath, that what Eleanor Roosevelt said is entirely true.
There will always be the unpredictable.
And we will prepare for that too.
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What about the flavour it brings though?
The flavour of life … the flavour of an unpredictable speaking experience.
I like to think that being a speaker operates on at least 3 levels.
There is me, you, the speaker.
There is what I call the eagle eye – the ability we have to watch ourselves and our audiences from above and evaluate how things are going, in order to adapt.
And then there is the concept that beside the conversation we are having with our audience is another experience, the shared experience of being together in a presentation.
We can leverage that with little moments of quirking an eyebrow at the audience as if to say “See what I did there?”, or less subtly discussing what is actually going on. We can create a shared experience in this level.
If the experience is unexpected, this is where we can really capitalise on that flavour Eleanor mentioned – enjoy the moment together with the audience,
forge a bond of shared experience,
of response to the unexpected
with humour, with pathos or with jointly created action.
So while those un-predictable events can be challenging, especially if we worry too much about them beforehand, or label them failures afterwards,
they can also be the source of some of the most powerful and enjoyable experiences a speaker can have.
So what if we were asked to define the Holy Grail for speakers?
What would you say?
This has me intrigued now.
So the Holy Grail is a feeling?
What is that feeling?
For me, then,
the feeling is natural
not forced,
confident without being egotistical,
though sometimes a performance.
It is uplifting,
a quiet satisfaction sometimes,
sometimes exhilarating.
It is absolute connection,
shared laughs, emotional highs, and sad lows,
sudden understanding
and joy in discovery,
all shared.
That is me, the speaker, but what about the listener,
the audience member,
what does that person see as the Holy Grail of speaking,
of being in an audience?
What does that feel like?
And I, like you, have sat in an audience, just as we have stood or sat or walked as the speaker.
What is that feeling, as an audience?
We wanted to feel that connection
that experience,
those emotions,
the energy,
those shared learnings,
that absolute connection.
Sometimes we wanted to be the only person in that audience, alone in the experience,
at other times we felt kinship with all the others sitting or standing or online beside us.
We wanted to trust,
for the feeling of communication to be natural,
unforced.
We wanted to feel somehow changed by the experience,
more prepared to face our challenges,
validated in our choices already made,
motivated to go ahead,
uplifted, entertained, bemused,
if only for the duration of the presentation.
Is this the holy grail of speaking,
and does it exist,
has it ever existed???????
Memorability is important for us speakers, as it is for anyone building a brand, creating change, inspiring action, or wanting to be rehired.
If you want your audience to remember your message, there are several wonderful ingredients you can add to the mix.
Today let’s look at this one
… create an emotional connection.
Maya Angelou is quoted as saying “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
When you make an emotional connection, you open up the pathways in your audience’s brains that facilitate recall. Whatever you associate with that emotion will be retained along with the emotion, in their memories.
If you want to introduce a new way of thinking or doing for your audience to adopt, create an emotional connection. Having already researched your audience, you should have some idea of what excites them, what they cry about, what their problems are. And you can use that information to connect to their emotions. Use examples that will push those buttons, appeal to what matters to them most.
Tell stories that create an emotion.
Use words that heighten emotion.
Use emotive verbs. Rather than “she said” use “she screamed”, rather than “he went” use “he raced”. Give your adjectives and adverbs the same treatment.
You can watch your audience as you go, and get a feel for what moves them.
It is also a fact that while statistics and logic and facts and figures are useful in supporting a point, they will not have the power over your audience that emotion does. People will make decisions (and give you their attention) based on emotions … and justify them afterwards with logic.
So create an emotional connection with your audience and mix it in and around your facts, statistics and testimonials to engage your audience, have them remember your message and be open to making changes in their lives.
It’s not just speaking … when we speak to persuade.
Successful persuasion also lies in the ability to actively listen, even in the field of public speaking.
Successful speaking to persuade relies on knowing your audience.
What are their needs and wants.
How are they thinking about your proposal.
What are they likely to favour about it?
What is going to stand in the way of them being persuaded?
What are their doubts?
What are their objections?
What are the obstacles to them moving forward with your suggestions?
Listen to them – before the presentation – survey them, talk to them, ask the event organiser about the – and listen.
Listen to them – during the presentation – ask them questions – and listen.
Successful speaking to persuade relies on seeing moments where you can gain agreement – maybe a comment or question from your audience, a situation from which you can draw an analogy, maybe a report back from a group discussion.
Listen for those and keep a line of thinking open that will allow you to use those moments to really amp up the energy of your speaking response.
Successful speaking to persuade relies on your being adaptable. It’s one of the lessons I teach in my workshops and seminars on PowerPoint. Be prepared to change the course or direction of your presentation. If it seems that your audience puts value on one point or discussion over another, or if the feedback, comments or discussion suggests that a different direction would wok best, then be prepared to change the structure of the presentation that you had prepared in advance.
This means that not only is your structure working for you. It also means that you are building trust. You care enough about your audience to change direction for them and you are confident enough in your material and your beliefs to change direction for them.
Listen, then to their comments, to their suggestions and the tone of their discussions.
So I have covered three areas of listening that will build the success of your persuasive speaking – knowing your audience, watching for opportunities to ramp up the energy and being adaptable.
Do you use any other listening techniques to successfully persuade?
Why would you give your audience homework?
How could homework be a gift?
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Most school children hate homework, or at least see it as a chore.
Why do school children have homework?
I imagine there are many reasons, but one must be to solidify the learning done in school.
Because we learn by doing.
We reinforce theory with practice.
We multiply the learning by applying what we have learned to our own lives.
We take ownership of the learning when we implement it.
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We take ownership of the learning when we implement it.
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Spend time in the classroom or with an inspirational speaker, and we take in theory.
We take in enthusiasm, too, hopefully!
We take in the steps to success.
We take those “in”… at the time.
But how far “in” do they go as soon as we leave the classroom
… as soon as the speaker leaves the podium
… as soon as the lesson has ended?
How often have you listened to a motivational speaker, felt motivated … and then several weeks, or even days, later, if someone asked what you were doing differently now, could not remember what his message was or what you had felt so motivated to do????
Clever speakers give their audiences homework.
Caring speakers who really want their audiences to achieve or grow or benefit give their audiences the gift of homework.
They will learn by doing.
They will reinforce theory with practice.
They will multiply the learning by applying what they have learned to our own lives.
They will take ownership of the learning when they implement it.
So if you care about your audience, really want them to change, really want to be of service, what will you ask them to do when they get home after your presentation?
“The success of your presentation will be judged not by the knowledge you send but by what the listener receives.”
— Lilly Walters
Public Speaking is all about you, isn’t it?
You the speaker.
You creating a speech.
You delivering a speech.
You taking the audience on a journey.
You affecting the outcome.
You presenting stories, humour, information, ideas, products.
Me, the speaker.
Me, facing my fears.
Me, being confident.
Me, remembering the best words to use.
Me, creating energy in the room.
Me, finally achieving success as a speaker.
This blog is aimed at You (and if you are reading this, then it is about “me”).
I am writing and speaking to you, hoping to give you ideas and resources that will be of value to you as a speaker.
Strange, then, that the one sure foundation of success is the ability, once the presentation begins (or even in the marketing beforehand) to make it about us – all of us in the room, all of us on this journey to being better, living better, being and living more easily.
Not just the audience – the “you” to whom we speak – else we become preachers, philosophers, at least one step, if not a whole staircase removed, from that audience, that “you”.
We are all on this journey together, supporting each other.
How can we best ensure that, in our blogs, in our social media, in our speaking?