A great speaker doesn’t speak at an audience, but rather listens to the audience, and responds to the audience. What exactly is good listening on a public speaking level? Is it about simply mirroring the body language of the person (or persons) you are speaking to, as some communication coaches suggest? Or is it deeper than that? I would argue that good listening on the public speaking level is the same as good listening on the personal level; it is the ability to understand the meaning of a question or comment, not just the delivery. On the micro level, this means repeating questions that are posed by your audience, and asking directly if you are understanding them correctly. It means paying attention to the context of the question, and picking up important non-verbal clues.
On the macro level, listening to your audience means understanding what they are expecting of the speech, and what they want, even need, to hear. Do you make sports analogies at a film industry convention with an audience made of movie buffs? Start out an awards ceremony with edgy humor when the audience yearns for sincerity? Perhaps you aren’t listening. Try imagining what you would want to hear if you were in the audience… this is the first step to becoming a speaker who is truly attuned to the audience.
Sir Ken Robinson gives a wonderful and hilarious speech on the need for education reform. He has a delivery to die for, and a comedian’s timing, which can’t be taught. What can be taught is how to say something with your speech. Here the thrust is crystal clear; the educational system kills creativity rather than nurturing it, and it’s time for reform. From this profound and bold statement, we get a myriad of wonderful personal stories, quips, and jokes. My personal favorite is his bit about what it must have been like to teach Shakespeare. What’s your favorite part of the speech?
I think this is one of the best commencement speeches I have ever seen. I was skeptical at first. Mr. Jobs starts the speech unconventionally, he tells a story about dropping out of college, not the best choice for a commencement address. My initial reaction was that he hadn’t analyzed his audience or the occasion thoroughly enough. A brilliant speech, however, is often unconventional, and I was soon won over.
His craft is impeccable. He starts the speech with a simple premise, and gives the speech a simple structure. He will tell three stories. Done.
Each story illustrates the main theme of his speech, which is that death is lurking for all of us, and we must chase after our dreams with the limited time we have. Each story Mr Jobs tells is chock full of details, and each one builds in intensity and personal revelation, from his decision to drop out of college, to finding out he was fired from Apple, to being diagnosed with cancer. He punctuates the speech with witty, touching quotes. These quotes illustrate his main theme, and make you laugh, even as the lump is building in your throat.
This speech is a great example of what speech making at it’s finest can accomplish; it can remind us of our shared humanity, and propel us to identify with our highest potential.
What do you do if you’re chairing a panel and one of your guests makes a sexist remark? Or during a Q and A? Or ON NATIONAL TELEVISION. Well that’s what Mark Haines does here to broadcaster Erin Burnett. What do you think? Do you think she handled this appropriately? What is the best strategy here?
It’s graduation season, so I thought we should take a look at a wonderful commencement address. Check out Steven Colbert’s Knox College Commencement Address. He crafts a speech that fits the occasion brilliantly, it’s light and witty, and he finds a way to turn the whole improvisational nature of the speech into the theme of the speech itself. “Say yes” he says, and learn to turn your life into a thrilling improvisation.
Note: The speech is broken into three video files. See the next two posts for the remaining two vids.
Many business professionals tend to simply rehash the obvious when presenting. Sales presentations become a litany of product information, investor updates become awash in figures and PowerPoint, and small group meetings get bogged down in repeated information. Suddenly a thirty minute meeting feels like two hours. No good.
You can beat boardroom boredom (fancy alliteration, no?) by utilizing metaphor. Giving an ad sales pitch about your companies ability to sort and sift data? How about utilizing diamond mining as a metaphor? Sprinkle your speech with words like “sift”, “mine”, “granular”. Start out with an attention getter: “Where do you find a diamond?”. Use the imagery of sifting through dirt to find the perfect stone to represent your companies ability to sift through users to find the perfect ad match. That’s right, abstract the speech a bit, not much, a bit, and use the power of imagery to make an impact on your audience.
At the end of the presentation, your audience will remember you first, the way you speak, smile, laugh, frown, and the images you create second. The content of your speech rates a distant third. So hook them first with human interest and creativity, and hit them with the hard facts later. In the end, we all want to be entertained, stimulated and engaged, so view your presentation as a small performance, and watch your speeches grow by leaps and bounds!
