The Audience-Centered Speaking Process

The success of any communication will hinge on your focus on your audience, and your understanding of their needs and attention. This impacts on many aspects of the communication and this article by Kellie Fowler from MindTools puts it into perspective ... As every successful speech writer knows, the only reason to give a speech is to change the world! Otherwise, why bother? Having established that, how can you ensure that your speech can accomplish such a lofty goal, especially when the opportunities for failure are many, and for success correspondingly few? Recent studies suggest that most executives would rather die than deliver a public speech. Perhaps this explains why most executives often put off the task of preparing speeches to the last minute, or hand the task off to someone else. Before you do this, you should know that public speaking can be a powerful tool for communicating your most important messages. And, when it happens, it’s powerful. When it’s missing, everyone feels it, including the ill-fated speaker. Can you find that connection with your audience that truly creates sparks? And, once you make the leap and deliver a successful speech, could it be that it is something you actually enjoy? Yes, and yes! The place to start is with the content of your speech or presentation, for that will make or break you with your audience. Structure Your Content Like a Conversation Your content should be structured and delivered in a way that recognizes the audience’s need to absorb information through an aural genre with limited opportunities for feedback of the kind conversation provides. This is not to say that there is no feedback in public speaking; there’s actually plenty. But because most public speaking is more or less scripted, the speaker is limited in the amount of attention he can give to feedback, and limited in the ways in which he or she can respond. Perhaps it is best to think of your presentation as a journey. Once on the journey, you may not get to stop often, for you will miss something. Considering this, your content needs to proceed logically, in complete thoughts, with stops along the way for the audience to check its comprehension. You will need to remember that active listening is exhausting work and people don’t retain much of what they hear. So, with this in mind, make sure you structure your content so that it is organized and delivered the way the audience needs to hear it. Second, it’s a matter of unabashed focus. Think in terms of getting your messages and your ideas across to your audience. For instance, if you get only a single message across to your audience, what will it be? When structuring your speech’s content, pit your focus here. Third, consider your emotional content. You want to give as much thought to preparing an emotional story line as an intellectual one. Take Your Audience on the Journey With You Your audience will start the journey wanting a few key questions answered: “Why am I here,” “Why is this topic important to me,” and “Why should I pay attention to this speaker for the next hour or so?” Herein lies the difference between conversation and public speaking. People engage in conversation for mutual pleasure, to exchange information, or perhaps storytelling, or even a mix of the three. Public speaking differs greatly from conversation in that you need to orient the audience and prepare the way, or the journey, for where you will take them. To accomplish this, you must set them at ease early on and establish right off the bat what the context of your presentation is and why it is important and worth their time (and yours). Once you’ve answered the “why?”, the real journey begins. Now your goal is to move your audience from “why?” to “how?”. Don't Tell All You Know Your audience already assumes you are an authority on the subject discussed. By being there, they are bestowing a mantle of trust and credibility upon you at the beginning of the speech. It’s up to you to wear it successfully. To do this, stick to the point and make it possible (and enjoyable) for the audience to follow you by delivering strong, focused, clear and concise messages. Connect With Your Audience with Stories Studies show that we make sense of the world by piecing together stories. Take advantage of this to ensure your audience gets your message. Think of the journey you are taking your audience on as a kind of story. Your audience will understand it better if it has all the parts, or the various makings, of a good story – a strong protagonist, a clear dilemma for him or her to work on, and a happy ending. For more information on speeches, presentations and audience-centered communications, visit the Mind Tools website’s Communication section. You can subscribe to their newsletter by emailing join-mindtools@atomic.sparklist.com..htm