They are usually a bunch of strangers attending out talk. We may know one or two people in the audience, but generally we have no clue about most of them. The feeling is likewise. They may have perfunctorily glanced at our introduction in the blurb advertising the event but who are we as a person? How smart are we, how useful is this time allocation going to be, can we speak well, are we adding any value to them? Here are twelve ideas to build rapport with the audience.
Consider ourselves honoured to be asked to address an audience and say so. However, don’t do this at the start of the talk. You hear this all the time, “Thank you for inviting me today, it is a great honour to be able to speak to such a distinguished audience”. Boring!!! Design a powerful opening to grab everyone’s attention and only then thank the organisers and the audience for the chance to speak.
Give our listeners sincere appreciation. Arrive early and meet some members of the audience and thank them for coming to listen to you. At the end of the talk, we can also express our appreciation for their attendance. Don’t make this the last comment though. We reserve that for our final close, where we make sure our key message is reverberating in their ears, as they walk out of the venue.
Mention the names of some listeners. Getting there early allows us to meet the guests and then when we get up on stage we can refer to a conversation we had before the start of the speech. For example, “I was chatting with Suzuki san and she made a very interesting point about….” There is an invisible wall between the speaker and the audience and this connecting with people in the audience breaks that wall down and we feel as one unit.
Play ourselves down – not up. Nobody likes someone who is egotistical and acting superior. We should always be humble and never talk about ourselves, as if we were something special, just because we are the speaker. Yes, you need some degree of ego to stand up and speak to an audience, but let’s keep the full dimensions of that ego to ourselves.
Say “we” not “you”. When we use “we”, it is inclusive language and we want to have our audience to feel as if we are one united team. “You should do…” doesn’t work as well as “we should do”, when we want to appeal to our audience. Let’s remove all barriers between ourselves and our listeners.
Don’t talk with a “scowling face an upbraiding voice”. I never do that you say. Really? Check the video. When we are concentrating, without knowing it, our face can look like we are scowling at our audience. Smiling is a great way to make sure we are not doing that, as long as the smile is congruent with what we are saying. If it is a serious topic, then our face should be serious. But a scowling face is too much, because it looks like we are angry and admonishing our audience.
Talk in terms of your listener’s interests. We might have a great love of a subject and we get a lot of satisfaction from talking about it, but are our audience members interested. We need to design the talk, looking at things from their point of view and their likely interest. What is in it for them? What can they take away from this talk which they can apply in theIr world?
Have a good time delivering your talk. If we look like giving this talk is killing us, it will make our audience feel uncomfortable and will have a very negative impact on our personal and professional brands. If we are nervous, we can come across as a wounded animal on stage. Best to mask that wounded animal look, as much as possible. Keep all of that type of “I’m nervous” information to yourself.
Don’t apologise. This is a very common way to start talks in Japan, but we should start with a well designed opening that breaks through all of the competing distractions for our message and grabs the listener’s attention. Apologies are all about us, when we should be totally focused on the audience and not ourselves.
Appeal to the nobler emotions of your audience. People turn up to hear us speak on the basis they want us to succeed. We should assume that and then be very sincere in our preparations, so that we can match their high expectations of us.
Welcome criticism instead of resenting it. If some audience member takes issue with the logic of what we have said or the conclusions we have drawn from the data, we shouldn’t get into an argument. We should just say “thank you” and say we will take that on board and have another look at our assumptions. If we are receiving some feedback on the delivery of the talk, then we should not allow our emotions to get involved. We should just take it as helpful feedback so that we improve.
Be “a good person skilled in speaking”. The most clever criminals around the world all have something in common- they are good talkers. We want to be better than just being a smooth talker. We want to have our audience’s best interests upper most in our minds at all times. They will feel the difference.
Try these twelve ideas when you are preparing for and delivering your next presentation and you will do a much better job of connecting with your audience.
