Even if you are already an engaging presenter, add more audience participation. It will help the people you’re talking to remember more of your content.
Here are some ways to add variety and help people remember the important points that you are trying to make. They are especially effective in a learning or problem-solving situation
Enthusiasm is a necessary qualification for effective speaking. When you show enthusiasm it is contagious. The enjoyment and knowledge that is demonstrated for your subject will result in increased listener enjoyment and your speech being more convincing.
For public speaking, the enthusiasm required, as described by Coleman Cox, “is inspired by reason, controlled by caution, sound in theory, and practical in application, reflects confidence, spreads good cheer, raises morale, inspires associates, arouses loyalty and laughs at adversity.”
Enthusiasm in public speaking is about being passionate about the subject of your speech and being able to convey it to others. The enthusiasm must be demonstrated in your tome of voice, body language, gestures and facial expressions to transfer it to your audience. The feeling of excitement must come through as you deliver.
Some people are naturally enthusiastic and they are that way because they have developed the necessary habits. You must want to be enthusiastic to become enthusiastic.
Frank Bettger author of “How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling” attributes his success to enthusiasm. His advice is “act enthusiastically and you’ll be enthusiastic.” By acting on his own advice he put his “heart” into selling and went from failure to the top of his field for several years.
If you are not naturally enthusiastic, it can be created as a result of your attitude and enjoyment of the topic or by believing in a cause. By taking the time to apply the following it is possible to develop enthusiasm:
1. Choosing a positive optimistic nature and attitude
2. By putting your whole heart and soul into every you do
3. Do not let criticism put you off your stride
4. Develop a burning desire in your subject by thinking about it and living it everyday.
5. Have an active interest in people
6. Spend your time with people who are genuinely enthusiastic. Their positive emotions will “rub off” onto you.
Unless you want to be enthusiastic you will never be enthusiastic. If you are ashamed of the topic, or dislike it you will not be able to develop enthusiasm for it. Genuine enthusiasm only comes from something you believe in or enjoy.
One of the factors that contributed to the late John F. Kennedy’s speaking success was the enthusiasm he displayed when delivering his speech. Sure, he had good speechwriters but without his enthusiasm the speeches would not have been nearly as effective. A person conveying their speech in a monotone voice, boring and steady manner will not be as effective at getting their message across.
An enthusiastic delivery can overcome other shortcomings in your presentation. Where you are not naturally enthusiastic it can be developed provide you choose to be. By being genuinely enthusiastic and combined with preparation and knowledge your public speaking will be more confident and effective.
For public speaking, the enthusiasm required, as described by Coleman Cox, “is inspired by reason, controlled by caution, sound in theory, and practical in application, reflects confidence, spreads good cheer, raises morale, inspires associates, arouses loyalty and laughs at adversity.”
Enthusiasm in public speaking is about being passionate about the subject of your speech and being able to convey it to others. The enthusiasm must be demonstrated in your tome of voice, body language, gestures and facial expressions to transfer it to your audience. The feeling of excitement must come through as you deliver.
Some people are naturally enthusiastic and they are that way because they have developed the necessary habits. You must want to be enthusiastic to become enthusiastic.
Frank Bettger author of “How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling” attributes his success to enthusiasm. His advice is “act enthusiastically and you’ll be enthusiastic.” By acting on his own advice he put his “heart” into selling and went from failure to the top of his field for several years.
If you are not naturally enthusiastic, it can be created as a result of your attitude and enjoyment of the topic or by believing in a cause. By taking the time to apply the following it is possible to develop enthusiasm:
1. Choosing a positive optimistic nature and attitude
2. By putting your whole heart and soul into every you do
3. Do not let criticism put you off your stride
4. Develop a burning desire in your subject by thinking about it and living it everyday.
5. Have an active interest in people
6. Spend your time with people who are genuinely enthusiastic. Their positive emotions will “rub off” onto you.
Unless you want to be enthusiastic you will never be enthusiastic. If you are ashamed of the topic, or dislike it you will not be able to develop enthusiasm for it. Genuine enthusiasm only comes from something you believe in or enjoy.
One of the factors that contributed to the late John F. Kennedy’s speaking success was the enthusiasm he displayed when delivering his speech. Sure, he had good speechwriters but without his enthusiasm the speeches would not have been nearly as effective. A person conveying their speech in a monotone voice, boring and steady manner will not be as effective at getting their message across.
An enthusiastic delivery can overcome other shortcomings in your presentation. Where you are not naturally enthusiastic it can be developed provide you choose to be. By being genuinely enthusiastic and combined with preparation and knowledge your public speaking will be more confident and effective.
Be more effective in your public speaking and conversation with “The Art of Great Conversation.” To claim your free preview visit http://www.SelfConfidentSpeaking.com
For the rank amateur to the ignorant professional, audiences create the same effect no matter how small they are to a speaker. Fear and anxiety.
From a single person to a crowd as big as the fans in the Super Bowl, speaking in front of a serious listening audience is the true test and baptism of fire.
Despite this, audiences are predictable. Audiences listen to you because they want to learn something from the speaker.
Following this logic, the speaker would do well to follow the strategy of making it informative as well as interesting to listeners to see your speech through till the end.
Here are some tips on how you can have the audience listen in rapt attention.
When you are making a speech or presentation, you need to be aware that your gestures can support or detract from your message.
Learn to become aware of what your hands are doing while you speak.
If necessary, make yourself hold them still.
Many people have habits that are terribly distracting and yet they aren’t aware of what they are doing. They click or twiddle a pen, play with their hair or their clothes, hold a microphone with fingers unconsciously making a rude gesture, take glasses on and off, put hands in pockets and take them out.
All of these things are not necessarily detrimental in themselves, if the audience is absolutely focused on the speaker and the message. But if there is any reason for the audience’s attention to stray (and we all have short attention spans) then they will become fascinated, at best, and possibly annoyed at whatever it is that the speaker is doing with their hands.
A presentation can succeed or fail depending on whether your audinece stays with you or not.
Get this free set of tips on “Writing your presentation to keep audience attention”, and improve YOUR chances of success!
As always just let me know if you want to receive the tips
From a Commentary post at Meetingsnet …
Don’t Let a Speaker’s Style Defeat Substance
A keynote speaker at Meeting Professionals International’s MeetDifferent 2010 has been generating sparks from bloggers who followed the conference, not because of his message, but for the way he delivered it.
The speaker was branding specialist Marty Neumeier, who preached a philosophy of radical simplicity for organizations in search of products that are both good and different. The message was strong, but for much of the audience, Neumeier’s style was his undoing.
Read the rest of the post … and what do you think… should a speaker be hired if his/her material is outstanding, but presentation woeful?
From one of my favourite “gurus” ….
How do you make your presentation more interesting to your audience? Perhaps the most important technique is to include them when you speak. You can choose your words to engage your listeners — or leave them out. If you leave them out, boredom is the probable result. In this article, I’ll give you some specific techniques for crafting your content in a way that grabs the attention of your audience.
Here’s the rest of the article in Pivotal Magazine
with Cliff Atkinson
Armed with laptops and smartphones, audiences are no longer sitting quietly while speakers are talking — instead they’re using Twitter and other tools to create a backchannel where they chat with one another, make comments about your presentation and broadcast their thoughts to people all over the world.
If audiences are happy, the backchannel can spread your ideas far and wide, create buzz about your ideas, and keep a conversation going long after you leave the podium. But if audiences are unhappy, the backchannel can criticize your ideas and delivery, disrupt your talk, and even derail your presentation completely. So is the backchannel yet another thing to fear when you give your next presentation? Or a great opportunity to really know what your audience is thinking?
Cliff Atkinson, author of The Backchannel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever, will share his research and ideas for making the backchannel work for you.
You will learn:
• How audiences are changing the power dynamic of presentations
• Why you need a Twitter account and how to use it
• How to make your presentation Twitter-friendly
• How to avoid backchannel disasters
• How to extend your message farther than previously possible
• How to use Twitter feedback to adjust or fine-tune your ideas
Click here for all the details …
Today’s freebie is a set of tips on public speaking ….
Keeping Audience attention.
It’s just so basic, so crucial to your success as a speaker. And particularly for beginners, it can be very nerve-wracking, wondering how to make sure your audience stays with you. What will you do if they get bored? What if they start chatting, or worse still, go to sleep, while you speak?
From the First Steps series, this set of tips will be sent by email. It will give you strategies for the planning and for the execution of your speech to make sure the audience gets you and gets your message.
Just send me an email … and I’ll send you the tips.
If you haven’t already–as a public speaker, you should dedicate yourself to a lifetime study of adult learning principles. It will pay you colossal dividends.
And there’s a lifetime of “adult learning stuff” to learn. Today we’ll look at one such principle; Elaborative Rehearsal.
It’s more than practice. It’s a proactive approach of making the most out of past learning in order to maximize new learning.
For your audiences to make the most out of this proven learning and memory technique, you will have to teach them. Most adult learners just aren’t aware of these methods. Here are five tips you can pass along to all of your audiences.
1. Proper Note Taking. For a learner’s notes to enhance one’s memory, it is important that a learner is able to record the speaker’s ideas in their own words. And, as a presenter you need to tell them so.
2. Paraphrasing. This is like the above note taking, except that care is given to the actual words the note-taker uses. Ideally, the words the learner replaces the speaker’s with has equal or added meaning to the learner.
3. Predicting. It will help a listener to project a speakers message into the future. This “projection” allows a person to simulate the material they are learning in the theater of their mind.
4. Questioning. A good Q and A will help your audience learn your principles better. Challenge your audience to come up with creative and meaningful questions, and then dig into them together.
5. Summarizing. There much talked about the concept but it is seldom used in most learning environments. Plan a specific, “Now what did we learn here today?”
There’s a lot more to the idea of Elaborative Rehearsal than these five tips, and we’ll discuss them in future articles.
The “take-away” today is the need for the public speaker to “train” their audiences how to use elaborative rehearsal to their greatest learning benefit.
One thing that will help your audiences to be able to “practice” your message is a strong visual representation of your message. The presentation world calls these graphics by many things, Process Models, Method Maps, Matrix’s, and Hierarchy Models, etc.
Wayne Kronz
And there’s a lifetime of “adult learning stuff” to learn. Today we’ll look at one such principle; Elaborative Rehearsal.
It’s more than practice. It’s a proactive approach of making the most out of past learning in order to maximize new learning.
For your audiences to make the most out of this proven learning and memory technique, you will have to teach them. Most adult learners just aren’t aware of these methods. Here are five tips you can pass along to all of your audiences.
1. Proper Note Taking. For a learner’s notes to enhance one’s memory, it is important that a learner is able to record the speaker’s ideas in their own words. And, as a presenter you need to tell them so.
2. Paraphrasing. This is like the above note taking, except that care is given to the actual words the note-taker uses. Ideally, the words the learner replaces the speaker’s with has equal or added meaning to the learner.
3. Predicting. It will help a listener to project a speakers message into the future. This “projection” allows a person to simulate the material they are learning in the theater of their mind.
4. Questioning. A good Q and A will help your audience learn your principles better. Challenge your audience to come up with creative and meaningful questions, and then dig into them together.
5. Summarizing. There much talked about the concept but it is seldom used in most learning environments. Plan a specific, “Now what did we learn here today?”
There’s a lot more to the idea of Elaborative Rehearsal than these five tips, and we’ll discuss them in future articles.
The “take-away” today is the need for the public speaker to “train” their audiences how to use elaborative rehearsal to their greatest learning benefit.
One thing that will help your audiences to be able to “practice” your message is a strong visual representation of your message. The presentation world calls these graphics by many things, Process Models, Method Maps, Matrix’s, and Hierarchy Models, etc.
Wayne Kronz
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Wayne Kronz is the host of http://MethodMap.blogspot.com. Visit it today for the best free, online information about the design and use of visual aids in public speaking. You’ll discover many actual models you can use in your next presentation plus a host of videos showing you how the top pros are using visual aids in their public speaking. And a lot more!
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