The Accidental Communicator

Advanced PowerPoint: 3 Tips The Pros Use

Dr. Jim Anderson — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:01:25 +0000

Great Looking PowerPoint Slides Are Easy To Create – If You Know How

PowerPoint is a double edged sword when it comes to giving a speech: it can be both a powerful way to add a multimedia impact to your speech or it can end up distracting your audience and taking their attention away from what you have to say. The experts know how to use this tool correctly and here are three of the ways they tame the PowerPoint beast…

It’s All About Look & Feel

The PowerPoint slides that a speaker uses to augment their speech should look professional. Now this doesn’t mean that they needed to be done by an expensive design house, just that they shouldn’t look like they were put together by an amateur (even if they were!)

The most important part of this is to make sure that the slides have a consistent look and feel to them. The first step in making this happen is to decide on a PowerPoint template and then use it for your entire presentation.

However, that’s not quite enough. All too often I see presenters who’ve had a presentation that has been force-fit into a new template. That it doesn’t fit is pretty clear because the text and images spill over the edges and on top of the template’s decorations.

As a presenter it’s your responsibility to make sure that this doesn’t happen to you. Review your slides and make sure that they are living in harmony with the template that you are using.

Getting From Here To There

PowerPoint is a powerful tool. It has a lot of features that either enhance your presentation or take away from it depending on how you use them. One such feature is the “slide transitions”.

When you move from one slide to the next, PowerPoint can do a number of amazing things on the screen. These are what is called a transition. Transitions can range from the simple (old slide fades away only to be replaced by the new slide) to the complex (new slide zooms out from the center of the screen).

My advice to you here is to keep it simple. Just as your PowerPoint slides should not overwhelm your speech so too should your transitions not overwhelm your slides. If your audience is eagerly awaiting seeing your next transition, then you’ve done something wrong.

PowerPoint will let you use a different type of transition for each slide. Don’t do this. Instead pick one type of transition and stick with it for the entire presentation.

No Surprises

Technology is a wonderful thing – until it turns on you! The professional speakers know that although the PowerPoint presentation that they put together while sitting at their desk looked one way, it might not look that way when they are standing in front of an audience.

There are a lot of reasons for this: you might be using a different computer, the display system might change one color into another color, etc. The way to overcome such surprises is to be prepared.

When you are going to use PowerPoint slides as a part of a presentation, always try to show up early in order to run through your slides on the system that will be used to display them and in the space where you’ll be giving your speech.

The reason that you want to do this is that you’ll be able to see what your audience will eventually be seeing. Issues with a slide being too dark, the colors being messed up, or some other technical snafu can be quickly identified and corrected on the spot.

What All Of This Means For You

As speakers, we all need to make use of whatever tools we have available. PowerPoint is one such tool. However, if not used correctly, PowerPoint can actually end up diminishing the impact of our speech.

We can avoid the pitfalls and make the most of PowerPoint if we follow some simple rules. Making sure that all of the slides in our presentation have a common look and feel is important. Picking a slide transition that doesn’t distract from our slides and then using it consistently will boost our impact. Finally, taking the time to preview how our slides are going to look before a presentation can prevent any technical glitches from showing up.

Technology is here to stay and speakers need to learn how to harness it. By using PowerPoint the way that the pros do, you can create and deliver powerful multimedia presentations that will leave your audience saying to themselves “That looked professionally done…”

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: Do you think that just skipping using any fancy transitions would be the best way to go?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So I’m not sure if there is really any big payoff for taking the time to write about how to become a better speaker; however, if there is, then it’s in getting the opportunity to review new books. Oh, and I get the books for free with no obligation to give a good review – how cool is that?

Related posts:
Mastering The PowerPoint Beast In 3 Easy Steps Can we all be honest here? PowerPoint is a part...

10 Professional Speaking Tips That You Need To Know Editor’s Note: This article has been selected to be included...

10 Tips For Conquering The Final Frontier Of Speaking: Television I think that it was Bruce Springsteen who in his...

The 100 Hour Secret To Creating Speeches Everyone Will Want To Hear

Dr. Jim Anderson — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:01:56 +0000

Image Credit
Yes, I Do Have A Secret To Share With You

Have you ever gone to hear someone speak and just been blown away by what they had to say? I mean their words just seemed to flow out of them and the stories that they told were right on the mark – a perfect complement to the point that they were trying to make? It turns out that you can deliver speeches like this too…

The Secret To Creating Great Speeches

If you want to be able to give a great speech, then you’ve got to be willing to invest the time to create a great speech. I’m not talking about shutting down for a couple of days and holing yourself up somewhere and banging out some fabulous bit of text – that never seems to happen when you need it to.
Nope, what I’m talking about is actually spending the time that it takes to really create a fantastic speech. How much time is that you ask? Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 hours. Oh, oh – now I’ve gone and done it. It looks like you don’t think that this is possible. Turns out that you’re wrong – spend the time keeping a journal and you’ll have all of the high quality content that you’ll need to quickly make a great speech.

How To Spend 100′s Of Hours Creating A Speech

I’ll grant that you are correct that the next time someone asks you to give a speech, the last thing that you want to have to tell them is “could you get back to me after I spend a 100 hours just whipping up a speech for you?” Maybe there’s another way to do the same thing.
Keeping a personal journal is something that all too few of us speakers do, and yet all of us probably should do more of it. Life comes at us fast and if we’re not careful, it will blow right by us and we won’t even remember what happened to us. That’s why a journal is so important.
If you take the time either once a day or perhaps for short times throughout the day to write down what you are doing, how you are feeling, what challenges you are facing, then you will be able to remember everything that has happened to you. This is the raw material that makes for a great speech.

Strong Words Make Strong Images

Anybody can jot a few words down on a piece of paper. It takes a truly skillful speaker to capture just exactly how you are feeling when you update your journal.
One of the keys is to record how you are feeling using all of your 5 senses. Yes, this means taking note of what you are smelling (perhaps your own fear?), tasting, hearing, seeing, and feeling. These are the small details that you will need to use when you use your journal entries to create a fantastic speech.

What All Of This Means For You

The truly great speakers are the ones who have taken the time to create a speech that will resonate with their audience. This means that they have crafted both the words and the stories that will not only allow them to get their points across, but that they have also found a way to get their message to stick with their audience.
You have the ability to create this kind of speech also. What you are going to have to do is to take the time that is needed to create such a speech: 100 hours or more. It turns out that you can do this by keeping a journal – the time that you spend working on the journal will pay rich dividends when it comes time to create your next speech.
By recording everything that you are experiencing at any given moment in your journal, you’ll be able to go back and relive those moments when you are in the process of creating your memorable speech. The secret is to not gloss over how you feel, but rather to record everything that is going on so that you can recapture it. Nobody said it was going to be easy, but it will be the best 100 hours that you’ve ever spent doing something…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills

Question For You: How often do you think that a speaker should update their journal? Once a day or more often?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

PowerPoint is a double edged sword when it comes to giving a speech: it can be both a powerful way to add a multimedia impact to your speech or it can end up distracting your audience and taking their attention away from what you have to say. The experts know how to use this tool correctly and here are three of the ways they tame the PowerPoint beast…

Related posts:
The Secret To Becoming An Expert In Anything If you forget all of the advice that you’ve ever...

The Best Speeches Have A Lot Of You In Them Congratulations – you’ve been asked to give a speech. Got...

Speechwriting Magic: 3 Ways To Cast A Spell Over Your Audience When you deliver a speech you stand up straight, you...

Mastering The PowerPoint Beast In 3 Easy Steps

Dr. Jim Anderson — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:01:17 +0000

Image Credit
There's No Need To Fear PowerPoint, Show It Who's Boss!

Can we all be honest here? PowerPoint is a part of everyone’s life no matter how you feel about it. We all seem to fall into one of three camps: we fear it, we love it too much, or we just don’t really know what to do with it. With a little help, I think that I can help you out here…

Get Your Head Straight

The first thing to work out isn’t what your slides need to look like, rather it’s what role PowerPoint should play in your next speech. The answer is, always, a supporting role.

This means that you need to make sure that your audience doesn’t end up spending your entire speech looking at your slides and not you. Likewise, you don’t want your slides to confuse your audience – almost as if they are telling a different story than what you are talking about.

Speech First, Slides Second – Or Third

If you only remember one thing from reading this, I’m hoping that this is it: always, always write your speech first. Don’t you dare pop open that copy of PowerPoint and start creating slides until AFTER you’ve gotten your words all worked out. Remember: the slides are there to support your speech, not the other way around.

I fully understand just how easy it is to instead of picking up a pen (or a keyboard) and spending some time doing the hard job of writing (unfun) that you open PowerPoint and spend a lot of time drawing (fun!) The problem with this is that you’ll end up creating a lousy speech.

When your words have to follow your slides, the slides will take center stage and you’ll be shoved off into a corner. There won’t be a natural flow to your words. Instead it will appear as though you are just reading off of each slide as it is displayed. This is no way to give a speech.

Slides Are Like Diamonds – They Should Be Rare

Sadly I suspect that at one time or another we’ve all had to sit though one of those speeches where the presenter showed up with like 300 slides and come hell or high water, they were going to show each and every one of them to us.

After you’ve created your speech and when you start to design some slides, you need to make sure that you don’t turn into that person with 300 slides. A good way to prevent it is to take a step back and look at your speech. What is the main point that you are trying to make? You should probably have a slide for that. What are the three ways that you support the main point that you are trying to make? You should probably have slides for those. If you can stop here, that would be a good thing.

Cut Down On The Slides That You Have

The last thing that you’re going to want to do is to throw away some of your slides. “What?” you say. You heard me, you’ve got too many slides. I don’t care which ones you throw away, just get rid of some of them – they can’t all be critical to the message that you are trying to make.

This may be difficult for you to do, but do it anyway. Your audience will benefit from it and they’ll thank you in the end.

What All Of This Means For You

Repeat after me “PowerPoint is my friend”. It can be an important tool that can make your next speech even more powerful; however, you have to know how to use it.

The key things to keep in mind are simple, but critical. You must remember to write your speech before you start to create slide. You have to keep the number of slides that you make to a minimum. Finally, you need to make a second pass and throw away as many slides as you possibly can.

Adding multimedia to your next presentation can only make it better. Just remember, you are the star of the show, not your slides!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: How many slides should you use for a 30 minute speech?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Have you ever gone to hear someone speak and just been blown away by what they had to say? I mean their words just seemed to flow out of them and the stories that they told were right on the mark – a perfect complement to the point that they were trying to make? It turns out that you can deliver speeches like this too…

Related posts:
Real World Speaking: A Trip To See The Doctor We can talk about how to give great speeches until...

Speech Writing Success: How To Make It Happen

Dr. Jim Anderson — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 04:01:35 +0000

Image Credit
You Can Be A Winner, You Just Have To Know How To Get There…

So there you are: you’ve agreed to give a speech and now your mind has gone completely blank when you’ve tried to start to figure out what you’ll say. Where did your energy go? Perhaps more importantly, how are you going to get it back and create a great speech?

It’s All About Your Goals

If you’ve ever read a book or attended a workshop on motivational techniques, then you already know about the power of goals. If for some reason you haven’t, then you’re going to learn now.

In a nutshell, if you want to accomplish something, like writing a great speech, then you need to first start by creating a goal and, this is the important part, writing it down! Yes, I know that it seems too easy, but trust me – this really works.

Setting Goals Is How You Start To Be Successful

Sure we throw the word “goal” around a lot, but do any of us really know what it means? It can mean many different things, but for our purposes here lets assume that when we talk about goals, we’re talking about something that you want to achieve.

You would think that when it comes to the goal of writing a great speech, all you have to do is to think to yourself “I’m going to write a great speech” and that would be that. Right? Well, actually there is a lot more to it than just that.

The experts say that thinking about the goal is really just the first step. The next (and some argue the most important) step is to write it down. For some reason this has the effect of making the goal seem to be more “real” to us. Finally, the last step in the process is actually taking action to make the goal a reality. There may be many steps that you need to take, but taking the first one is what will get you on your way…

Visualization: Can You See What I Can See?

If you were a professional sports figure, then in the past few years you would have found yourself getting caught up in the “visualization” craze that swept through the sports world awhile back. Simply put, this is where you take the time to imagine yourself being successful before it comes time for you to perform. Since the mind can’t tell the different between real and imagined actions, it thinks that you’ve done this before and you’ve just improved your odds of completing your goal.

When it comes to writing a great speech, visualization can be a big help. Speech writing can take quite some time and so having taken the time to visualize yourself successfully creating a great speech helps you to stay focused and on track while writing.

What sport figures go through is called process visualization. What you’ll go through when you are writing a speech is called outcome visualization. You can “see” what you want to produce and that will help you to get there.

Becoming A Speaker Of Action

In the end, all of the goals and visualization in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t get up out of your chair and take some action. It’s this final step of the goals process that separates the people who plan great things from those who achieve great things.

What All Of This Means For You

You can write a great speech. The key to doing this is to make sure that you have clear goals for what you want to achieve.

Knowing your goals is only the first part of a process. Next you need to take the time to visualize yourself creating that great speech and then, most importantly, you need to start to take the steps that will be necessary to get you to where you want to be.

There is no secret to writing a great speech. You have the ability to do it right now. Go set some goals and you’ll be half way to creating that great speech…!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: What kind of goals do you think would help you to create a great speech?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Can we all be honest here? PowerPoint is a part of everyone’s life no matter how you feel about it. We all seem to fall into one of three camps: we fear it, we love it too much, or we just don’t really know what to do with it. With a little help, I think that I can help you out here…

Related posts:
Get It Done: Thinking On Your Feet And Building A Speech Real Quick If I asked you to give a speech, how much...

Never Give A Speech Without Having A Potato Bored audiences will get up and walk out of your...

Never Be Lonely Again: How To Include Your Audience In Your Speech Why Does Giving A Speech Have To Be So Lonely?...

Big Game Hunting: How Public Speakers Capture An Audience’s Attention

Dr. Jim Anderson — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 04:01:35 +0000

Image Credit

You Can't Go Hunting If You Don't Know What You Are Looking For

In the world of big game hunting, the goal always seems to be to try to hunt something bigger and more deadly than you did last time. The world of public speaking isn’t all that much different except that we go looking for the biggest game of all: an audience’s attention.

Do The Unexpected

Face it, we’re all jaded. We live in a world where we expect to be updated instantly via iPhone or Blackberry, we get text messages whenever something important happens, and we can get virtually any type of food within about a mile of where we currently are. What the heck do you have to offer us as a speaker that is going to cause us to pay any attention to you?

David Green is a speechwriter who has to deal with this wandering attention thing as a part of his job every day. He’s got some suggestions on just exactly what you need to do as a public speaker in order to keep that audience of yours hanging on your every word.

First off, David suggests that you pay attention to what your audience is expecting you to say. Do they know who you are? Have they heard you speak before? Are you just like a bunch of other speakers? If any of these are true, then it’s time to shake things up just a bit.

David suggests that you do the exact opposite of what your audience is expecting you to do. If they are expecting you to deliver a speech standing behind a podium, then get out in front of everyone. If they are expecting you to use 100′s of slides, then don’t use any at all. These types of dramatic departures from the ordinary will catch your audience by surprise (in a good way) and they’ll be forced to pay attention to you because they’ll want to know what’s going to happen next.

Accent, Accent, Accent

Nope, we’re not talking about having you sound like Crocodile Dundee or like you are from the U.S. deep South, instead we’re talking about what else is going on on stage while you are speaking. Like PowerPoint.

How much time do you typically spend on the PowerPoint presentation that you are going to use with a speech? As much or more time than you spend on the speech itself? Forget all that fancy stuff, the real star of any speech is you. Make sure that if you decide to use slides that they accent (softly) what you are saying and don’t steal the show from you.

It’s Play Time!

So just what is a speech? If you’re not careful, it’s 20-30 minutes of pure boredom for your audience. If you don’t want to inflict this kind of pain on your audience, then you’ve got to entertain them. I’m not saying that you’ve got to make them laugh (although that might be a good idea), instead I’m trying to let you know that you’ve got to give your speech in a way that will hold their attention.

There are lots of ways to do this. Telling great stories is one way to do it. Slowly unveiling a discovery that you’ve made is another. How you do it isn’t as important as just making sure that you do it.

What All Of This Means For You

Just like a big game hunter, when you are giving a speech you are stalking prey. Your elusive quarry does not have four feet, but rather is sitting in a chair with four legs.

Your goal is to capture and hold your audience’s attention for your entire speech. In order to do this you’re going to have to get creative. Doing the unexpected is one way to keep them guessing – and paying attention to you. Make sure that your PowerPoint doesn’t overpower what you are saying and make sure that you tell a story or two or three.

In the end, you’ll know if you’ve done a good job because the audience won’t want your speech to have ended – they were having a great time listening to you. You’ll know that you’ve had a successful hunt if you get asked to come back and present again!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: What should you do if you sense that you are starting to lose an audience’s attention while you are giving a speech?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So there you are: you’ve agreed to give a speech and now your mind has gone completely blank when you’ve tried to start to figure out what you’ll say. Where did your energy go? Perhaps more importantly, how are you going to get it back and create a great speech?

Related posts:
Ambush: When Experienced Speakers Develop New Public Speaking Fears Even the most accomplished public speakers can develop a sudden...

What American Idol Can Teach Speakers (It’s Not What You Think) Why Should A Speaker Watch A Singing Show? I’m pretty...

What Could Chris Matthews Teach You About Speaking In Public? If you’ve ever wished that there was a formula for...

When Disaster Strikes: 3 Ways To Avoid A Crash While Speaking

Dr. Jim Anderson — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:01:57 +0000

Image Credit
Being Prepared Can Help Prevent A Speaking Accident

Welcome to the real world – things happen. Specially, things happen while you are delivering a speech. Bad things, things that can really screw up your speech. Fire alarms go off, the power fails, a projector bulb quits, your laptop decides to eat itself, etc. What’s a speaker to do?

You Need To Have A Plan

If you want to have any chance of not self-destructing when something goes wrong while you are giving a speech, then you’re going to have to have a plan. Oh, and it’s going to have to be a really good plan.

Can you say homework? In order to prepare for things to happen while you are giving a speech, you’re going to need to spend some time BEFORE the speech running through all of the things that just might happen. Once you’ve identified these things, you’ll start to feel much more relaxed about your actual speech – you should be ready for whatever happens.

Awhile ago I took advantage of an opportunity that was presented to me to become a Certified Business Continuity Professional. This means that I’m now considered to be an expert in how to plan for the worst.

The most important thing that I got out of all of my training was actually the simplest: you need to identify everything that could possibly happen to you, but then you only have to plan for the most probable items on that list. Possible fire drill – plan for it. Meteor striking the earth during your speech – put it on the list but don’t worry about planning for it (too low of a probability).

It’s All About The Escape Hatch

Although you might want to have a hole that you could just go and jump in if something happens to disrupt your presentation, you don’t actually have that option. In show business they have a saying that says “The show must go on” and the same can be said for your presentation. What you do need to have is an escape hatch that leads from the presentation that you were giving to the one that you will be giving after the event happens.

This means that before your speech, you need to have taken the time and thought through all of the possible things that could go wrong. Just thinking about them is not enough, you also need to decide what you would do if they happened. I’d take the time to write down both the possible event as well as the action that you’d take if it happened. Just the action of writing can help to firm things up in your mind.

A case in point: if your projector bulb failed, how would you handle that? One possibility would be to distribute a handout that you had created just for this situation. Another way to handle it would be to bring out the flip chart and to start drawing on it. Doesn’t matter what you do, just have a plan in case something happens.

You Are The Rock, Act That Way

Any speech is actually a performance. When something goes wrong, your performance doesn’t end. How you react to an unplanned event will go a long way in determining how you audience reacts to the event.

What all this means is simply that you need to not react when something goes wrong. Don’t show any surprise, deal with it, and keep on moving forward with your speech.

The hardest part of all of this is remembering that it’s not just the words that you are saying that may betray surprise, but also your body language. This is once again where having thought though through all of the possibilities will help you deal with them as expected occurrences.

Practice, Practice, Practice

In order to bring all of this planning into operation, you need to have practiced what you would do if something happened. I’m not suggesting that you pull a fire alarm or sabotage your projector, my suggestion is much simpler.

After you’ve gotten done with your planning, sit down and mentally picture yourself delivering your speech. Now imagine something going wrong. What do you do? “See” yourself reacting calmly and with a great deal of assurance to whatever the event is.

By mentally running through the event and your reaction to it, you’ll build up a “learned response” . This means that if such an event does happen to you, you’ll instinctively know how to react. Both your words and your body language will be telling your audience that you have the situation well under control.

What All Of This Means For You

Life does sometimes give us lemons. Unfortunately sometimes these lemons arrive right in the middle of one of our presentations. How we deal with life’s unplanned events can determine the success or failure of that speech.

We must always pre-plan for events that are out of our control happening during a speech. This planning will help us to have a back-up plan in place and will allow us to convey a sense of control to our audience.

Yes, this will require more work on your part in order to get ready to give a speech. However, taking the time to plan for the worst to happen can help you deliver a successful speech under the worst of circumstances.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills

Question For You: What do you think the #1 thing that can derail a speech is and how would you plan to deal with it?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

In the world of big game hunting, the goal always seems to be to try to hunt something bigger and more deadly than you did last time. The world of public speaking isn’t all that much different except that we go looking for the biggest game of all: an audience’s attention.

Related posts:
Business Speaking Is Unlike Any Other Speaking Welcome to the world of business: do you know how...

Speechwriting Magic: 3 Ways To Cast A Spell Over Your Audience When you deliver a speech you stand up straight, you...

Ambush: When Experienced Speakers Develop New Public Speaking Fears Even the most accomplished public speakers can develop a sudden...

Not Funny: What’s A Speaker To Do About Unacceptable Humor?

Dr. Jim Anderson — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:01:32 +0000

Image Credit
When Speaking, You Do Really Have To Be Careful About What You Say

Humor, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Well, maybe not – simply because although I do like using humor in a speech; however, it’s a tricky beast and it can turn on you at any moment. Just how is a speaker supposed to determine when some form of humor is inappropriate for the audience that he / she is speaking to?

The Test

Humor is a powerful tool for any speaker. The right words used at the right moment during your speech can cause your audience to laugh, loosen up, and start to really get into what you are talking about. However, humor has a dark side.

Once those words have left your mouth, there is no getting them back. What this means is that you’ve got to figure out if you really want to say them before you utter them.

What’s needed here is some sort of litmus test that would allow you to make that yes/no decision BEFORE you firmly stick your foot into your mouth. Professional speaker John Kinde believes that the best way to test something before you say it is to ask yourself if you’d be comfortable saying it in front of a corporate audience if you had been paid to come and talk to them? Now that’s food for thought…

Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

Look, if you want to minimize your chances of getting into trouble by saying something that you will end up regretting later on, there are some topics that should never find their way into your speeches. You probably already know some of these: religion, skin color, and politics.

What you might forget is that there are a whole bunch of other topics that you should plan on staying away from. These include anything about the human body (functions, sizes, etc.), people’s sexual orientation, and, of course, curse words.

The list is actually much longer and you’re going to have to use your common sense to figure out what should be on it. Things change and you need to make sure that you don’t find yourself giving a speech in the middle of a minefield.

The Problem With Your Audience

Is it possible to so carefully construct your next speech that you will avoid offending anyone who happens to be sitting in your audience? Nope. Someone is always going to take offense at something that you say.

What this means is that instead of trying to avoid offending everyone, you should instead try to offend as few people as possible. How many is too many?

Estimates vary, but most professional speakers agree that ticking off less than 10% of you audience is what you should be shooting for.

What All Of This Means For You

As a speaker you have a responsibility to reach out and connect with your audience – to make an impact in their lives. Using humor is a great way to make this happen.

However, humor has a dark side and if used inappropriately you won’t be connecting with your audience, instead you’ll be offending them. Picking what you include (and don’t) in your speech is a key way to play it safe.

Give all of this, sometimes you’ll screw up. You’ll end up offending too many people based on what you included in your speech. When this happens, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and be more careful next time.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: What do you think the best way to determine if a piece of humor is over the line for a given audience?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Related posts:
Speaker Alert: Make Me Laugh — Or Else Stop. How funny was the last speech that you gave?...

Speaker: You Are What You Wear! The purpose of giving any speech is to be able...

You Are A Superhero Speaker: You’ve Got Word Power! The Thing About Words As speakers we have a tendency...

Speechwriting Magic: 3 Ways To Cast A Spell Over Your Audience

Dr. Jim Anderson — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:01:30 +0000

Image Credit
It Turns Out That Your Speeches Can Be Magical

When you deliver a speech you stand up straight, you speak clearly, and you have fantastic eye contact. What more could anyone ask for? How about a speech that is both memorable and magical…

Do Your Homework

If you want to create a speech that will do the two most difficult things that any speaker can attempt, inspire and motivate your audience, then you’re going to need to write a killer speech. That speech is only going to be as good as what you are able to put into it. This means that you’ve got some homework to do.
If you wait until when you are sitting down to create your next speech to start to collect the information that you are going to need to make a great speech, then it may already be too late. The really good speechwriters are always collecting information. They read everything that they can get their hands on and those items that catch their attention get filed away somewhere they can find it when they eventually need it.
Your ultimate goal needs to have more information that you’ve collected for your speech than you could possibly use. This will allow you to sort through it all and pick out only the best bits to use.

Magic Speeches Start One Word At A Time

What’s interesting about speech writing is that all too often we are our own worst enemies. We all know what a great speech sounds like and as we are creating a speech we quickly realize that our first draft basically sounds pretty lousy. If you aren’t careful, you can get caught in an almost endless loop of editing in which you try to get a sentence perfect before you write the next one.
Don’t do this. Instead just let the words flow out of you as you create your first pass of the speech. One way to make sure that your speech is able to grab your audience’s attention and holds it is to identify 6 or so main points that will grab attention and which have a good story associated with them.
As you practice your speech, what you are going to be listening for is the “rhythm” that your speech has: it has a lot to do with the pace of the speech and how it all links together.

It’s All About The Ears

I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent in the past working on getting my Power Point slides just perfect. It turns out that what I should have been doing. Your audience really isn’t going to remember what your slides looked like after your speech is over. Instead, it’s your words that will stay with them if you choose them correctly.
If you take the time to make sure that your words are used to draw a sequence of mental pictures in your audiences heads then you will have found a way to leave a lasting impression. An important note here is that we write differently than we speak – we use more slang and contractions when we are speaking. If you write your speech out and then read it as you wrote it, it’s not going to come across as a natural way of speaking.

What All Of This Means For You

Finding a way to cast a magical spell over your audience is what every speaker wants to find a way to do. Creating a great speech is one way to make this happen.
The way to make happen is to get into your audience’s head while you are writing your next speech. Once you do this you’ll understand that your audience doesn’t really want to find out just how smart you are (what can they do with that?), but rather what they really want is to know what they can do with the information that you share with them during your speech…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: What’s your secret to writing a great speech?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Humor, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Well, maybe not – simply because although I do like using humor in a speech; however, it’s a tricky beast and it can turn on you at any moment. Just how is a speaker supposed to determine when some form of humor is inappropriate for the audience that he / she is speaking to?

Related posts:
Know Your Audience: What You Don’t Know May Hurt You When you think of the perfect speech in your mind,...

Size Matters – Shaping Your Speech To Match Your Audience Have you ever heard the expression “one size fits all“?...

Happy Independence Day — Take The Week Off!

Dr. Jim Anderson — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 04:01:17 +0000

Image Credit
Take A Week To Celebrate Your Independence

Loyal readers & subscribers, here’s hoping that this upcoming week is a great week for you — I’m taking it off! Blogging will resume next week…

For my readers in the U.S., you know that this week is all about family, fireworks and general celebrating. The cause for all of this celebration is the signing of the U.S. deceleration of Independence. Now if only the work that we do could have the same type of impact 234 years later on!

For my international readers, pretty much all of the United States will be taking time off this week to celebrate the decision of our founding fathers to make their own decisions. For better or for worse, it’s what has gotten us to where we are today and we think that that’s a good thing.

Have a happy and safe week no matter where you are and we’ll talk next week.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

Related posts:
Happy Thanksgiving — Take The Week Off! Loyal readers & subscribers, here’s hoping that this upcoming week...

Merry Christmas – Take The Week Off! Loyal readers & subscribers, here’s hoping that this upcoming Christmas...

Happy New Year! (I’m Still On Vacation…) It’s still the holiday season and I’m still on vacation!...

4 Things That You Should Never Talk About

Dr. Jim Anderson — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 04:01:57 +0000

Image Credit
There Are Some Lines That Speakers Just Shouldn't Cross

The next time that you are given an opportunity to create and deliver a speech, do me a favor and stop, put your pencil done before you start to write. I can just imagine what’s running through your mind: the magic words that will come spilling out of your mouth and will entertain and entrance your audience. Umm, unless of course they don’t. If you talk about the wrong things, then your speech will go nowhere quickly. Maybe we should have a chat about what you shouldn’t be talking about…

The Big Three

In every speaker’s life, hopefully there is someone who takes them aside early on and tells them the three topics that are absolutely off limits: race, religion, and sexuality. Yeah, yeah – if you are talking on one of these topics, then it’s ok, but if you’re not, then you need to stay far, far away.

The reason for this is because each of these topics are polarizing flash points that will instantly divide your audience. Some will agree with what you say, some won’t and you will have lost your audience.

Too Much Personal Info

As long as we are talking about things that you shouldn’t be talking about, let’s make sure that you know that sharing is good, but too much sharing is bad. I’m not even talking about the embarrassing personal stuff, instead I’m talking about the boring details of each of our lives.

I’m sure that we all have hobbies and personality quirks that we may find interesting or endearing. However, they aren’t. This is why you always want to test your speeches with friends who will be honest with you. If that personal story just isn’t doing it, then it needs to go away before you hurt an audience with it.

Personal Success Stories

So you saved a busload of schoolchildren from a pack of rampaging wild elephants. Yawn. Look, if you’ve done something impressive, that’s pretty cool. However, do you really think that you can tell me about it without coming across as someone who is bragging?

It takes a very careful skill for a speaker to share a story of personal success with an audience in the right way. You have to have a reason for telling the story. That reason has to have something to do with your audience. You had better be telling them how they can have the same type of success that you had or the story will just end up making your audience feel inadequate.

Book Reports

Any time that we have a speech to give that includes describing a sequence of events, such as a trip that we took, how something is manufactured, etc., we run the risk of delivering a book report that nobody wants to hear. You would be amazed at how many times I’ve had to sit though speeches that started out with “I’d now like to tell you about the 17 steps that we had to go through to solve this problem.”

Even if something took 17 steps to do, you don’t have to cover them all in your speech. Take some mercy on your audience and trim it down to two or three steps and tell them to talk to you to get more details if they want them. You must always think about how your speech is going to sound to your audience before you deliver it.

Bad Objects

I like a visual aid just as much as the next speaker, but sometimes they can work against you. Depending on the size of your room, a visual aid can be either too big and overshadow you or too small and not visible to your audience.

Keep in mind that you are the star of your speech – nothing else is. This means that if you choose to use something else that will allow your audience to take their eyes off of you, then it had better be the right object for the right audience.

What All Of This Means For You

As speakers we like to focus on what we can include in our next speech. However, it might be just as important to spend some time worrying about what we should not be putting into that speech.

The obvious topics that shouldn’t be included include race, religion, and sexuality. However, boring personal habits, overblown success stories, book reports, and poorly selected visual aids can also bring your next speech down.

The key to avoiding including things that will take away from your message is to put yourself in the place of your audience. If you can create a speech that has only good content and no bad content, then you will have created a speech that everyone is going to want to hear.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills

Question For You: Did I leave anything off of my list? What other topics should a speaker never include in their speech?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

Related posts:
How Boys Can Talk To Girls (And Visa Versa) Man, as though giving a speech wasn’t hard enough already,...

What Could Chris Matthews Teach You About Speaking In Public? If you’ve ever wished that there was a formula for...

The Best Speeches Have A Lot Of You In Them Congratulations – you’ve been asked to give a speech. Got...