Fairleigh Early Birds Toastmasters Club

John Maxwell, the renowned American communications expert, believes that there are 4 things that an audience will never forgive a speaker for:

1.If the speaker is unprepared.

2.If the speaker is uncomfortable (not confident and fidgety).

3.If the speaker is not committed (not speaking with conviction).

4.If the speaker is uninteresting.

The following are some of the ways a speech can be made more interesting and also ways that will give you a greater chance of retaining the audience’s concentration.  These are some speech attributes that have an impact on the audience:

In time, the audience will remember how they felt and not what they heard.  So be nice to them.  Treat them as you would like to be treated.

• Have structure to your speech ie opening, body, conclusion.

  - The opening has to include the whole point to the speech.  If you get into a car you want to know where it’s going.  Just like that, an audience wants to know where the speech is going.

  - The Opening should have an attention grabber to get the audience’s attention immediately.

  - Eg “You are in for the ride of your life” attributed to Malcolm Blight the ex coach of the StKilda Football club.  He could have said, “Supporters can look forward to some reasonable years ahead”.
   

• Make the audience feel important eg engaging eye contact, mention audience member’s names, introduce yourself before the presentation to get to know them.

  - A non-threatening method to meet the audience is to hand out business card / program / brochure prior to a presentation.
   

• The purpose of the speech is absolutely clear:

  -Make sure that the audience member walks away in no doubt what the point of the speech was.  To assist towards this end, use joining phrases to start each main point.  For example if the speech is to inform the audience that you are going to Rome for your next holiday, start each main point with:  “I am going to Rome because…”.
   

• Extraordinary Happenings

  An audience will be more interested in your dinner last night with the Martians than what you had on your toast for breakfast.
   

• Confidence

  - A confident speaker inspires an audience.  Keep speaking to enhance confidence.
   

• Real life experience

  - This arouses audience interest, even more so if it is your real life experience you are sharing.
   

• Clarity of image

  - Use examples, anecdotes, hand gestures, body gestures etc to help the audience have a vivid picture of your idea.
   

• Relevance to audience

  - Ballet training may not be an appropriate subject to an audience of Hell’s Angels bikies.
   

• Story / speech with suspense, twists, surprises

  - Obviously if the speech is a story where the ending cannot be told at the  start, then don’t do so.  However in the opening, set the scene for the audience.
   

• Human weakness

  - Eg an audience is impressed with hearing stories of human weakness.  We can all relate to them.  Eg the time you arrived back at work intoxicated to find a message on your desk that your boss wanted to see you immediately.
   

• Enthusiasm / Passion

  An audience is impressed with a speaker who likes what he’s talking about and is happy to show it.  An audience will be let down if you don’t give it everything you’ve got.
   

• Animation

  - An audience will be persuaded more with body language than words.
   

• Vocal Variety eg, volume, speed, tone, pause, a pleasant voice

  - The audience will lose interest quickly if the speaker doesn’t sound interesting.
  - Humm one song a day to make the voice more pleasant and stronger.
   

• Make Vivid descriptions

  - You can say “it was a nice day” but you are more likely to maintain and arouse audience attention if the description was “it was a day out of the box, the sunshine was continuous and the birds couldn’t stop singing” or you can use “glorious”, “breathtaking” or “fabulous” rather than “nice”.

  - It’s not a matter of exaggerating but a matter of describing with more vividness, more colour.  Paint a picture for the audience so they know better what you are talking about.  The croissant was delectable (it was also nice)

Source: www.youthsspeak.com.au