Connect With Your Audience: Don’t Hide Your Emotions When Speaking

Andrew Dlugan — Fri, 23 May 2008 05:13:05 +0000

When you mask your emotions, you sever all connection with the audience. They might as well be reading your speech from a boring magazine.

Conversely, your connection to the audience is strongest when you effectively transfer your emotion to them.

Are you sharing your emotions? Or are you speaking as if a paper bag hung between you and your audience?

If You Are Feeling It, Then Show It

It’s really a very simple concept — if you are feeling it, then show it.

If you are passionate about your topic, show your passion.
If you are mourning, show your sorrow.
If you are excited, show the audience your excitement.
If you are confident, show your confidence.
If you are feeling ___, show ___.

Too often, speakers attempt to be “proper” or “dignified” when the occasion does not call for it. By masking their true emotions, they sacrifice authenticity and lose the audience.

Believability = Showing Appropriate Emotion

In the simple relationship shown below, Jessica Hagy reminds us that our believability is determined by the appropriateness of the emotion we are demonstrating.

The sincerity of a eulogy becomes believable when the speaker exhibits signs of sorrow such as an unsteady voice, a tearful eye, or a body full of grief.

Likewise, a politician’s credibility hinges on whether she is able to convey her conviction, confidence, and resolve to the audience through her speaking. If the words say “I believe in this budget“, but the emotion says “I’m bored standing up here“, which do you think the audience believes? Emotion trumps words. If the emotions displayed do not match the message, the audience will not trust the message.

Use Nervous Energy to Fuel Emotions

Professional speech writer Pete Ryckman recently encouraged us not to suppress our nervous energy. Instead, channel it into your emotions when speaking:

Successful speakers communicate profound belief in their own messages. They do it with emotion. Don’t pull back from your emotions. Move toward them. Use performance energy to win over your audiences.

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Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Electrify Your Audience with a Shocking Speech Opening

Andrew Dlugan — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:25:48 +0000

A strong speech opening is critical to grab the attention of your audience.

Suppose you were delivering a speech to raise awareness in your community about school security. How would you open your speech?

“I’m going to talk to you today about security in our schools…“
“School security is an important issue that we must deal with…“

Both openings are direct, to-the-point, and boring! What if there was a better way?

A Better Speech Opening

Great speakers know how to open a speech in a way that hooks the audience into the presentation immediately. (Opening strong is one of the 25 essential skills for public speakers.) There are many ways to do this, including the use of drama and misdirection.

Imagine opening your speech with the following lines:

Tobacco. [long pause]
Alcohol. [long pause]
Guns. [long pause]
Criminal items seized in a search [slight pause] of a 6th grade locker in a bad school district.

Why does this speech opening work?

Beginning the speech in this way generates interest for several reasons:

Employs a classical technique: the Rule of Three.
“Seized in a search of a sixth…” uses alliteration.
Pauses after the three opening words add drama.
Drama also created because the danger increases with each item (i.e. guns are more dangerous than alcohol and tobacco)
Mid-sentence pause after “search” signals an important statement coming up.
Audience thinks these items were seized from some criminal hideout, and then surprised to learn they were found in a school locker.
All this in just 19 words.

If these items really were seized from a nearby school district, then you’ve got a “ripped from the headlines” opening. Otherwise, you might transition into the rest of your speech with “We must act decisively to prevent this from becoming reality in our schools.”

Try adding drama and surprise to grab the audience early in your next speech! Begin strong and keep going…

This article is inspired by index card wisdom from Jessica Hagy.

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