It is absolutely critical to your speaking success
that you captivate your audience’s attention.
In order to successfully captivate and sustain the attention of your
audience, you must maintain an ongoing awareness of your audience during your
presentation. However, you ought to have
been considering your audience long before you take the floor. In fact, it is important for you to spend
some time thinking about your audience prior to preparing your material. As it is true that a comedian should not tell
the same jokes to a class of elementary students as she would to a group of
night club patrons, it is just as true that your material and delivery should
be as tailored as possible to your particular audience. Here are the three key steps to zeroing in on
your audience’s particular characteristics in a manner that will help you to
deliver a speech with impact that keeps everyone’s eyes and ears on you the
whole time.
Step
1: The Background Research
Know
Your Audience
Although it may not always be possible to
know who will be in your audience, it is most probable that you will have a
general idea of the number of people attending, their general backgrounds,
their goals and interests for attending and perhaps even some general
demographic information. Take some time
to think about who will be in your audience and why they will be listening to
you. Will the audience be looking for
entertainment, education or inspiration?
Do the audience members share a similar professional background?
Know
Your Context
You should also be sure not to dismiss the importance
of gathering information on the context of your presentation. Will you be appearing at a professional
conference or a casual gathering? As you prepare, always keep in mind the
appropriate tone for your context and audience.
Will your presentation be one of
many, or the only one? If you are
presenting at an event with many speakers, what time of the day will you be
presenting? If you are at the end of the
day, or just before a meal break, you may need to pay greater attention to
ensuring that your presentation starts out lively and maintains a very high
level of energy. How many people will be
in attendance? Will you need to use a
microphone or multimedia? Will you have
time to have a question and answer component and if so, how will you structure
it given the number of audience members?
Take the time during your preparation to
imagine how to ensure that your presentation will be relevant, informative,
entertaining and appropriate for your audience.
Good speakers never deliver the same presentation with the same style of
delivery in different situations
Step
2: Preparing your Material and AV for
Your Audience
Have you decided that you will be using a
microphone or multimedia? If these
details are your responsibility, you must communicate your needs to the event
co-ordinator. Ask about the size and
set-up of the room, and be detailed about the type of equipment that you
require. Make sure to follow up on the
confirmation a few days prior to your presentation. When you arrive at the venue, try to have
time to test the equipment with your materials to ensure that everything runs
smoothly, the visual aids appear properly on the screen and that the sound
volume is appropriate for the room and audience number. If possible, travel with your own back-up
equipment in case the venue’s equipment fail to work or synchronise with your
equipment.
If you will be circulating documents, make
sure that you have thought about a system for this or will be using
assistants. Don’t let paper shuffling detract from your
performance or interrupt the flow of your delivery.
Decide if you will be presenting from a
podium or if you’ll be moving around. If
you are doing a very short presentation, if your context requires it, or if you
like to have written materials in front of you to present from (more on that in
a later post!), you may want to use a podium. If you
don’t want to be stuck standing stationary behind a podium, and you’re
presenting in a large room or to a large audience, ask for a lavalier
microphone so you can move around. You
can still have your notes set on a podium or table, but this way you can stray
from one spot during your presentation. Just
don’t forget to take it off before you take a break or go to the restroom - there are already too many audio clips of that scenario!
Step
3: Observing the Audience
The importance of knowing your audience
doesn’t stop once your presentation begins. I guarantee that if you don’t pay
attention to your audience, they won’t pay attention to you. As you
speak, you should be monitoring your audience very closely to note their
interest level and their reaction to your material. Watch to see the signs that your audience is drifting
away such as, looking around the room, watching out the windows, talking to
each other, moving around or generally not focusing their attention on
you. Do not ever make the mistake of
focusing only on one or two people in the audience, unless you have an audience
of only one or two. You can gauge
whether you need to pace faster or slower, leave a topic, spend more time on a
topic, inject some humour, or even take a break depending on the energy level
and attention of the audience. Be
dynamic and responsive to your audience and they will respond back by listening
to you. Just like any good relationship,
public speaking is a connection between you and the other party. To captivate your audience, you must be aware
of and responsive to, their needs and interests.
Remember, you can strengthen your professional or public speaking presentation
by ensuring that you’ve paid attention to your audience before you prepare your
materials as well as remaining receptive and responsive to the audience during
your delivery. Captivating, engaging
public speaking is dynamic, so stay alert and responsive. Your audience will thank you for it!
Feel free to send me your comments or questions, which I will feature in future posts.
