Speaker tip: If you find yourself in a BAD situation with your audience, try this… 01/28/2010 No Comments
Yesterday I enjoyed a lively conversation with a colleague on presentations that go bad quickly due to a lack of speaker training. By “bad,” I’m referring to a devolution into frustration and confusion for both the audience and the speaker. This can happen when you’re dealing with an audience with a shorter than average attention span. With all of the electronic distractions available these days, that seems to increasingly be the case. Others reasons may by that the presentation is mandatory for busy employees, or the reality of it’s content isn’t what was marketed to the public.
When the audience starts to get tired and disgruntled, you, the speaker, are in trouble. Many times when speakers find themselves in this situation, some form of disruption or “heckling” begins, and the speaker makes the fatal mistake of reacting defensively. Responding to uncooperative audience members with sarcastic or otherwise negative remarks that anger or humiliate them is a bad idea. Remember, the goal is always to maintain or repair a damaged rapport with your audience.
Prevention is the best solution, but if it’s too late for that, I recommend two strategies to speakers who have found themselves “down the rabbit hole” in this unpleasant place with their audience.
1) If you’re anywhere near the end of your presentation, get to your close fast. Pass out the assessment sheets and ask for additional comments on the sheet. Remind them that constructive feedback consists of clear and specific suggestions backed up with reasons why the suggestions are made.
2) Call a break as soon as possible, and leave the area during the break. Do not stay in the room or make any attempt to interact with the audience. This will give those who don’t want to be there any longer a chance to leave discreetly. When the break is over, acknowledge their frustration and confusion and announce a q&a session for a limited amount of time to clarify expectations or miscommunications. Once you’ve done that, press on with whatever portions of your presentation remain relevant to your audience.
Stay tuned for more on prevention….
Using the Twitter Backchannel in Your Public Speaking 01/15/2010 No Comments
Whether you like it or not, it appears that the backchannel is here, and its use is only going to continue to grow over time. (The backchannel – the conversation taking place online while speakers are talking live, often via Twitter.) Wouldn’t it be wonderful for people to be tweeting great comments about your presentation both during and after you’ve delivered it? But then, what if the opposite occurs? What if the tweets aren’t so great, and someone starts making awful comments about your presentation online? What then? How do you control this? Is it possible?
Some speakers are even allowing the backchannel to be a part of their live presentations. Olivia Mitchell of Speaking About Presenting, a public speaking coach and consultant based in New Zealand, recently published a free ebook titled, “How to Present with Twitter (and other backchannels).” It’s an highly informative ebook that also serves to promote a larger publication by Cliff Atkinson, titled The Backchannel Book: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever.
With the opening up of the backchannel, finally, all of those folks trained via the National Speakers Association or Toastmasters are going to experience and have to learn to deal with the “classroom management” issues that school teachers have been addressing daily from the start of the profession itself. (Evil laugh!) Parts of this ebook really took me back fifteen years to my early experiences teaching high school.
Basically, there’s one primary problem with opening up a backchannel during a presentation, referred to in my recent blog post, “Constructive Criticism vs. A Communal ‘Lemon Squeeze.’” That is, when one or a few individuals are allowed make public negative comments, the collective negativity can grow and get out of control to the point where comments are not at all constructive for the speaker or remainder of the audience. They devolve, becoming simply mean, harsh, and useless. Unfortunately, as Ms. Mitchell illustrates, in some cases, the speaker loses their cool and the presentation is disastrous.
This can be prevented, and Ms. Mitchell gives several useful strategies for doing so in her ebook, which I recommend that anyone who might end up speaking with a backchannel read carefully. The only comment I would add is that instructing your audience in advance to give qualitative and specific feedback, whether positive or negative, will go a long way toward circumventing that problem. Comments like “that’s great!” or “that stinks!” really don’t say much when they don’t give a hint as to why. If you state your expectation that your audience be thoughtful and intelligent with their feedback, they usually will be.
But there are a lot more positives to using an open backchannel during a presentation. Here are several:
1) The speaker is forced to ensure that their presentation is relevant to their audience, or face the backchannel’s wrath! No lazy, ill-prepared presentations will be tolerated.
2) The backchannel allows the speaker an easy way to check in with their audience during the presentation to make sure the audience is still with them. For example, if there is a misunderstanding, the speaker will have the opportunity to clarify before the connection with the audience is lost.
3) The audience is can be more open with their speaker, which creates greater opportunities for clearer communication between the two.
With the right structure and preparation in place, any new technology can serve to open the lines of communication and understanding for everyone involved. I haven’t read Cliff Atkinson’s book yet, but Olivia Mitchell offers plenty of strategies for setting up that structure in her ebook. Please go to www.speakingaboutpresenting.com/blog to download your copy.
Public Speaking Tip on Collecting Stories 01/12/2010 No Comments
Stories and anecdotes are one of the keys to engaging with and staying connected to your audience throughout your presentation. So how do you keep your stories fresh and not tell the same ones over and over again? Answer: collect a file of interesting stories and anecdotes you’ve heard over the years. Some of them may be your experiences, some others’– that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the stories are interesting and amusing, illustrate your points, and don’t run on too long. If find yourself bored with the stories in your presentation, it’s a fair assumption that you’re not delivering them with a lot of enthusiasm. So keep them fresh for you and your audience by having a wide variety to pick and choose from in your story file!
