Lately, I’ve been noticing principles that great speakers use to guide them. I’ve talked about this before. I like when speakers start by answering a question for the audience: “Why is this important to me?” I also notice when speakers find their passion for the subject, and use it to bring the ideas to life.
Here is another way to boost your persuasiveness.
Talk conversationally. Conversations unfold in a series of moves, or triggered associations. Someone tells a story about their dog, and that prompts a response from another person about their own pet. Or a confession of sorrow gets a response of comfort. Conversations travel on a give and take, back and forth, two-way street.
Yet most of us don’t present conversationally. Instead, we make lists. “I will cover these four topics,” we say. Or, we show an agenda of topics, and then move through them sequentially. And often the topics don’t flow intuitively from one to another.
It’s now very popular to talk about story. Story is the new, or newish, buzzword. And stories are similar to conversations because actions taken by the characters in a story move it along by triggering consequences. There is an intuitive, cause and effect association between one scene and the next (there’s a wonderful, short text that explains this called Backwards & Forwards).
So if you need to present a list-like talk, one in which each topic is not linked to the one before or after, you need to be more careful about how you move from one to another.
In other words, you need to be aware of where you could lose your listeners. Does a particular thought cry out for an illustration, a concrete example? Do you need to anticipate an objection? Do you need to state exactly where you’re going? Are your transitions from slide to slide clear? You may have two or three anecdotes that you’d love to tell, but if you want to hold audience attention, or finish the talk in a defined length of time, you’ve got to be willing to cut.
Make connections between main ideas. Showcase them as stepping stones of logic or association, thoughtfully leading your listeners from one idea to the next.
[h4]Next…Find a sense of truth[/h4]
Pingback: Hide the Art (especially Toastmasters) | Moving People to Action