Image Credit: Dobi
Often when we are giving a speech we are trying to convince our audience to take some action after they hear us speak. This is what the importance of public speaking is all about. We can do a great job of creating our speech, we can craft a powerful opening, and yet we may end up not achieving our goal. What went wrong? We’ll never get what we want if we don’t get our audience to trust us. The good news is that with a few simple changes to your next speech, you can make this happen.
Become Someone That They Can Trust
Before you can hope that your audience will trust you and take action based on what you tell them during your speech, you first need to find ways to get them to trust you. Remember that if you don’t gain their trust, then you’ll come across as being like a used car salesman – you might have a slick delivery, but you’ll be seen as being a pitch artist.
In order to gain your audience’s trust, you are going to have to find ways to really engage with your audience. This means that your speech can’t just consist of you reading a prepared speech to your audience. Instead, you need to take the time to ask your audience the right questions at the right time during your speech. You need to listen to what they’ve been saying and use their input as a part of your speech.
Use Your Speech To Persuade Your Audience, Don’t Push Them
One of the most important things for you to realize is that you don’t want to be seen as pushing your audience in one direction or another. Instead, what you are going to want to do is to grab their attention and then lead them to the conclusion that you are going to want them to reach.
The path that you lead them down has to be created by them. What you are going to have to do is to create a back-and-forth process by which during your speech your audience will be able to learn what your main points are and identify any challenges.
Have A Strong Opening
You’ll never be able to convince your audience to follow you if you can’t grab and hold their attention. This means that you are going to have to have a powerful opening. Your opening must be relevant to the ideas that you’ll be presenting – if they are not then you won’t be able to use your opening to win the trust of your audience.
One of the most effective ways to get your opening to help you build trust with your audience is to use it to enter into a form of dialog with your audience. During your opening you can spend time asking questions that you know that your audience will have. As a part of your opening you can then provide answers to these questions. Taken together, these questions and answers will allow you to navigate the conversation that you’ll be having with your audience.
Make Sure That You Have A Plan To Build Trust
Winning the trust of your audience is all about having a plan to make it happen. This means that you need to have a very clear idea what the objective of your speech is going to be. Once you know this, you’ll have to identify ways that you’ll be able to make your audience care about your ideas.
Having captured their attention, you’ll then have to create ways for you to work with your audience during your speech to build a solution to their problems that will lead them in the direction that you want them to go. Assuming that your speech goes as you want it to go, you’ll need to be very clear about what actions you are going to want your audience to take once your speech is done.
What All Of This Means For You
In order to get your next audience to realize the benefits of public speaking and take action based on your speech, you are going to have to find ways to get them to trust you. What this means is that as you deliver your speech, you are going to have to do it in a trustworthy way that will allow you to connect with your audience and not come across as being too slick or smooth.
As you deliver your speech, you’ll need to keep in mind that you want to be persuading your audience, not pushing them in a given direction. You’ll get things off to a good start with a powerful opening that captures your audience’s attention and allows you to lead them down the path that you want them to travel. Finally, your speech needs to have a plan associated with it. Your plan will need to make sure that you know your objectives and you know what you want your audience to do after you are done with your speech.
Trust is the magic ingredient that will motivate your next audience to take action based on what you’ve shared with them. In order to build trust during your speech you need to plan for it and you need to take specific steps to make trust happen. Follow the steps that we’ve listed and your next speech will become must more effective because your audience will trust what you are telling them!
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™
Question For You: What’s the best way to measure the level of trust an audience has with you?
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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!
What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
So why do you bother to give speeches? If you are like the rest of us, you understand the importance of public speaking and feel that you know something that will be of value to your audience and you are willing to share it. Deep down inside, a small part of you hopes that by going to all of the effort of giving this speech you’ll be able to change the world even if it is only in some small way. Well I’ve got some news for you. This isn’t going to happen if your audience doesn’t believe you. Do you know how to make that happen?