Image Credit: Mattias Karlsson
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?
How To Get Your Audience To Believe You
In order to get your next audience to believe what you are telling them, you are going to have to come across to them as being trustworthy. In order to make this happen there are several things that you are going to have to do while you deliver your speech in order to make your audience believe you:
- Know Your Objective: There is no way that you’re going to be able to get an audience to believe what you are telling them if you don’t know why you are telling it to them. You have to pick a single objective for your speech and make it be crystal clear in your head so that your audience can believe that you know why you are talking with them.
- K.I.S.S: Keep It Simple, Stupid – your audience is only going to be able to believe you if they can understand what you are telling them. What this means for you is that if you make your speech too long or if you try to pack too much information into it, then they are not going to be able to absorb what you are trying to tell them. Instead, keep it short and limit your information content.
- Listen To Your Audience: Even as you deliver your speech, your audience is going to be talking to you. Are you going to be listening to them? What you need to be looking for is signs, both verbal and visual, that your audience is agreeing with what you are telling them. If they are, then they are believing what you are telling them.
- Always Follow Up: During almost all of our presentations, we make promises to our audiences. A key part of getting our audience to believe us has to do with following up on our promises. If we do what we said that we were going to do, then all of a sudden we become that much more believable.
What All Of This Means For You
It’s not easy giving a speech. As long as we’re going to go to the effort to create, practice, and then deliver a speech we sure would like to think that we’re going to make an impact on our audience by sharing the benefits of public speaking. In order for this to happen, we’re going to have to make sure that they believe us. Making that happen is the difficult part.
If you are going to be believed, then you are going to have to know what the objective of the speech that you’re giving is. Your audience can only handle so much new information and so you need to be careful to not overload them. As you give your speech, it’s going to be up to you to get affirmations from your audience so that you know that they are believing what you are telling them. As you give your speech, take the time to listen to what your audience is trying to tell you because this will make you more believable. If you make promises to your audience during your speech, make sure that you follow up on them.
The good news is that you can make your audience believe what you are telling them. This does not happen automatically, instead you are going to have to work at it. However, the benefits of having an audience believe what you tell them can be very, very powerful.
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™
Question For You: What’s the best way to determine if your audience is believing what you are telling them?
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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 just exactly what happens to your heart when you get asked to give a speech? Does it drop down into your shoes? It might not be the actual process of delivering the speech that gets you or your understanding of the importance of public speaking, but rather the idea that you are going to actually have to prepare a speech to give that can take your breath away. This can be a big task. The secret to making it a doable task is to understand just exactly what you are going to have to do to get from here to there.