Maybe one of the most common occurrences that happens in a public speaking situation is to see someone in the audience go to sleep on you. When you are the one going to sleep, you just hope the speaker doesnt notice. But when you are the speaker, you know that you do notice and you wonder what you are doing wrong. You worked hard on your speech and you thought it was pretty interesting stuff. So why do they doze off?
Well you are in good company if you see that happen. For some reason this phenomenon happens routinely in churches all over the country every Sunday morning. And that preacher is a skilled public speaker who you would think could keep that crowd riveted. But in many public situations, even when the speaker has decades of experience, he may still not know how to keep that audience awake. That is because there is a public speaking technique that if you learn it early, you will be come of the rare public speakers that routinely is considered to be "great" no matter what the quality of your material.
That technique is quite simply how you use your voice. The voice is a marvelous tool. It has the power to express emotions, complex ideas, humor or outrage. And yet for some reason, many public speakers when they stand up to do a formal presentation loose 90% of the expression in their voices. All of a sudden we all start to sound like a boring math teacher droning on in a monotone even if the subject we are talking about is very interesting, human or emotional. You could talk about the day you fell in love or how to skydive but if you say it in a monotone, you are going to put people to sleep.
You have a lot of vocal tone available to you that you naturally use when you speak person to person and you are relaxed. What causes speakers to switch to a monotone or a reduced amount of vocal tones when speaking formally starts with nervousness. You are so focused on speaking clearly so you are understood that you end up sounding like you are reading the phone book. This is especially true if you have your entire speech written out and you are reading it. The strange thing is you would never read like that to children. It's strange we fall back to that style of speaking when talking to a group of adults.
Two great exercises can be used to help you get control over your vocal range as you speak. It really isn't something you want to think a lot about when you are in front of people because then you will become self conscious. But listen to other speakers and think about how they can improve their range of vocal tones. That will help you process your own range of expression. But also practice your presentation focusing on the ideas themselves but also on how you say them. Dont be afraid to express emotions while speaking. If the subject is exciting, be excited. If it's troubling, be troubled. Be a human in front your audience will respond.
In addition, you can add a lot of variety to your presentation varying the volume with which you speak and the speed. You dont want to shout but when you speak softly at times and with more force at others, that sudden change of tone and volume can capture the ear of the audience and hold their attention. In a way your focal presentation takes on elements of music as you use your voice as an instrument to make sure not only that the information is given to the audience but that they stay awake long enough to hear it.
In the delightful Broadway musical "Singing in the Rain", there is a song called "Make em Laugh" which is based on this idea that the best way for any stage performer to build a bond with an audience is to use humor to bring a smile, or a laugh, to that audience. Well, that idea is not just valid for stage performers. It's just as true when you begin to develop your style as a public speaker.
If you pick up any self help guide to how to be effective as a public speaker, one of the golden rules is to open with a joke. But guess what? That is not actually a hard and fast rule. Humor is the type of thing that works just as well about a minute into your presentation, halfway through or just about anywhere that you feel you are losing your audience.
Audience psychology is a funny thing but not in the "laughter" sense. The truth is that when you first begin to speak to an audience, they are probably listening to you. Most people are at least curious about you and what you have to say and will take interest in you if for no other reason than you are a new person up there in front of them. While there is certainly not a bad idea to open with humor, the time your audience needs a joke is when you have launched into your discussion and you look out to nodding heads or drifting eyes and you know that you are talking but nobody is listening. That is when humor brings the audience back to you and hooks them back into your presentation.
The biggest problem with a lot of public speaking situations is that you may be presenting ideas to the crowd. While an idea is a good thing, people have trouble staying focused on pure concepts for very long. That is why most good public speakers use illustrations, stories and humor to keep the audience focused on what you are talking about. And that is where a generous use of humor will help your public speaking style as well.
Humor has a certain effect on the human psychology that causes the listener to bond with the speaker in a unique way. To put that more simply, using humor in your presentation makes people like you. And when they like you, they want to hear what you have to say. There is just no getting around the fact that people will listen to, accept, understand and make their own ideas presented with humor far more readily than if your talk is dry presentation of material, even if it is important material.
But what if you don't know how to use humor? Of course you can always just tell a joke. But canned jokes are just that, attempts to use someone else's humor. They do work, (if its a good joke) but if the humor is not relevant to what you are talking about or to you as a speaker, it often is not as effective as it should be. The best humor is actually self-deprecating remarks as you speak. These are easy to come up with by simply using yourself as the subject of an illustration. For example, if this topic was part of your speech, you might say
"You know it's easy to get tongue tied and bumble around up here trying to use humor. But you folks won't make a mess of it like I am doing."
That isn't even a very good joke. But because it is highly relevant, it is self deprecating and its a light moment in the presentation, it will probably get a chuckle. A chuckle is really all you are looking for. You are not trying to become a stand up comic up there. Humor that is too wild and designed to bring hearty laughter actually is distracting. You just want little asides that are of a humorous nature to bring your audience back to listening to you.
Listen to good speakers you admire and take note of how they seem to slip and out of humor easily and effortlessly and how quickly that build rapport with the audience. It will take some practice to get good at using humor as you speak. But it will improve your presentation style tremendously. And that's the whole idea, isn't it?
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