The term “Public Speaking” doesn’t only mean speaking before the ‘public’ but knowing HOW and WHAT to speak before them.

The ‘HOW’ and ‘WHAT’ differentiates a good/great speaker from an average speaker. Many speakers fail to analyse or understand their audience before delivering a talk. They are more involved in building rich content, stuffing pointers to make the talk power packed. It’s more about “What I want to say” rather than “What will get them to listen to me?”. This is where most speakers fail.

The exercise of building an audience centric speech begins at the scripting stage, where you need to answer a few basic questions while preparing your speech:

1.) What is the nature of the audience (is it a diverse audience across age groups or people from the same fraternity (CA’s/ Doctors/Engineers etc)?

Ans: Let us assume the CFO of an organisation is addressing a team of finance professionals. He has the liberty to use financial terms at free will while discussing or explaining a concept. Now if the same CFO is addressing his organisation, which has professionals from the Sales/HR/Admin and other departments, he needs to change his style and approach. There is a need to simplify concepts in a manner that even non-finance professionals understand his message. That’s where the skill of a good speaker comes into play.

2.) What level of Expertise/Experience does the audience have?

Ans: If you are addressing a diverse audience, the speech should be prepared in such a manner that a person at the lowest grade or position is also able to understand and connect with your message . A speech shouldn’t be an act of showmanship, but a display of simplicity.

I often say this to my mentees- “A great speech is one which even a middle-school student is able to understand and interpret (in his own way)”

 3.) What is the cultural backdrop of the audience?

Ans: There are 2 contexts to look at here:

a.) Speaking before a New Geography/Country– It is absolutely important to do your homework with regards to the likes/dislikes, the patterns followed when speaking to an audience in a new geography (it can be within the country or abroad). Each place has its own ways and practices. Sometimes we may end up saying something inadvertently which may seem offensive to them. It is always advisable to speak to the organisers to understand the practices followed.

b.) Language Barrier– Assume you are delivering a talk to a group of blue collared workers in a manufacturing industry, who aren’t really proficient in English(while they follow it). In order to be an effective speaker, it is imperative that you ‘step down’ and simplify the language used, which could also mean speaking the local language in parts to connect and communicate with them. Whenever I address a gathering who aren’t too comfortable with English, I try to speak in Kannada or Hindi (as the case maybe)for most part of my speech, even though I may commit a lot of grammatical errors. They are more forgiving of you and happy connecting with someone who is putting an effort to speak their language.

Beyond addressing these questions, the speaker needs to step into the shoes of his listener and answer the question ”What’s In It For ME (WIIFM)?”. A speech that fails to address WIIFM is a self-indulgent speech which has the audience sub-consciously disconnected while physically being present at the venue.

Write a speech which gets your audience to keenly listen to you, rather than one where they are hearing you out!

P.S – WIIFM is a concept by itself and I would write about it in my future posts. Keep following the blog!