Learn to Talk TO Your Audience -- Not AT Them!

Learn to Talk TO Your Audience -- Not AT Them! by Nancy Daniels

One of the most interesting aspects about presentation skills is that those who are really dynamic in their delivery are those who talk to their audience and not at them. What this means is that they treat their audience as if they were having a conversation in their living room. This is one of the best pieces of advice I give when I teach public speaking.

In a forum recently, I went toe-to-toe with another writer who was discussing the similarities between acting and public speaking, referring to them as brothers. Personally I see only 3 things which the two forms of delivery share. They both have an audience; both are possibly on a stage; and, they both require speaking. Aside from that, what the actor is doing is not what the public speaker should be doing. In that sense, I could see these two forms of delivery as a brother and a sister.

Our discussion between the 'similarities' came to a sudden halt when the other writer said that her students found it even more difficult to memorize their own material for a speech or presentation than to memorize someone else's words for the role they were playing. That was the final straw. I knew immediately that our repartee would be finished when I read her words.

I do not advocate memorizing a speech or presentation aside from your opening statement. [Public speaking is difficult enough; the ability to get through your opening without flaw, however, is a tremendous confidence builder and will make the rest of your delivery that much easier.] If you can address your audience just as if you were having a conversation in your living room, memorization cannot be part of that picture because the act of effective oral discourse involves communicating with your audience. Memorization does not allow for such communication.

If your delivery is memorized, you will be talking at your audience, spitting out words in a rote fashion just like those who call you at dinnertime to try to sell you something. The beauty of public speaking is that you are actually having a conversation with your audience. Their response to you could be smiling, applause, nodding in agreement, shaking their heads in opposition, or even voicing their displeasure. Whatever their reaction is to your words is the conversation. In that sense, a memorized script does not allow for 'room for change.'

If you are talking to your audience, on the other hand, you can actually change the direction in which you are speaking - you can add specific anecdotes on the spur of the moment or you can word your statements differently dependent on how you are being received by your audience. Good public speakers can 'change it up' so to speak because they are practiced, they know their material inside and out, and they value their audience's reaction to them.

Next time you give a presentation or a speech, talk to your audience and pay particular attention to their part of the conversation. That is dynamic public speaking!