NEVER IMAGINE YOUR AUDIENCE NAKED (and other speaking myths debunked)

The great thing about being a speaker is that everyone is full of advice, the bad thing about being a speaker is that everyone is full of advice.

I have a library of speaking books and they offer a myriad of strange advice, from explaining the exact angle you should hold your hands, showing you the way you can ‘fake’ looking at an audience, and explaining ways to learn your speech ‘by heart’. I disagree with most of the generic advice out there. I definitely disagree with the following:

Imagine your audience naked – how uncomfortable and completely strange it would be to talk to a room full of naked executives. Ugh, I don’t ever want to imagine that (unless of course I’m paid lots of money to speak at a nudist camp). If you must imagine your audience as anything, imagine they are a group of interested people who are there to learn and be inspired. If anyone is comforted by imagining their audience without clothes you may want to consider other career options.

Fake eye contact: I was once shown in depth how you could ‘fake’ making eye contact with your audience, it mainly involved looking at people’s foreheads. If you look at people’s foreheads you aren’t making a connection with them, as a human-being, you aren’t getting feedback on

1. If they can hear you
2. If they understand what you are saying
3. If you are connecting with their needs and desires
4. If they are cold, hot, bored, lost, in the wrong room etc..

Eye contact works both ways – it makes your audience feel connected and involved and it gives you feedback. The only eye-contact that works is real, genuine eye contact. The only time you don’t get to do this is when you are on stage and have bright lights that mean that you can’t see the audience. In that case you just act ‘as if’ you can see them, keep the contact genuine!

Practice in a mirror. Arghhhh, yes I know Churchill apparently never gave a speech without practicing in a mirror first but your speech isn’t about you – it’s about your audience. It’s not about knowing every word by heart, it’s about speaking from the heart. It’s about connection.

Listen to all the advice you get and disregard all the stuff that you don’t agree with (even all the stuff I tell you)

Speaking isn’t acting – it’s about Being you, and you can break every so-called ‘rule’ if you are just being you. So feel free not to read this article, or read it and then forget every word, except the bit about BEING YOU. That’s all you really need on stage. The audience wants a real person to connect to, and that’s you being you. I know it doesn’t take a whole book to tell you this, and it seems so simple that anyone can do it, but it’s the truth, simple and straight up.

Tagged as: 2009, aileen, keynote speaker, speaking, tips