Make sure your audience gets the point

A client asked me recently why she wasn't getting the results she wanted from putting her department's case at business meetings. Paula is an intelligent, knowledgeable, articulate and confident woman, very successful in her field, the sort you would expect to win through every time, and she couldn't understand why she was making so little impact at these meetings.

Fortunately, the answer turned out to be something she could quite easily change. Although she was powerful and persuasive when speaking to one or two people, when addressing larger groups, Paula unconsciously adopted a persona that was intended to be professional but was actually rather elusive. My impression, as I listened to her delivering what she was planning to say at the next meeting, was of someone who clearly knew what she was talking about. I agreed with what she said as she went along - and yet afterwards I couldn't remember anything specific she had told me. It was all somehow nebulous and I understood why she wasn't getting what she wanted: people weren't grasping what it was she was actually asking for.

To rectify this, I encouraged Paula to break down her speech into bite-sized chunks, to bring her voice down at the end of each one and to pause between them. I also suggested she speak a bit more slowly and use less jargon.

The results were satisfyingly positive. Paula's point of view became clear to her colleagues and many more of her requests began to be granted.

Public speaking is about communication. When you're preparing your speech or presentation, try to summarise your message in a sentence or two. Once you've identified the essence of what you want to say, you can expand on it but, if you don't identify the essence first, it may never become apparent to your audience what your core message is.

Avoid cliches, corn and verbal mannerisms

The magic convention was excellent. Extremely talented and diverse magicians from all over the world congregated in South Shields for a few days to share secrets and to entertain one another. If you're interested, you can find out more about magic conventions on my website We Love Magic.

From the public speaking point of view, something that struck me was how often I heard the same lines. Particularly these days, when magicians watch - and listen to - one another on DVD all the time, cliches and corny gags are copied and repeated more and more. Practically every time somebody from the audience signs a card, for example, he or she is asked to put his or her credit card number underneath the signature. This may (or may not) have been marginally amusing the first time somebody said it but, if you've heard it before, it's just irritating.

A new one is, when giving instructions to an assistant from the audience, the frequent use of "Do me a favour". Personally, I feel this expression is out of place in the context but, anyway, it's the endless repetition that grates.

It's certainly not just magicians who behave like this. How often in everyday life do people use the expression "to be honest"? How many corny jokes do you hear in the average day?

When you're writing a speech or presentation, be careful to avoid cliches and corn. And, while you're rehearsing, listen out for your own verbal mannerisms. Do you, for instance, ask, "Do you know what I mean?" more often than is necessary? If so, make a conscious effort to cut down, or even cut it out altogether.

If you overuse cliches, you risk distracting people from the content of your speech. Find an original way to say it and people will be far more impressed. You might even start a new cliche. :-)

Welcome!

Hello everybody and welcome to my new blog. I've got so much to say about public speaking that doesn't seem to fit neatly into a category on the website that I thought I'd start a blog and post my ideas as they occur to me.

I'm about to set off for South Shields, to a magic convention, so I can't write more now but I wanted to get the blog off the ground, as it were. Back soon!