How to Put Your Audience at Ease

• 00:04 So how do you put your audience at ease?
• 00:09 This is something many speakers worry about and they search for
• 00:13 the perfect joke to get the perfect laugh.
• 00:17 Humor's fine if it comes natural to you.
• 00:19 And it's hard to be tense if you're laughing.
• 00:22 Especially if it's a hard laugh and not just a nervous titter.
• 00:26 But that's not the only way.
• 00:29 The easiest way to actually put your audience at ease is to be interesting.
• 00:36 To be sharing great ideas, great information with them.
• 00:40 Part of what makes an audience uncomfortable is they're thinking, uh-oh,
• 00:45 this TJ guy is gonna be really boring and
• 00:48 if he sees me reading my email the whole time, it's gonna embarrassing.
• 00:52 Well, maybe, but you don't have to be boring.
• 00:58 Be interesting.
• 00:59 Make sure you've got good messages, interesting messages, and
• 01:03 memorable messages, and share them with your audience.
• 01:06 And do it in a conversational way.
• 01:08 That's why reading is awful.
• 01:11 How many times have we seen some speaker get up, blah, blah, blah,
• 01:14 blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 01:14 And you could stand on the front row, light your hair on fire, and
• 01:18 the speaker wouldn't noticed.
• 01:19 Their head is buried in that speech script or
• 01:22 they're staring at Powerpoint slides behind you, they're ignoring you.
• 01:27 They kinda go in through the motions, and
• 01:29 you know what when the audience goes through the motions.
• 01:33 They might even be looking at you but
• 01:35 they are thinking about what they had to do in their own afternoon meetings.
• 01:40 Audiences want us to do well, the only exception is if its Saturday night and
• 01:45 its a bunch of college kids and you're a stand up comedian.
• 01:50 Yeah, there are times there when the audience wants you to fail and
• 01:53 they're shouting you down and their whole attitude is you've gotta make me
• 01:57 laugh every 10 seconds or I'm gonna be angry with you.
• 02:01 That is the mentality of a Saturday night comedy club.
• 02:05 But guess what?
• 02:07 For the rest of us, we don't have to deal with that.
• 02:09 You're speaking in the business world, the civic world, the government world, for
• 02:14 the most part, people are rooting for you, your audience is rooting for you.
• 02:18 They want you to do well.
• 02:21 They want you to speak in a way that's interesting to them,
• 02:24 where everything goes well for you.
• 02:26 They don't want you to fail typically.
• 02:30 So, keep that in mind and it will make you more at ease.
• 02:34 Quite often when people say I want my audience to be at ease,
• 02:37 what they really mean is that they want to be at ease as the speaker.
• 02:41 Focus on interesting ideas.
• 02:43 Make it relevant to your audience.
• 02:45 And really look at them.
• 02:47 Engage them.
• 02:48 Ask them questions before your speech starts and during.
• 02:53 Do that, everyone will be at ease.
• 02:57 More important, people will be understanding you and
• 03:00 remembering your key messages.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.