What questions should you ask a host or meeting planner when you’re preparing a speech?  Good research means a good understanding of the audience – and that means that you can connect with that audience.  A good connection is the basis of a great speech.  So what do you need to ask your host?

Basically, you need to know about 3 things besides your area of expertise:  the venue, the audience, and the speech itself – how it needs to be tailored.  Here’s a list of questions I’ve developed over a few years that you can use as a checklist to make sure you don’t forget anything important.  And please weigh in – what have I left out?  What do you always ask your contacts? 


A.  The Venue

When is the speech taking place?
Where?
How many people are in the audience?
What time of day will the speech be given?
How long should the speech be?
Will the audience be or have eaten?
What is the hall like?
Is there lighting?
What is the sound like?
The layout?
Are there backdrops, sets, stages, props, podia?
Are there barriers between speaker and audience?
How long is the audience’s day?
How many other speakers?
What is the nature and content of those speeches?
What kind of chair is the audience sitting in?
How long have they sat?
What is the event theme?
Slogan?  
What is the arrangement for slides and other visuals?
How quiet is the hall?  Is there background noise?
When can we get in the hall for rehearsal?

B.  The Audience

Describe the audience
What is the age range?
Socio-economics?
Do they know each other?
Do they work for the same or difference orgs?
Describe the org?
What should my talk be about?
What is the point of the event for the audience?
How is the audience feeling?
What is the business climate?
What does the audience fear most?
What are their hopes and dreams?
What makes them laugh or cry?
What makes them worry?
What do they need to succeed?
What are their cultural references?
What is the worst speaker they’ve ever seen?
What would you like them to do differently as a result of the talk?
Who are their heroes and villains?
What are their recent successes and failures?
Why are they there?
Have you made any arrangements to get feedback?  A DVD?

C.  The Speech

Why did you pick me?
Who and what determine the success or failure of this event?
How will that be measured?
How does the idea of my speech work for your event?
Give me some audience members that are great (or bad) examples of the points of my speech?
Can I interview them?
What is the problem the audience has for which my expertise is the solution?
Is the audience expecting interactivity?
Is the audience used to Power Point?
Can I ask for volunteers?
How many of them will have read my book?
Can we arrange for a signing/sales event?
What journey do you want the audience to go on?
Why should the audience pay attention to my speech?
How will you know if they have taken something important away from the speech?

I often get asked about injecting humor in speeches, and that other question, which might be summarized as “how blue can I go?” 

Let’s take humor first.  The clichéd advice is to begin your talk with a joke, ‘just to put the audience at its ease’.  That’s bulls**t.  Beginning with a joke may or may not induce a laugh from the audience, but it won’t put the audience at its ease.  The audience is already a whole lot easier than the speaker will ever be.  The real reason speakers tell jokes to start is to put themselves at ease.  If you’re getting a laugh in Minute 2, you’re going to think, ‘they love me already!’ 

Bad idea.  First of all, because you're typically full of adrenaline, especially at the beginning of a speech, there’s a danger that your mouth will move faster than the audience’s ears.  And if the joke falls flat, then everyone feels bad, and you’ve blown the opening.  Don’t put that kind of pressure on yourself.  Begin with a story, or a question that brings the audience in, or a fascinating fact. 

Of course, humor is its own defense.  If people laugh, that’s a good thing, right?  True as far as it goes.  But it doesn’t go very far.  I’ve heard many stories of speakers that told jokes the audience laughed at – and then had to deal with the complaints from the meeting planner because some person or persons in the audience was offended. 

Humor is topical, personal, aggressive, local and in your face.  That makes it inherently risky.  If the humor is funny, it’s usually at someone’s expense, and that means you’re likely to offend someone.  If the humor isn’t funny, you look stupid.  My preference is to allow your wit to play with the content in (appropriately) funny ways, rather than telling set jokes. 

The bottom line?  Know your audience.  Everyone loves to laugh – and we need laughs these days as much or more than ever – but watch out for the few that love to be offended, and to make a case out of it. 

Humor doesn’t travel well, so if you’re determined to use jokes, then do your research in advance, and make sure that your great line about rednecks will play as well in Iowa as it does in NYC.  And forget about taking a joke across country boundaries.  Humor is virtually incomprehensible from one country to another.  Even the US and the UK, the two countries I know best, laugh at very different things.   

On to sex!  Here there’s very little upside, and plenty of career-limiting downsides, to offending an audience with sexual references.  Of course, you have to judge your audience.  A church group and a squad of Marines in Afghanistan will have different attitudes toward and tolerances of blue comments.  But you also don’t want to get a reputation for making comments that might be offensive to a percentage of your potential audiences, and you don’t want sexual innuendo to get back to other audiences even if your comments were safe in front of a particular group. 

My advice?  Don’t tell an audience anything that you would blush to say to your mother, or you would mind reading on the front page of the New York Times.  Keep it clean.  Squeaky clean. 

The definition of clean varies from region to region and country to country.  Once again, the cardinal rule is Know Your Audience. 

What the people who hire speakers look for can be summarized in one word:  consistency.  They don’t want to be surprised, because in the speaking business, almost all surprises are bad ones.  If you want to be a working speaker, have that word – consistency – tattooed somewhere you can see it, and never forget it.  That’s your job.  So ask yourself, is a chuckle, or a leer, in one moment for one audience worth my reputation? 

What has been your experience?  Has humor paid off for you?  Where do you draw the blue line?  

What is the most neglected piece of equipment in the public speaker's arsenal?  It’s a trick question.  The answer is not the clicker, or your laptop, or your mike. No, it’s your voice. Most speakers take their voices completely for granted. And that’s a big mistake. Voices need care and feeding. Most of us talk all day long, and by the end of the day – and after a decade or two – it shows. 

Every voice has something called the maximum resonance point (MRP).  You can find your own, if you’re not tone deaf and you have access to a keyboard.  Determine the lowest note you can comfortably sing, and the highest.  (Men, don’t use your falsetto range for this purpose.)  Count the number of white notes you span.  Divide that number by 4, and then count that many notes up from the bottom of your range.  That note is your maximum resonance point.

Why is that important?  Because all sorts of good things happen at that point.  Most simply, resonance is pleasing to our ears, so people will respond favorably to your voice.  Second, your voice is happiest at that pitch, so it will last longer than if you try to speak higher or lower habitually.  Men often try to speak lower than their MRP, and women sometimes go higher.  The result is a strangled tone that pleases no one and puts strain on the voice -- and causes long-term damage. 

But there’s more.  There’s some research that shows that we put out overtones and undertones – especially undertones – that are outside of the range of human hearing.  Amazingly, groups align these tones with the leader of the group.  We literally get on the same wavelength as the leader -- the one with the best undertones!  So at your MRP, where you’re putting out the most undertones, you have the best chance to take over leadership of your group.  (And you thought leadership was something you earned by good practices or clever dealing!) 

Have I convinced you to take care of your voice?  If you don’t support your voice with good breathing, as well as the obvious – no smoking, restrained drinking, and so on – you will put long-term strain on it and end up sounding like Marlon Brando in The Godfather.  Breathing -- belly breathing -- is the first and most fundamental step.  I've blogged on the importance of belly breathing before.  

Recently, Klaus Moller, a voice coach based in Denmark, published a great little ebook that gives you a quick primer in how to take care of your voice, and how to produce good sounds with it.  Go to his website, here, and download it.  You’ll find it very useful.  He's charging a little for it, but it's worth it, and so is your voice.  

 

For my final podcast based on Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, I talk about the 4th step in the communications series I discuss in the book:  Listening.  Too little listening is going on among us today, and when it does happen, it's often at a superficial level.  Here, I discuss how to listen at a profound level that will bond you strongly to the person you're communicating with. 

 

Trust Me Podcast 10

For this penultimate podcast in the series, I talk about how to use your voice and gestures to generate passion.  The podcast is based on my book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, and it's about 3 and a half minutes long.  Enjoy!

 

 

Trust Me Podcast 9

 

In this podcast, #8 in the series based on Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, I talk about 4 ways of speaking that convey passion appropriately.  Passion -- done right -- creates charisma, and memorable communications.  This podcast is just under 5 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

Trust Me Podcast 8

Body language -- good or bad -- can make or break a meeting, a conversation, a presentation.  Here's how to use it to connect powerfully with other people.  The podcast is just under 7 minutes and it's based on my book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  Enjoy!

I'm taking a few days off to work on a new book, but I'll be back with more podcasts next week. 

 

 

Trust Me Podcast 7

 

For podcast #6 in the series based on my book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, I talk about connection - step #2.  Specifically, how to connect better with the people around you with the language you use.  Having trouble getting people to pay attention?  Here are some tips that will help.  The podcast is just under 4 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

Trust Me Podcast 6

 

 

This is the 5th podcast in the Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma series - why you need to be open, and how to do it.  Especially as our lives get more and more virtual, it's useful to recall the basics of openness -- and here I do so in about 4.5 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

Trust Me Podcast 5