Connect With Your Audience: Using People Words

This Week’s Meeting Theme:
Using People Words

Each week JIA Toastmasters focuses on a particular skill, action or other
unique talent needed and used by world class speakers. Our meetings and
their components are centered around practicing these skills as part of our personal and professional skills development.

The theme for this meeting is “Using People Words.” People words are references to human beings that can make it easier to connect with your
audience. They can make a dry subject more appealing to your audience.
The easiest way to start is by substituting references to human beings for
the abstract words so many speakers put in their speeches. 

Take, for example, a common type of phrase from a technically-focused speech, “The results of the survey showed an increase in sales of 25 percent.” The facts are accurate, but you need to add someone that your audience can identify with. If you take the same sentence and, without focusing on the grammatical subject, search for a human-interest subject, you find it in “salespeople.” People increase sales, and that’s who your audience wants to connect with. So you could change the sentence to, “Our salespeople increased sales by 25 percent.”

That’s a good start, but don’t stop there. As you really begin to dig, you will discover more people hidden in that sentence. An easy way to approach this is to begin asking the “who’s” – Who did the survey? Who did the sales­people sell to? This is a quick trick that will help you find more people references. Let‘s add in some more people: “We found in our survey that our salespeople sold 25 percent more to our customers than they did last year.”

What began as a sentence with zero people words now is loaded with them. “We, our salespeople, our customers” and “they” all refer to human beings. With those simple changes, you have intrigued and involved your audience while giving them an idea of who increased those sales, who kept track of the sales, and who did the buying. Your human-interest quotient has just skyrocketed, and your audience will more likely pay attention.

No matter what your topic may be, remember that the subject is always people. Whether you’re talking about politics, sales, economics, or the price of widgets in

China – it is the people behind these topics that make them interesting. Get in the habit of scrutinizing your speech for opportunities to focus on human beings instead of dry facts.

At our next meeting we will practice using people words. Before the meeting, listen carefully to conversations around you for people words and practice using them more in your speech. Whenever possible, replace words like “it” with “him” or “her.” Listen to how frequently people words are used and not used, noting any missed opportunities to connect what is being discussed with people as a subject of the discussion.

Your Body Speaks: Distraction

This Week’s Meeting Theme:
Distraction

An example of how easy it is to get distracted.
From the movie “Up”

Each week JIA Toastmasters focuses on a particular skill, action or other unique talent needed and used by world class speakers. Our meetings and their components are centered around practicing these skills as part of our personal and professional skills development.

The theme for this meeting is “Distraction.” It’s difficult not to look at a moving object. At Toastmasters meetings you’ve probably noticed how people pay attention to visual distractions. A late-comer’s arrival or a flashing timing light usually siphons attention away from a speech.

We remember more of what we see than what we hear. However, we remember best when both our visual and auditory senses are involved. As a speaker you can capitalize on these tendencies by providing visual stimuli that capture your audience’s attention and enhance retention of your verbal messages. Gestures, body movements, facial expressions – all of these can be valuable tools when skillfully employed. It’s important, however, that you don’t allow the natural distractions in the room to pull your focus away when you’re speaking, especially when you are trying to use all the Toastmasters skills in your arsenal.

Dr. Ralph C. Smedley, the founder of Toastmasters International, wrote, “The speaker who stands and talks at ease is the one who can be heard without weariness. If his posture and gestures are so graceful and unobtrusive that no one notices them, he may be counted truly successful.”

When your actions are wedded to your words, you will strengthen the impact of your speech – even if the audience doesn’t consciously notice them. But if your platform behavior contains mannerisms not related to your spoken message, those actions will call attention to themselves and away from your speech. In fact, rather than adding physical characteristics, sometimes the enterprising speaker must work on removing impediments.

What are these impediments? At your next Toastmasters meeting, watch the speakers closely. You’ll probably detect at least a few visual distractions in each person’s delivery.

Some mannerisms involve the whole body, such as:

• rocking,
• swaying, and
• pacing.

Others that commonly plague inexperienced or ineffective speakers include:

• gripping or leaning on the lectern,
• tapping the fingers,
• biting or licking the lips,
• jingling pocket change,
• frowning,
• adjusting hair or clothing, or
• turning the head and eyes from side to side like an oscillating fan.

Most of these actions have two things in common: First, they are physical manifestations of simple nervousness; second, they are performed unconsciously – the speaker isn’t aware that he or she is doing them.

Most of us are aware of our verbal mistakes. But unless we have access to video equipment and can have our movements recorded, many of our distracting mannerisms go unchallenged. The first step in eliminating superfluous mannerisms is to obtain an accurate perception of your body’s spoken image.

At our next meeting we will practice dealing with distractions. The purpose of practicing this skill is for the speaker to not be distracted by what is going on in the room. At the same time, audience members will be paying special attention to each others distracting mannerisms, in order to increase awareness of personal behaviors that do not serve them well.

Before the meeting, sit quietly and pay attention to sounds around you that could be considered distracting. Also notice when you or someone else loses their train of thought and see if you can connect this to a distraction that happened at the same time. When we become aware of our surroundings, it becomes that much easier to tune out the distractions.