THE PUBLIC SPEAKING SERIES. More on the goal!

A friend of mine once unboxed a birthday gift sent by another friend who had promised to surprise him on his birthday. Upon tearing the heavy package open, my friend found a huge book buried at the bottom of the box! He sighed loudly in disappointment because the gift had not met his expectations; my friend is not the type who appreciates books so the gift was worthless!
As a speaker, your audience have expectations of you. As stated before, these expectations may be in the following forms:

The expectation to be informed
You see, the strength and character of a football team in a game can be measured largely by their formation. From the defence to the attack, the structure of a team's tactical formation is a major decider of the game's outcome.
The same goes for the audience you're speaking to. They are about positioning themselves at a particular place in the game of life and will need the pieces of observations that will come from you to form the basis of their inFORMATION. Their winning or losing may depend on it.

The expectation to be reformed
Words are powerful! Some members of the audience may be listening to hear you tell them what will make them change certain aspects of the way they do things.
A business owner whose business had been doing poorly for lack of proper customer relationship management, but who attended a seminar where it was identified as a problem and given tips on how to correct it will certainly go back to the business and reform it by doing something about the organisation's customer relations.

The expectation to be transformed 
Transformation is the recalibration of the system that runs a process.
A person who is experiencing negative outcomes in life due to wrong beliefs and worldview may be sitting in the audience, waiting to collect from you, the sledge hammer with which to dismantle the existing structure of his life and erect a new one. The sledge hammer are the words you say.
It is your responsibility as a speaker to find out what the need(s) of your audience is/are and tailor your message along such lines. If the buyer of my friend's birthday gift had tried to find out what his needs were, he would have bought him something more useful.
How do you deliver your message to an audience? That's coming up next!

© 2017, Emeka Akpa. All rights reserved

THE PUBLIC SPEAKING SERIES. More on the ball

How would you feel when you are in a situation you are not sure how to come out of, and someone comes along who tells you how s/he was in the same situation, but did certain things to get out or told you how s/he was able to use her/his knowledge or know-how to help someone else find solution to the challenge? Certainly you will listen to such person.
When speaking before people, your desire is to have them listen to you, you want them to follow you. Unfortunately they won't listen to you if you don't have a message for them. I have said before that a message can (amongst others) stem from a personal experience or an area of knowledge. Let's expand on them a bit here.
On personal experience, please take note of the following:
1. Your personal experience must be relevant to the listeners. Don't tell your listeners things about you that are irrelevant to the presentation.

2. Personal experiences help build your credibility as you deliver your speech. Your audience see in you what is possible in themselves.

3. If you are a beginner in speaking, you may find it difficult to know or remember what to say before an audience, but if you build what you're saying around a story, your story (where applicable), you will easily flow with the audience.

On your know-how (skills) and what you know, consider these:
1. Some presentations are technical in nature and requires that the person presenting understands what they are saying. You'll loose your audience if you appear to them like a quack.

2. An audience will listen to you if you tell them about a need you met in the past, are meeting now or will meet in the future, using your know-how. In that case, they are rest assured of committing themselves in your hands knowing 'you got them' and will pay attention.

3. It is equally important to be aware of certain things happening around and make references to them when making your presentations. That way, you are assuring your audience that you exist in the moment. News items, current happenings in your field will do the trick.

Remember, your audience pay you attention to deliver a message; get it right!
In the next episode, I will discuss the audience expectations further.

© 2017, Emeka Akpa. All rights reserved

THE PUBLIC SPEAKING SERIES. Get a Message!

Imagine a football game without a ball.
How would the beauty and elegance of the great footballers be seen? How much entertainment will 22 men, just running round the field give you without a ball?
In the end, the aim of each of the 22 men, each time they have the ball, (including the goalkeepers) is to score a goal with it!
For anyone who speaks before people, the ball is the message and the goal is to convey that message to the hearers.
There is no reason to stand before people if you do not have a message to give to them.
A message can stem from any of the following sources:

1. A personal experience
This is the most powerful source of a message. When you engage an audience in a subject matter of interest to them, based on a personal experience, it adds a lot of credibility to your presentation and a very high likelihood that it will be accepted by the hearers. 

2. Other people's experiences
This can replace personal experiences where it (personal experiences) is lacking. 

3. An area of knowledge
Over time, you have learnt some skills and worked on particular projects thus, have acquired a lot of expertise in a certain area. That can serve as message to some people.
Any message that you hope to communicate to others must meet one, two, or all of the following needs of the hearer:

a) the need for information
Information can simply increase the head knowledge of the hearer. Such messages can either be entertaining or informative

B) the need for reformation
This need is met when the listener finds some aspects of the information useful enough to implement in their lives to fill a particular gap or correct some faults they may have 

C) the need for transformation
This need is met when the listeners do not just stop at correcting few faults, but are able to cause major overhaul of their lives based on the information they got.
So, there you have it! The need to have a message for an audience cannot be overemphasised.
In the next episode of THE PUBLIC SPEAKING SERIES, I will try to breakdown the three sources of a message that I have highlighted above.
Keep a date with me this coming Monday!

© 2017, Emeka Akpa. All rights reserved

THE PUBLIC SPEAKING SERIES. Anybody can speak before anybody!

What was your reaction the first time you were asked to speak or make a public presentation?
I almost died of dread the first time I did! The fact that I was going to stand before people and have all of them stare at me at the same time in expectation of what I wanted to say to them almost crippled me.
Even after I was done, I still felt odd. "Did I just walk through the path I thought was reserved for the wise?" i asked myself. I grabbed on the closest support to regain my balance before moving on!
However, that was the sacrifice I made to speak before others, because subsequently I have made presentation before thousands!
It wasn't until I did it that I realised speaking was like water, anybody can drink it! Hitherto, I thought it was a venture for some special breed of humans; people who were not entirely ordinary; well, that was until I did it!
Speaking before people is what anybody can do; whatever your level of education, exposure, and so on. But there is something very important you need to have prior standing before an audience otherwise you won't like the experience of going before them. What is it?
Keep a date on Wednesday!