The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

How can I get over stage fright and nervousness before I give a speech?

Your Motivational Guru: “Think positive thoughts and you will have a positive impact.”

Your Speech Coach: “Picture your audience naked and they won’t seem intimidating.”

Your Mother: “Just visualize all of your audience giving you a standing ovation, and it will happen!”

You: “Maybe if I open with a good joke then everyone will laugh and I will feel relaxed.”

***

Your Audience: “You SHOULD be nervous before giving a speech. Chances are, you are going to bore the hell out of us like most speakers do. Why don’t you try something radical, like actually delivering an interesting, relevant speech full of compelling case studies, stories and examples that will help us improve our businesses or lives.”

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

Do I need to memorize my speech?

Your Public Affairs Director: “Yes, you will seem more professional if you memorize your speech.”

Your speech Coach: “Yes, with enough hours of rehearsal, you can memorize your speech.”

You: “Ugh!!! I guess I have to memorize my speech. This is going to be long, hard, difficult work, but I guess I have to do it. Goodbye family, friends and fun for the next two weeks!”

***

Your Audience: “Of course we don’t want you to ignore us or read to us or have your head buried in a bunch of papers. But don’t give us too much credit. We can’t really tell if you have memorized your speech or not, and, frankly, we don’t care. If you’d like to use a single page of notes that you refer to from time to time, we certainly won’t hold that against you. Of course the less obvious about looking at your notes, the more you will fool us into thinking you simply know your subject matter cold. There’s certainly nothing wrong with using a cheat sheet. After all, you aren’t taking a geometry test.”

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

Will reinforcing my key points in text on PowerPoint slides make my audience retain the points more easily?

Your Director of Marketing: “Yes, research shows that if people see the words in print and hear them, they are more likely to remember the points than if they simply heard them.”

Your PowerPoint Specialist: “Don’t be a jerk! Everybody knows you put all of your key concepts in bullet points on a PowerPoint. Otherwise I’d be out of a job!”

You: “I’ll feel a lot more confident if all of my key concepts are up in bullet points on the screen. This will make life easier for me and my audience.”

***

Your Audience: “If we wanted to read, we’d stay at home and curl up with a good book. Or we’d close our office door and read the newspaper on our computer screen. We are more than capable of reading but we’re not quite sure why we’d want to if you are going to say the same stuff. What’s easier for you to remember, the face of someone you just met, or their name on a business card? Obviously, it is the person’s face. So if you want us to remember something, don’t take the lazy person’s route and throw up text. Instead, use a photo, graph or chart. Create an interesting visual and we won’t forget. Sadly, there’s nothing particularly interesting or memorable about text up on a screen, no matter how interesting the topic.

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

Should I tell my audience that I am sick/my plane was late/I didn’t get a full night’s sleep?

Your personal assistant:   “Of course you should let people know you are feeling under the weather, boss!”

You: “I feel awful with his cold. I don’t want people to think that I normally sound like this. Plus I’m really tired. The plane didn’t get in until 3:00 AM. I’m not at my best. This isn’t fair!”

***

Your Audience: “Too much information. We don’t care about your problems at this stage of the relationship (presumably we just met you for the first time as you were being introduced). It’s not that we are mean and wish you ill-will. It’s just at this point, we don’t need to know about your medical history or your sleep problems. We have our own problems. Do you want to hear about them? We didn’t think so. Just do the best that you can and focus on giving us interesting and valuable insights and information. If someone asks later or the issue comes up, then you can talk about your problems. But don’t talk about your petty problems at the beginning of your presentation.”

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

Should I use a microphone when speaking to an audience?

Your Director of Communications: “if you are speaking to more than 100 people, then you should use a microphone.”

Your Director of Public Affairs: “If the room you are speaking in is larger than 50 feet by 20 feet, then you should use a microphone.”

You: “I don’t need a microphone. I have a strong voice!”

***

Your audience: “Hey dummy, the microphone isn’t for YOU; it’s for US the audience. It makes it easier for us to hear you at all times, especially if we are in the back of the room, if there are distractions or if we are a little hard of hearing. The other nice thing about you using a microphone and speakers is that now when you talk to us you can sound conversational without having to project your voice. When you project your voice you become monotone and you remind us of our least favorite home room teacher from 8th grade.”

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

Is drawing on white boards and charts too old fashion for modern audiences?

Director of marketing: “Of course it’s too old fashion. You should always use video or slick PowerPoint graphics.”

Director of Public Affairs: “We want to project ourselves as modern members of the 21st century, so let’s not be caught using old technology.”

You: “I don’t want to draw or diagram in front of people. What if I make a mistake? All eyes will be on me. If I do the PowerPoint slides in advance I can spend hours on them and add many layers of useful date to each slide.”

***

Your Audience: “Actually, it’s quite refreshing to see someone draw or diagram for us live and in the moment. It’s, frankly, much easier to follow because a speaker cannot draw 8 different color-coded lines at once. As audience members we feel we can see and experience exactly what the speaker is talking about us. Also, it slows the speaker down and gets the speaker away from doing a huge data dump. By drawing items, it forces the speaker to get away from meaningless abstractions. We don’t care if the drawing or writing is less than great, as long as we can understand the concept and see the drawng, we are OK with it.”

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

Should I rehearse my presentation and for how long?

Your PowerPoint Presentation Creation Specialist: “Rehearsal sounds like a nice idea, in concept, but we still have to re-design the last ten slides.”

Your Corporate Communications Director: “Sure, let’s rehearse if there is time. But we are still waiting for approval on the slides from corporate HQ and I don’t expect those until the morning of the presentation.”

You: “I absolutely have every intention of rehearsing. But shoot, it’s midnight and we are still changing the font size for the bullet points on the presentation and the speech is tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM and I haven’t slept in 2 days. Looks like there is no time for rehearsal. Besides, I want to seem ‘fresh.’ I might seem stale or canned if I rehearse.”

***

Your Audience: “We don’t care if you rehearse or not, just don’t rehearse on us. If you don’t know what slide goes where, or how your transitions work, or how your clicker operates, guess what you are telling us? You are telling us that you and your one hour of time are a hell of a lot more important than the collective hundred hours of our time as audience members. You are telling us to drop dead. OK, we will; right in front of you. You now get to speak to a dead audience. Are you happy now? You had better be great when you present to us if you want us to remember you and to love you. In theory it’s possible you could be great without rehearsing, and maybe Tiger Woods could have become a great golfer without ever practicing. Yeah, right!”

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

Should I use special effects in my PowerPoint?

Your Corporate Communications Director: “This is the MTV generation. Of course we have to have special effects. Get with it!”

Your Director of Marketing: “Yes you need some special effects and music. In fact, this will be the perfect time to unveil our new TV advertising campaign.”

You: “Wow, if I could have some eye-popping special effects, that will really make my presentation sizzle. This will also take the spotlight off of me and make my whole speech go down better.”

***

Your Audience: “Do you have any idea how many chumps we’ve seen standing in front of us apologizing for their audio or video not working in their presentation? Or worse, they have some PowerPoint page flying in from the top and then dissolving at the bottom like we’re going to be impressed. You know who impresses us? Steven Spielberg impresses us. George Lucas impresses us. You and your special effects in a PowerPoint don’t impress us. Do you know what would impress us? That’s if you actually prepared something interesting to say and then you said it, rather than wasting 15 hours preparing some cheap special effect gimmick that probably won’t even work.”

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

Will I steal my own thunder if I email my PowerPoint presentation to people in advance of giving my speech?

Your Speech Writer: “Yes, let’s keep the element of surprise on our side. Don’t send it in advance.”

Your Communications Director: “No, why would someone come hear you speak if they have already received the presentation in advance? Let’s not cannibalize our audience.”

You: “What will by audience need me for if I have already given them all my material? They will know as much as I do if I send them the presentation in advance. Worse, they will have had time to think of tough questions based on what I’ve sent them. And worse still, they might find a factual error! This has disaster written all over it.”

***

Your Audience: “One of two things will happen if you send us your presentation in advance. One, we don’t read it, but we are at least impressed that you cared about us so much that you prepared in advance and sent us something. Or, two, we will read your presentation in advance. If we read the whole thing, chances are you engaged us and interested us at some level so that we are even more psyched to hear you speak. You now have more credibility in our eyes, we have a better understanding of your key concepts, we grasp your concept more easily during the speech because we are already familiar with them and we ask even more thought-provoking questions. Either way, you win. So yes, please send us your presentation in advance.”

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

How should I end my speech?

Your Boss: “Once you have finished your main points, then shut up and sit down.”

Your Conference Organizer: “We are running behind schedule. Just sit down quickly after you’ve hit your main points.”

You: “I know I should end with some heart-warming, pithy story, but I can’t think of one. So I will quickly shut up and sit down.”

***

Your Audience: “Nothing is worse than a speaker who just quickly and abruptly finishes the last bullet point on a presentation and says ‘that’s-it-any-questions-thank-you-and-goodbye’ as they run off the stage. End with a purpose. End with finality in your voice. Don’t throw us off guard. Don’t be like a car that is going down the highway at 70 miles per hour and then suddenly runs out of gas. You don’t have to be funny or poignant, but at least re-state your main points, summarize, or ask us to do something. Leave us with one final thought—and that thought should NOT be that you are desperate to get out of the room!”