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 show my audience that I am well-organized by telling them at the beginning the outline of my whole speech?

Your Speech Writer: “Yes, you want to show your audience that you are well-prepared.”

Your Boss: “Yes, this is the logical and rational thing to do.”

Your Speech Teacher: “Yes, you and your audience need a clear roadmap for your speech.”

You: “Yes, my audience will be impressed that I prepared so thoroughly for them.”

*** 

Your Audience: “Huh? What are you, our high school teacher? Do you really think we are going to write down your outline? If you waste time telling us what you’re going to tell us later, then you are practically begging me to take a little nap at the beginning of your speech, since you will cover everything later. Why not just hop into your speech by telling me something really interesting, useful and memorable right at the beginning?”

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 jokes at the beginning of the speech to loosen up the audience?

Your Speech Writer: “Yes, this will be a great way to get the audience on your side.”

Your lawyer: “What? Are you crazy? Do you want to get us sued?” Don’t ever use humor at anytime in your speech.”

You: “Yes, I’d like to start off with a good joke—this will relax me and make me more comfortable for my speech.”

***

Your Audience: “Who are you, Henny Youngman? There’s nothing worse than someone trying too hard. That’s the problem with starting your speech with a joke—it’s too obvious. We know it’s coming and so do you. Sure, you might get a chuckle form us begrudgingly, but so will bad puns. You’d be a lot better off saying something funny in the middle or the end of your speech. We aren’t expecting it then—that’s why we’d be even more pleasantly surprised.”

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.

What is the most likely speaking disaster I could encounter while presenting?

Your Corporate Communications Director: “Your fonts will be inconsistent in size, shape and color. We, as a company, will look like idiots!”

Your Marketing Director: “If you forget to mention our seven key corporate marketing messages that were signed off on by the CEO last year, this speech will be a wasted effort!”

Your Audio/Visual Technician: “A bulb could burn out on the PowerPoint Projector.”

You: “I could forget some of my transition statements and I will look like a complete idiot. Everyone will laugh at me!”

*** 

Your Audience: “The biggest disaster is that you will have robbed me of thirty minutes of my life that I can never get back. The biggest disaster is nothing…that is, you said nothing interesting, nothing memorable or nothing useful and you wasted my time. Thanks for nothing!”

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 do I get rid of my “ums” and “uhs?”

Your Volunteer Speech Group: “Have someone ring a bell every time you say um and uh during a speech. You will stop eventually.”

Your Presentation Coach: “Videotape yourself and then stop the tape every time you say uh or um. Count to “three Mississippi” silently in your head and pause instead of filling the sound with uh or um.”

You: “God! I hate myself for saying so many uhs and ums. This is my number one problem. If I don’t figure out a way to say fewer uhs and ums, I’m going to cancel my next 10 presentations.”

*** 

Your Audience: “Um, I guess it’s slightly annoying to hear a whole lot of uhs and ums, but do you know what is even more boring? Listening to a speaker give us a boring data dump. Do you know who says uh and um a lot? Martha Stewart, Bill O’Reilly, Ed Koch, and Geraldo Rivera. They all say uh and um a lot and they’re all multi-millionaires. So maybe saying uh and um aren’t your biggest problems?”

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 teleprompter?

Your Corporate Communications Director: “Yes, this will ensure that we are all on the same page with our corporate marketing messages.”

Your Convention Technical Planner: “Yes, this will ensure greater consistency and control over time—we must keep everything on schedule!”

You: “My God! This teleprompter thing is the greatest thing ever created! Now I don’t have to memorize anything. Now, I don’t have to spend as much time rehearsing because everything will be right in front of me and yet my audience can’t see my speech. This teleprompter thing is a better invention than the iPod!”

***

Your audience: “Ugh!!! Have you ever actually listened to someone read off of a teleprompter who wasn’t a professional news anchor? They sound as energetic and engaging as Keanu Reeves on Quaaludes. There is a reason why the TV ratings for political conventions are usually lower than a test pattern running on cable access TV. Most people sound like robots reading without enough electricity when attempting to use a teleprompter. Instead of using a teleprompter, why don’t you just talk to us about what you know?”

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 read my speech in order to not make any mistakes?

Your Marketing Director: “Yes, this way you won’t get off message and we will be guaranteed that our message will be transmitted.”

Your Corporate Lawyer: “Yes, this will be the best way to mitigate risk.”

You: “I know I probably shouldn’t read, but I didn’t really have time to rehearse or memorize my speech and I want to gt it just right. The stakes are too high for me to make a mistake. OK, just this once, I will read my speech word-for-word.”

*** 

Your Audience: “What did we ever do to you to deserve this torture? Why are you picking on us? We weren’t the ones who through you in the dumpster behind the lunch room in Middle School. If you are going to read a speech to us then you might as well come out on stage wearing a sandwich board that reads ‘I HATE MY AUDIENCE AND I WANT TO BORE THEM TO DEATH…PREPARE FOR PAIN!’”

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.

What is the single biggest difference between great speakers and average/mediocre speakers?

Your Speech Coach: “Practice, practice, practice!”

Your Marketing Director: “It is belief in his or her product or service that count s for the most.”

You: “Innate charisma, luck, the topic, I don’t know! Help!”

***

Your Audience: “A speaker can have perfect diction, perfect eye contact, perfect clothes, perfect hair, and perfect pauses and still be an awful presenter. Why? Because the presenter gave a data dump without stories or examples. The speaker was too abstract and to dispassionate. On the other hand, a speaker can have a button missing, messy hair, say “uh” and “um,” but if the speaker passionately conveys just a handful of messages using compelling stories and examples for each one, then that speaker will be considered a great presenter—every time.”

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 outline all of my key points at the beginning of my speech for the benefit of my audience?

Your Speechwriter: “Yes, this shows order and structure.”

Your Public Affairs Director: “Yes, this is a very logical way to proceed.”

You: “Yes, my audience will be impressed with how thoroughly I have prepared, how logical I am, and the well I have planed.”

***

Your Audience: “We hate outlining. You remind us of a boring school teacher when you do this. When you tell us about all of the points you are going to cover later in your speech you are reminding us that now would be a good time to check our email.  We won’t miss anything important because you’re going to cover it later, right? It’s OK for college teachers to outline for us because we had to write everything down in class. Why did we write down what the teacher outlined? Because that professor was going to test us two weeks later and if we failed the test we would get kicked out of school and have to go wash dishes for the rest of our life. Our college professors could bore us to death with data dumps and outlines and we were motivated to listen and write it all down. But you, my friend, don’t have that power over us. Instead of outlining, just tell us each point in a manner that is so interesting, visual and memorable, that we can’t forget even if we tried. Then, there will be no need to outline.”

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 give a formal or informal speech to this audience?

Chief Protocol Officer: “It depends on the audience. Make it a formal presentation if you are speaking to the board of directors or if there are any elected officials present.”

Director of Sales: “We want this big account, so of course this will be a formal presentation.”

You: “If it’s just in-house to employees I know, then I will make it informal. But if it is to 30 or more people from the outside, then I will make it a formal presentation.”

***

Your Audience: “Formal? Informal? What the h*&L are you talking about? There are two kinds of speeches in the whole world and formal and informal are not the categories. From our perspective, every speech is either good or it’s bad. It’s that simple. If a speech is good, then we will pay attention and focus on what you are saying that is relevant and helpful to us. If a speech is bad, we will zone out and plan our weekend grocery list. Your job is to figure out how to make your ideas and messages as interesting and memorable for us as possible. Period. That could mean making decisions on whether to use PowerPoint, handouts, drawings, stories, or props. But it does not involve deciding to be formal or informal.”

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 great speakers have to have a certain type of look?

Director of Marketing: “Yes, great speakers need to have a polished look. Make sure you have hand-tailored suits and expensive shoes on when speaking.”

Chief Legal Counsel: “Only an expensive business suit will do. And best to have some distinguished gray hair too.”

You: “I had better look like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher or Bill Clinton. Otherwise my audience will think I’m a joke. I’m going to be toast!”

***

Your Audience: “We don’t really care what you look like, or sound like. Just give us interesting and memorable ideas and do so with passion and stories. You can look as small and quiet as Mother Theresa or as big and rumpled as Michael Moore, we will give you are full attention for the next 20-60 minutes. We aren’t looking to marry you and we aren’t looking for a fashion role model. Just look and sound real and authentic to who you are and you won’t have any problems.”