Chapter 3
Surprise, It’s Not All About You

Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.

—Dorothy Sarnoff

We the People

Public speaking is not just about you. Though this might come as a shock, it’s actually great news. If it were just about the speaker, an audience wouldn’t be necessary. Without an audience, it’s not “public” speaking. See how that works? Here’s another way to look at it: You are giving this speech for a reason right? Chances are good it’s not to tell people how gorgeous and smart you are. Although you might be both, you’re speaking at a specific occasion for others and typically not about you. This shift in perspective immediately takes some pressure off of you. So, get out of your head (where negative thoughts lurk) and turn your attention to where it should be right now: the audience.

News flash: audiences are alive. Collectively and individually, an audience has dreams, emotions, hangups, desires, needs, and expectations. Though this may sound like a “duh” moment, think about what you’ve been told about “imagining your audience naked” or “looking above the audience” so you don’t have to make direct eye contact. As we mentioned in Chapter 1, this advice encourages you to distance yourself from your listeners when you really should be doing everything you can to engage them. By detaching yourself from the audience, the experience becomes all about you, the speaker, increasing your anxiety and dehumanizing your audience. What if your minister never looks at the congregation during her sermon? Instead, she focuses her attention on the lighted red “exit” sign in the back sanctuary. Does she seem very engaged or interested in sharing a message? How does this make you feel?

So now that you understand you need to connect with an audience, where do you go from here? Well, first you have to find out as much as you can about them.

Population Control

Marketing professionals spend a lot of time studying demographics. Basically, demographics are quantifiable characteristics of a population. Commonly studied demographics include: age, gender, household income, and ethnicity. Based on demographics, marketers calculate how a group of consumers might respond to a given stimulus. The goal is to make sure whatever product, service, or idea a company is “selling” connects to consumers by meeting their needs and expectations.

In the same respect, the best way to connect with your audience is by meeting or exceeding their needs and expectations. This means thinking like a marketer and figuring out the demographics of your audience. Though this might sound hard, in reality, you do this on some level every single day. For instance, do you talk to fishing buddies the same way you chat with your grandmother? You probably don’t. Why? You know your audiences and have tailored your style to meet their respective needs and expectations.

Although the audience you’re preparing for right now is most likely larger, it’s the same basic idea. Knowing your audience’s demographics will guide you in both your preparation and performance. You’ll have a better understanding of what words and tone to use, jokes to tell, how fast or loud to speak, what pop cultural references will work, and even what to wear.

On the Origin of Speeches

No offense, but you’re self-centered. We all are. Personal self-interest is rooted in our basic need to survive. Does “survival of the fittest” sound familiar? Herbert Spencer coined the phrase after reading Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.¹ It basically means the biggest and baddest will survive. It really is all about survival! Have we mentioned that?

Our interest in self-interest didn’t stop after the Bronze Age. “Relatively” speaking, life expectancy for our ancestors has only recently meant living past 50. Just 100 years ago in the United States, a man lived a mere 52 years on average. Women rocked it until age 57.² Our ancestors needed to be as self-centered as possible in order to stay alive each day, and we’ve inherited this trait. Part of the self-centeredness has to do with What do I need to do to connect with people? Remember: Rejection means tribe ejection. Audiences are also self-centered—collectively and as individuals. Yet, whether you’re thinking of an audience as a whole or individually, they want to know one thing: What’s in it for me? In other words, how are you going to meet my needs and expectations?

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was arguably one of the greatest orators of the 20th century. He gave us some sound advice for meeting an audience’s needs and expectations when he said, “Be sincere; be brief; be seated.”³ Roosevelt recognized that an audience expected a speaker to be truthful, passionate, and committed. He also understood an audience’s limitations and that they were not there for your personal satisfaction.

So what are an audience’s needs and expectations?

Know Your Audience and Speak Their Language

An audience has both major and minor needs and expectations. When looking at an audience as a group, we can identify two general or major needs and expectations. They are:

To suit the occasion: Is your speech appropriate for the event? Have you respected traditions, rituals, and the people involved?

To be prepared and perform: Depending on the occasion, an audience needs and expects to be enlightened, entertained, consoled, persuaded, or inspired in the most efficient way. The audience is self-centered. They are there for themselves, not you.

However, we know audiences are made up of individuals and every individual has his or her own needs and expectations. For our purposes, let’s call these minor needs and expectations. An audience’s minor needs and expectations can be physiological, like having to use the restroom, needing an aspirin, or daydreaming of the roast beef dinner they’ll enjoy when they get home. They can also be emotional, like wishing you will acknowledge their dedication to the company in front of everyone—or hoping you won’t.

Later on, we’ll guide you through the creative process of writing your speech, how to practice and memorize, and finally, make it all sound conversational and appropriate for your particular situation.

Play in the Majors

A common mistake made in the “performance” aspect of public speaking is playing to the minor needs and expectations to the detriment of the major ones. We call this recruiting audience members. To better understand this concept, let’s first look at two common ways speakers relate to an audience.

One group of speakers ignore the audience altogether or imagine them in unimaginable scenarios (for example, naked). Ignoring your audience altogether makes for a very lopsided and awkward experience. Essentially, it becomes speaker-centered and the audience is disposable. In this scenario, a speaker can come off as very stiff and robotic. Imagine you are giving your speech, say something witty, and the audience laughs, but you don’t pause. Instead, you speak over the laughter and move on to your next point. By the time the audience gets quiet and starts to listen again, they’re lost and you don’t get to bask in their appreciation of your wittiness.

On the other side of the spectrum, many speakers read into every move and sound coming from the audience. This is often because they’re trying to meet or exceed the minor needs and expectations of individual audience members. In other words, they are trying to recruit individual audience members (to like them) by guessing what their reactions are communicating. This approach might be tempting, but it is a slippery slope that can lead to overcompensation and/or wandering off your prepared path. We are certainly not advising you to ignore the commonsense feedback an audience gives you (for example, applause, laughter, sighing, head nodding, strong eye contact, crying). These are all signs the audience is engaged and/or understanding your speech. However, to paraphrase an old adage, “You can please some of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”⁴ So we caution you from putting too much stock into what individuals might be communicating through physical or even audible reactions.

To illustrate this point, let’s say you’ve done your demographic homework and prepared your speech on the general characteristics of your audience. Yet, once you’re up and speaking, instead of focusing on what you know, you start trying to guess what individuals need and want and then react accordingly.

It might look something like this: You’re giving a speech and a young couple appears to be very unhappy with what you’re saying, how you’re saying it, or both. The guy seems really frustrated. His female companion is staring angrily up at the ceiling. Obviously, you’ve done or said something wrong. You must really be messing up! How can you fix this? Suddenly, you can’t remember what you were saying. Of course, you have no way of knowing that a minute earlier, the guy got a text message from his ex-girlfriend. Now a big fight is brewing. Unless you’re the ex-girlfriend, this has nothing to do with you. Yet, you reacted to it like it had everything to do with you. Needless to say, it negatively affected your performance. As we mentioned earlier, minor needs and expectations can be physiological, too. If someone pulled an all-nighter, they might look half-asleep. You have no way of knowing who is hungry, has to go to the bathroom, is flunking out of math, is not feeling well, just got laid off, is pregnant, or any number of influences that might send messages you are bound to misread and make wrong assumptions about.

Yes, there are also times when audience members give you really amazing feedback. Enjoy that, but don’t let it make or break your performance, either. If that friendly woman in the front row gets up and leaves, what do you do then? You were banking on her friendly smile to get you through the speech. Now, not only are you absolutely sure she hates your speech, you were counting on her to give you reassurance. How could you know she has allergies and was afraid her sneezing would distract you? She’s now standing in the hall, but listening and still enjoying your speech.

So obviously, ignoring the audience entirely is not a great choice, but focusing on all the minor needs and expectations of individual members of an audience, and making automatic assumptions based on their behavior, is asking for trouble. Our advice is to be aware of and adapt to common sense audience reactions, but your goal is to play in the majors and do your best to forget the rest.

Speaking With the Enemy

When it comes to public speaking, most of us automatically make the audience the adversary. That’s actually a pretty natural response. After all, doesn’t our society rate and rank almost everything? The fact is we judge others, too. But public speaking is an entirely different thing. This kind of judgment feels like a death sentence. But wait. You’ve assumed the audience is your enemy. This cannot be further from the truth. However, blame it on your primitive brain. That’s right, it’s hard at work convincing you these strange faces are dangerous and the familiar ones will kick you out of the tribe if you mess up. Again, it’s time to adapt where evolution hasn’t helped us. In this case, it just means understanding that a “modern” audience is almost always on your side. That’s right, your audience wants you to do well. Yes, we know this sounds too simple and far too good to be true, but there are three very good reasons why this is actually the case.

First, we’ve all been in your place and the fear of messing up is palpable. Have you ever been listening to a speaker and suddenly he loses his train of thought? He stands there for several uncomfortable seconds. No one in the room is breathing, but there seems to be a collective effort to will the speaker to find his place again and continue. Honestly, no one wants to see a speaker fail—well, unless it’s in politics. When a speaker struggles, we feel for him. When a speaker gets back on track, there is often a sigh of relief, audible words of encouragement, nervous laughter, or even applause. Why? We can truly imagine how awful it must be.

The second reason has to do with, once again, survival of our species. As much as you don’t want to be shunned or disliked by the audience, the audience doesn’t want to be shunned or disliked by you! Because connecting with the speaker, to each of their primitive brains, increases their chances of survival as the smart speaker surely knows how to ward off the approaching tiger! Connecting with the speaker feels safe because the audience views you as the authority.

The third reason goes back to the What’s in it for me? question. They came to listen to you because they believed they would get something out of it. If they are there, it’s because they want to be. If they were forced to be there, someone thought they would benefit from your speech. So, even the forced bunch is looking to connect because they have to be there. Better to be entertained than to be bored on top of forced. Given that premise, if you engage an audience that already wants to engage with you, it’s a win-win. An audience can get restless when they’re not engaged and if their major needs and expectations aren’t being met. Think about the worst speech you’ve ever endured. What was it about? Chances are good that you can’t remember what it was about because the speaker was so boring you had to keep jabbing a pen into your hand to stay awake.

Okay, now try to recall the most amazing speech you’ve ever heard. Both the speaker and her message were awesome. You felt totally invigorated when she finished and time seemed to fly by.

So, if you had to hear one of those speeches again, which one would you choose? We’re going to assume you’d choose the amazing speech. That’s because no one, including your audience, wants to be lulled to sleep by a tedious talker. Your audience isn’t thinking, “Gosh, I hope this speaker is tedious and uninteresting today.” It’s completely the opposite. An audience is on your side. They are rooting for you—if only because they don’t want to keep stabbing pens into their hands.

Connection Equals Direction

Understanding the audience wants you to succeed takes the pressure off and can decrease your anxiety. Connecting with them becomes easier because you know that they want to engage with you. However, as the speech giver, it is your job to find ways to relate to your audience. Researching your audiences’ demographics will point you in the right direction. So, if you are giving a sales pep talk, you know that your audience is full of salespeople. Sales people have to sell a product, so most people who go into that field are outgoing extroverts and find it easy to talk to people. In this case, a lively and interactive speech will be a win out of the gate. Give it pep! If you’re presenting or accepting an award, humor goes a long way on an extra long night. When presenting a new product your company has just launched, everyone is going to be interested in what it’s all about, so be enthusiastic, too! The more passion you demonstrate when describing it, the more passion they will feel too. Mood is contagious! However, make it genuine. So if you’re not really that jazzed about the new product, find at least one thing that you can get behind and funnel that passion into the entire product. This passion will propel your entire presentation and make an authentic connection with the audience.

Try and Apply

Remember, It Is Not About You

Remembering that public speaking is more about what you are talking about and less about you, the person giving the speech, is very helpful. Think back to the last time you went to hear someone talk. Unless it was a celebrity, chances are you could pretty much care less about the person giving the speech and were really there to hear the information they promised to impart. Knowing this takes some of the pressure off of you and puts the focus where it should be, on the information itself.

Speaking the Same Language

Spend some time researching the population you will be speaking to:

Who are they?

Why are they there?

What do they want to learn from it?

How can you best deliver that?

Needs and Expectations

Focus on major audience needs when developing your speech. Don’t take minor audience needs personally and don’t make assumptions on the behavior of your individual audience members.

The Audience Is Not Your Adversary

Remember that the audience wants you to succeed. It is uncomfortable and awkward to see the speaker struggling up there. They see you as the expert and want you to like them. And it is truly all about them; they want to be entertained. So as long as you are doing that, they will love you!

Key Notes

1. You are the least of their worries: Remember that public speaking is not about you. The audience is more interested in the information than the giver of the information.

2. Needs and expectations: Spending time doing research on your audience’s demographics will help you tailor your speech to best meet their needs and expectations.

3. Focus on the broad picture: Don’t get stuck on what individual audience members are doing and keep your focus on the room as a whole.

4. The audience is not the enemy: They want you to succeed. They view you as the authority and want you to like them as much as you want them to like you.