Your job as a speaker is to make your content interesting and memorable. Facts, statistics, numbers or raw data alone won't do that. Humanizing your speech -- adding human interest to it -- makes it meaningful. It shows you have a grasp of the issues and it makes it interesting for your audience. When you humanize your presentation, you make it mesmerizing and memorable.
Here are a few examples of one great humanizing concept, the demonstration.
The demonstration often can involve the audience. Here are a few clever ones I've seen over the years:
A minister trying to create a calm, peaceful atmosphere: He divided the congregation into thirds. At his cue, the left side snapped their fingers, the right side patted their hands together, and the middle section beat their chest. The different combinations of the percussive noise created the sound of rainfall!
A nutritionist demonstrating how much sugar is in some of our foods: She asked a volunteer to hold out his cupped hands. She explained she was going to spoon tablespoons full of sugar into his hands to show the audience how much sugar was in a 20 ounce soft drink. She began spooning and asked him to stop her when he thought she had reached the total. Pretty soon his hands were full. As soon as the sugar starting spilling over his hands, he said that must be it. She kept spooning a few more until she had spooned 17 tablespoons!
A facilities designer talking about the need for clear communication: He handed everyone a piece of paper and asked them to close their eyes. He proceeded to give folding and tearing instructions for everyone to follow, keeping their eyes closed. After a minute or so of directions, he asked everyone to open their eyes, unfold their piece of paper and hold it up. Amazingly, everyone in the room had a different-looking snowflake-like design, underscoring his point that just blanket instructions-without clear explanations, demonstrations, and feedback-were not enough to guarantee consistent outcomes.
There are other forms of demonstration that don't necessarily involve the audience, but use props to give the speaker a wonderful opportunity to make a point.
Once an environmentalist used an apple to represent our earth. Little by little, she cut off and discarded pieces of it, describing how each piece represented the oceans, inhospitable land, developed areas. What she finally had left was 1/32 of the apple. She peeled the skin off that tiny slice. "This tiny bit of peel represents the very thin surface of the earth's crust, which is less than five feet deep, upon which we grow the food to feed the world."
A nurse dietitian: When she started her presentation, it looked as if she was wearing a long red scarf that was draped around her neck with the ends hanging down in front of her. But at one point in her presentation, when she talked about ways to give yourself some exercise during the day, she whipped the scarf off to show that in fact it was a stretch band for exercising. And then she demonstrated a few exercises with it.
A nutritionist asked for two volunteers: She gave one an apple and one a pear and asked them to turn their fruit into a banana. Both of them were baffled and didn't know what to do. When it was clear they weren't even going to try, she asked them, "Is there any way you can turn your apple or pear into a banana?" When she received the negative response, she turned to the audience. "Ladies, how many of you were born with a pear-shaped body?" (hands up, laughter) "How many of you were born with an apple-shaped body?" (more hands, more laughter) "Ladies, you cannot be a banana!" (Applause!)
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Barbara Busey, president of the training firm Presentation Dynamics, has been a professional speaker, trainer and author since 1990. She does training and speaking on the "dynamics" of how people "present" themselves, is the author of the book, "Stand Out When You Stand Up," and is the creator of The Compelling Speaker, a unique presentation skills training program that combines advance audio CD instruction with a hands-on, ultra participative workshop. She now offers the Compelling Speaker Certification, a turnkey system -- complete with training content & technique, business strategies, and marketing guidelines -- that positions communicators to make a living training other business professionals to become more compelling speakers. Go to Compelling Speaker Certification to see her video, listen to her audio, and learn when the next Certification training is.
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