Tip#6: Connecting with your audience
I was at a conference earlier this year and wondered why I didn't connect with a particular speaker. He was lively, had won awards, but I just didn't connect. Out of curiosity, I started recording how many times the speaker said "I", "me" or "myself" and the number of times he used "you","yourself" or "we". I then did the same for the next speaker, whose style I preferred, even though she was quite similar in personality and told similar stories to the first speaker.
Speaker number 1 - used words referring only to himself (I, me, myself) 50 times, and included the audience ("you","yourself" or "we") 8 times.
Speaker number 2- used words referring only to herself (I, me, myself) 34 times, and included the audience ("you","yourself"or "we") 35 times.
Obviously speaker number 2 included the audience more, and was in my opinion more effective.
What do you think? What have you noticed? I can't claim to be perfect in this area myself - I'm working on improving my own connection with audiences, but you may want to look at a speech you gave lately and see what your own balance is. Please tell me what you observe!
You can see the exact I/me/you/we breakdown here on my blog
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