Networking as a Professional Speaker

Public speaking offers numerous advantages for a variety of purposes. Entrepreneurs make presentations about industry innovations and product updates. Business professionals give talks to inform colleagues or the public of important developments. Experts associated with meritorious causes, such as non-profits, charities, and local or national initiatives make speeches to announce needs or updates tied to organizational goals. Whatever the goal, professional speakers can use networking to form valuable connections that will help to promote their cause. Establishing links through various media can help to form new speaking opportunities and gain broader exposure.

Business events.

Participating in organizations or business-related events quickly helps to inform members of your availability to speak on relevant issues. The Chamber of Commerce, local professional associations, and regional programs often look for speakers to address group activities at lunch or dinner events, or occasional seminars and workshops. Becoming a member may let you post articles in their newsletter or get to know members of organizations where speakers are sought.

Local professional groups.

Consider giving talks to groups like college classes or hobby enthusiasts. These are great venues to get acquainted with those interested in your topic, and this can form a domino effect in some cases where members may invite you to speak at other related events. Giving a how-to talk at community agencies can open even more doors to networking with those who recommend your presentation to others.

National conferences and trade shows.

Public speaking options include making conference presentations or trade show speeches if you submit a proposal or your resume. Look for major gatherings of people who may be interested in your expertise and offer a streamlined presentation that fits with the program theme.

Social media and Web presence.

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are just three popular forms of social media where you can establish yourself as an expert and attract a following. With LinkedIn, you can network with others in your area of specialization to find out what people are interested in and how you can tailor your talk accordingly. You also may be able to learn about upcoming events or speaker needs that are looking for your area of expertise.

You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to become a sought-after speaker. Networking with those directly related to your specialty area or even marginally interested the topic may lead to speaking invitations at events where people want to learn more. Local and online network connections offer an informal but powerful way to connect with people who will want to hear you speak.

Use Your Everyday Conversations to Build Public Speaking Skills

There’s not as much difference between having a conversation with a coworker and public speaking as you might think. In each instance, you’re trying to get a point across. The point may be different in each case, but they’re more similar than you might expect. In order to become comfortable and even fluent in the ways of public speaking, you can use your daily conversations to make the skills you need become natural habits.

What is Public Speaking?

It could be a meeting with coworkers or a group meeting with friends, it could be that you want to achieve a career in public speaking and influencing others. Speaking in public means you will always be talking with a goal in mind. In a meeting with coworkers or your boss, you’re trying to convey a set message. On stage or in front of a class, you want to persuade people towards your personal point of view. Talking with friends, family or coworkers differs from speaking in public because you’re not actively trying to influence the conversation towards a certain goal. You’re likely to feel less anxiety because you know the people you are conversing with. This is a perfect time to hone the skills you will use in public speaking.

Building Your Skills

You can use your daily interactions with others to build your communication skills. For example, you can plan what you want to say in advance. Make sure you’ve practiced it, and plan on speaking clearly and definitively. Speaking in public requires confidence and authority in your words as well as your actions. You don’t have to have a mini-speech prepared in advance each day to practice, but you can use the opportunity to speak towards a message. That message can be anything from where you want to eat dinner to telling a coworker about a recent meeting with the boss. You want to be influential and persuasive without being aggressive or demanding. Think about the “why” of your point, rather than the “what”.

Passion is one of the biggest influencers. Think about the last public speaker you saw. It could have been a TED talk or a YouTube video where the person addressed an audience. The person spoke clearly and with authority. They kept a straight posture and moved and spoke with confidence. It’s important to believe in what you’re saying and to convey that belief with passion.

Eye contact with your audience is key to speaking with authority. If you look down at the ground or up in the air while speaking, you’re not giving your words the weight they deserve. This is one of the best things you can practice with your friends, family or coworkers.

When you pronounce each word on stage during a speaking engagement, it makes it easier to understand the message. You’re putting energy into your words. That doesn’t mean talking fast, though. Your words have to be clear and enunciated properly.

When you have a conversation at work, school, or with family, take note of your body. Hand gestures, posture, and other physical movements can be pivotal to a persuasive speech. You want to be authoritative and punctuate your thoughts without distracting from your words. You don’t want to be a “hand-talker” or pace with nervous energy, but you don want to make sure to take up space and stand tall in your conversation.

Build your vocabulary. Study new words and use them every day. While this might be difficult to do in everyday conversation, since it’ll seem unnatural, you can find ways to slip one or two words into the conversation to give yourself some practice.

Make sure to leave some pauses in the action to allow your words to sink into the minds of the audience. This is vital to speaking in front of a crowd, to the ebb and flow of your story, but may not come naturally (especially if you are nervous!)

Everyday Actions

• Straight spine during your speech
• Look your audience in the eye
• Talk with confidence
• Speak clearly
• Practice each day

Once you have practiced enough, transitioning to a real public speech in front of an audience won’t seem so daunting. Your skills will have improved, so you can speak to the audience with confidence and authority.

A Guide To Getting Through To Your Teen

In addition to my keynote speaking and guidance for adults as individuals as well as companies, I have also held many workshops in and out of schools, teaching leadership behavior, building better relationships, and strategic skill building. Teenagers are far more receptive to new concepts than most adults are, and are at the point in time where a little knowledge can help build a very strong foundation.

But teenagers can also be incredibly frustrating, and dealing with them can sometimes feel like trying to break down a wall with a pillow. So, from my experience and perspective, here are some ways to really get through to a teenager:

When you’re raising a teenager, it can feel like you and your child are in two different worlds. Many teenagers feel that their parents can’t possibly understand what they’re going through, and they turn to a number of coping mechanisms such as staying silent or exploding. While these coping mechanisms put strain on the relationship, so do the ways that you interact with your teen in these times of conflict. Here are a few tips on get through to your teen:

To get your child to have an open mind, you need to begin all interactions with understanding. Do this even if you don’t understand or agree. It will be difficult, but it will “open your child’s ears.” For example, if your child is getting preoccupied with a conflict with their friends instead of studying, you may immediately get angry and concerned about your child’s grades. But if you start out by saying that you know it’s hard to have a fight with a friend, your child will listen to you. Make sure you don’t say “I understand, but” because this will negate your statement of understanding.

When you’re trying to communicate with your teen, your emotions can work against you. Separating from your emotions for the moment is difficult, but it is a skill that can be learned. Do away with the idea that what your teen does is a reflection on you. The fact that your child is making their own choices doesn’t give you grounds to be mad at them. Even if your teen is making a bad choice, they may not have the skill set to make a better one. Realize that your job as a parent is to guide your child to make better choices and in turn gain a better skill set. Thinking about your job as a parent can make the conversation less emotional.

An important rule of thumb is to wait until you and your child have both calmed down before doing anything. Don’t try to resolve a conflict or bring up a difficult subject in the heat of the moment. You can choose to say nothing until the emotions have settled. Let your child know that they can speak with you when they are ready to approach you calmly.

Understanding is at the core of building a strong relationship with your teen. But don’t forget to stand your ground. You do not need validation or cooperation from your teen. If you feel that you need these things from your child to feel better, you are putting yourself in a vulnerable situation. If you don’t get these supposed needs, you will be more controlling and manipulative. If your child is acting out, that is the child’s problem, not yours. You should instead be concerned with how you will behave toward your teen. Your child will be less defiant and you will be making better choices for yourself.

Trying to talk to your teen can sometimes make you feel like you’re on two different wavelengths. But with a little patience, effort, and understanding, you can get through to your teen. Once this becomes a habit, you can work to build a strong, loving and healthy relationship.

The Speaker’s Dictionary Q-Z

Welcome back to The Alphabet of Public Speaking, a series where I give you some quick tips for being a better public speaker. You can read part one and part two on this site. Today, we’re going to finish up the alphabet with some more important terms you should know:

Questions – As a public speaker, it’s a great idea to ask your audience questions. Some questions will be rhetorical to get the audience thinking, and others will require audience participation. Getting your audience involved is crucial to a good speech. People will feel like they are an important part of your speech if you get them to say what you are trying to convey.

Repetition – When you’re writing a paper, you often try not to be too repetitive. But for speeches, repetition can be a good thing. No one is a perfect listeners, so even if your speech is engaging, your audience members will tune out at points. It’s a good idea to repeat important phrases and ideas so that everyone has fully absorbed them.

Simplicity – If you want people to take away the main points of your speech, make sure to keep your speech simple. Make your speech short, sweet, and to the point. Make sure you have a limited number of main points and you communicate those points clearly.

Target audience – It would be lovely to get through to every single audience member. But realistically, this isn’t likely to happen. Large audiences are bound to be filled with people who have different interests. Figure out which part of your audience you most want to persuade, and work hard to persuade them. If you persuade anyone else along the way, that’s an added bonus.

Universal human values – People have many differences, whether they’re personal, cultural, or social. But the Institute for Global Ethics has identified eight values that transcend these differences. These values are fairness, love, freedom, truthfulness, tolerance, responsibility, unity, and respect for life. If you tap into these values, you will be able to connect with a lot of people in your audience.

Vocal variety – Nobody wants to listen to a monotonous speaker. The best way to give a successful speech is to vary the way you are speaking. Change up the pitch, rate, and volume of your speech to make your speaking style more expressive. This will get audience members engaged and keep them on their toes.

Working outline – Many people write outlines when getting ready to write papers, so why should this be any different for speeches? A working outline is a tentative outline that includes a speech’s major points, how they fit together, and how important they are relative to one another. This will serve as a guide to help you write and deliver a powerful speech.

(e)Xamples – If you want to be sure that your audience understands the key parts of your presentation, including examples can do the trick. To illustrate a point that is not very complex, but may not be immediately obvious to all audience members, you can give a brief example. If you’re discussing a more complex topic that your audience is likely to be unfamiliar with, you can go ahead and give an extended example. Short stories in the form of anecdotes are easy to relate to.

(Be) Yourself – A speech should be practiced, but it shouldn’t be so formulaic that you lose your individuality. Feel free to add bits of your personality, whether that’s making jokes or telling a little bit about your personal story. Just make sure that these parts of your speech are also rehearsed. It won’t look professional to do them off the cuff.

Zeal – If you’re giving a speech, you have to have zeal for what you’re talking about. If you’re enthusiastic about the topic of your speech, this will shine through. When you deliver a speech with passion, you can transfer that passion to your audience and they can leave your speech with some interesting takeaways. 
Thank you for reading my series The Alphabet of Public Speaking. I hope you learned something, and I hope you’ll continue to tune in for more blog posts about public speaking.

Before Pursuing Public Speaking, Consider These 5 Things

Paid public speaking can be a fun and rewarding job, but many public speakers fail if they aren’t prepared to take on this career. Perhaps you’ve given a few talks and realized you have a knack for public speaking. Maybe you’ve been speaking in corporate environments and you haven’t been paid much for doing so. Maybe you see public speakers on your TV or computer and you feel like you could do it too. If you are thinking these things, you might want to go for paid public speaking as a career move. If you’re a good speaker, it’s pretty exciting that you could be paid to speak in front of groups. But before you make this career shift, you may want to think about these 5 things:

• Most of the money in this industry is in corporate speaking.

If you want to get paid a solid amount for public speaking, your best bet is to go into corporate speaking. In order to do corporate speaking, you’ll need to prove that your topic in some way improve a company. Maybe your topic decreases turnover or maybe it helps employees get along better. Perhaps it helps employees be happier or more productive. If you can convince companies of this, you’ll be able to reach success in the field of public speaking.

• Competition for high paying corporate “gigs” is tough.

In order to gain engagement, you’ll need to appear to be top notch, even before you are. In this industry, window dressing is key. Your website, your content, and the way that you market yourself will have a massive effect on whether you get the chance to show anyone how effective you are on stage.

• Paid speakers have to take their jobs seriously.

For prophets and celebrities, just speaking “off the cuff” might be acceptable. But in the world of paid corporate speaking, your message needs to be well-delivered, well-toned, and properly rehearsed. If you want to do well in the industry, you have to put a lot of effort into practicing your speeches. That means rehearsing everything from the tone of your voice to your gestures.

• Before you go after the biggest venues, test your performance, your content, and your jokes.

One of the biggest reasons speakers fail is because they are not right about their content. Perhaps they think their content is better than it is, they are basing their knowledge on things they don’t know much about, they deliver content that audiences have already heard a million times, or their research is from too long ago. In order to enter the field and gain success, you need fresh content, and you need to deliver it in an engaging, entertaining way.

• “Set it and forget it” marketing doesn’t apply to speakers

If you are the product, you will need to market yourself from the beginning of your career to the end. You cannot sit and wait for the phone to ring. If you jump into things without being prepared, you will slow down your progress. You cannot build a website now and expect to ride on it for the next decade. Most speakers are always working to write new promotional materials, new speeches, and even new books. You will need to keep your name under the noses of meeting planners at all times.

Now that you know some of the challenges associated with professional speaking, you can figure out if this is the industry for you. Professional speaking is a field that can be lucrative and even glamorous. Whether speaking is your business, or you are speaking to attract customers to your core business, professional speaking can be a fascinating profession.

The Speaker’s Dictionary I-P

Welcome back to my series, The Alphabet of Public Speaking. Here are some more quick tips to help you be a better speaker:

Inflection – It isn’t just what you say that is important. It’s how you say it. Inflections are changes in the intonation or pitch of your voice. When you’re practicing public speaking, you’ll need to think about this, as it carries a lot of meaning and affects how the audience perceives your words. Varying your pitch inflection is important because it keeps the audience attentive. It is also a key factor in differentiating critical points from information that is not as important.

Jargon – Jargon is a set of technical language associated with a certain profession, trade or similar group. While it is important to know the jargon of a topic before talking about it, many speakers make the mistake of filling their speeches with too much business jargon. Make sure you use jargon sparingly.

Keyword outline – If you want to be a top notch speaker, it’s a good idea to use a keyword outline to guide you. Akeyword outline is a written aid that can help you easily memorize a speech. To create a keyword outline, just take the most important words from your speech and write them down in order.

Leadership – When you’re speaking to a large group, you need to be able to influence people. You want your speaking to inspire people to work toward a common goal. Public speaking and good leadership go hand-in-hand. If you’re a good public speaker, then you’re also a thought leader.

Motivation – When we think of public speakers, we think of people who are motivational. A good public speaker is able to motivate the audience. Inflection and intonation is especially important for motivational speaking. People should leave your speech feeling inspired to do whatever it is that you encouraged them to do, whether it’s using a new skill in the workplace or shifting your perspective.

Nonverbal communication – Public speakers communicate through more than just words. It’s important to practice your gestures to make sure they are inviting, engaging and positive. It’s also a good idea to take up a good deal of space on the stage according to The Genard Method of public speaking. By commanding the space around you, you can show your listeners that they can have confidence in you.

Open-ended questions – One technique that people use while speaking is to ask questions that the respondents can answer however they want. Open-ended questions usually begin with how, what, when, where, and why. Asking an open-ended rhetorical question is a great way to get your audience thinking and involved.

Pause – There are times when silence in public speaking can have a negative effect, but pauses don’t have to be a bad thing. Pauses, when done correctly, can truly engage your audience. You can use pauses to separate the sections of your speech, or to let important information really sink in. Pauses can also help the working memory of your listeners. Silence can be powerful.

Stay tuned to see more posts with the rest of the alphabet!

Improving Your Vocabulary

As a speaker, teacher, or leader, it’s important to be eloquent. It’s important to always have exactly the right word to explain the emotion or thought you are trying to convey. Here are some tips for improving your vocabulary. As a speaker, when it comes to language, you need to have the biggest arsenal. Remember that it takes more than learning a word to remember it. Language is built through repetition and use. Once you find new words, you’ve got to get into the habit of using them. Otherwise they’ll never truly “stick.” Also remember not to “flaunt” your newfound knowledge. Everyone likes speaking with someone who is knowledgeable and well-spoken, but no one likes someone who comes across as pompous or a show-off.

Read. This is important. Be it trade publications, novels, newspapers, or online… the more you read, and the wider the scope of genre, the more words you will be exposed to in your day-to-day life. Reading is processed very differently by the brain than listening is, so I recommend you steer away from podcasts or audiobooks in favor of the written word. Make sure to use a dictionary if you need to. Also keep a keen eye on the context of the words surrounding the words you learn. It’s as important to know how to use the words as it is to learn them.

Use a journal or blog. This doesn’t need to be expensive or time consuming, but writing down a few of your thoughts daily is a great way to capture thoughts and ideas, but can also allow you to try out new words you learn, to work them into your regular vocabulary, and to get used to using them.

Write letters or emails to friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances. Keep the words fresh in your mind as you reach out to important people in your life. It will be as good for your social life as it is for your vocabulary!

Learn a word a day. Either via app, website, calendar, or dictionary, this is a great technique, and very effective. To make it part of your routine, try tying it in with something else you do every day. Like learning the word while brushing your teeth.

Spend time with a thesaurus. Look up your favorite words, or the words you use the most often, and there you will find synonyms, similar words that can be used in many of the same circumstances.

Learn a language, or study root languages. Latin and Greek are the basis of many words in English. Once you understand the root words, it’s easier to make connections between words and use them yourself. The history is important. Language for English-speakers in influenced by many cultures, so learning another language can also be beneficial.
Play games. Crossword puzzles on the train, Scrabble with friends, or even games you can download to your phone or computer are great ways to unwind and pass the time, while still strengthening the muscle of your vocabulary. This is having fun and working at the same time! Challenge your peers, find new games, stretch your limits.

The Speaker’s Dictionary A – H

This is the first in a series of quick, no-nonsense tips and how-tos for being a better speaker, leader, and teacher. The alphabet of professional speaking.

Audience – It’s fitting that this comes first, as this is the most important thing to remember in any speech or workshop or lecture you give. What matters isn’t you, what matters is your ability to connect with people. To get them to understand what you’re trying to convey. Make sure that you always keep your audience at the forefront of every decision.

Blocking – This is a theater term that is also useful for presentations. It’s your movement on stage, how you use the space. This is also the position of equipment on stage, like microphones or podiums. Make sure you know the blocking ahead of time, or a least a good idea of what your space is like and how you intend to use it.

Concise – Make sure to keep you lecture, presentation, or speech short, sweet, and to the point. Keep in mind that the simple ways of speaking often allow for more emotion and power in what you say.

Data – Information you use to build your speech and present to back up your words. Make sure you know how to use this properly. The best way to handle data is to use as little of it as possible. Stories are better than facts. Eye contact is better than slides. Sometimes you need data, but try to keep it to one slide per three minutes of speaking.

Eloquence – It’s not always about using the most obscure words, or having the largest vocabulary. Sometimes, paring down a thought to it’s bare bones poetically is the most eloquent a speaker can be.

Focus – Always make sure you know what your core message is, and always make sure that you know why your audience will care about your core message. If you keep your focus on those two questions, and you keep your on-stage focus on the audience and connecting with them, making eye-contact with them, you’ll never veer off course.

Gestures – Make sure that you use them powerfully, but in moderation. Don’t be a “hand-talker” because that is distracting, and don’t keep your hands stiff at your sides, or you’ll seem cold and closed off. Keep a balance and be mindful of it.

Heckler – Sometimes, depending on your crowd, you will get someone who is angry or tired or who thinks they are funnier or smarter than you. These people may sometimes yell out in the middle of your speech. Like schoolyard bullies, it’s usually best to ignore them. Responding could set you off course and make you lose the thread of your speech, and joking and being mean back will undoubtedly backfire. Just don’t let them change your demeanor.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts with the rest of the alphabet!

Effective Body Language in Front of a Crowd

Standing in front of a group, on stage, or leading a workshop, requires not just language to be commanding. It also requires a presence. It requires the command of the room. It requires body language.

 Here are some tips for effective speaking in front of others, but not with your voice, but rather with what you are conveying with your body:

Use your gestures.

 Begin with a neutral position of standing tall with your hands at your sides. When you think about hand placement it will start to feel unnatural and strange, but just let them hang at your sides to begin with. Keep yourself open to the audience, don’t turn your back to them to view a slide. Keep your shoulders at a straight or very narrow angle to the back wall of the room. Make sure that the gestures you use are sparing, and defined. Think of how many presidents comedians can imitate just using the hand gestures that the president favored. That definition and decisive gesture can drive home the impact of your words. If you are a natural “hand-talker” (someone who illustrates their conversation with many hand gestures) don’t try to fight your nature and keep your hands still, because you will look unnatural, but do try to pare it down to the core gestures you use to make your point.

Manage your stress.

No one likes speaking to a crowd, but those that do it professional have learned to turn it into energy. To funnel the nervousness and loop it around into exhilaration. Energy is a good thing and keeps your presentation alive and engaging, but letting stress get the best of you will lead to vocal tics and other nonverbal behaviors that might undermine your words. Sports players are often known for jumping a little in place before going out to field, stadium, or court, and turning nervousness into excitement. Clench and release your fists to relieve tension, bounce a little on your toes, breathe deeply from your belly, look at a wall straight ahead of you. Exhale slowly and feel all of your muscles relax in a wave. Concentrate on your toes, then your feet, then your ankles, and relax your muscles with your mind all the way up your body. Think about being excited rather than nervous.

Use your space.

Ditch the podium, forget the chair. Walk around the stage and fill it with your presence. Don’t pace around in circles, but do use what you have to keep the energy going and to keep eyes following you. Humans are drawn to movement and are more likely to be engaged with you if you use the space you have. But when you key to a key point, stop and face the audience, stand still and possessively, and really drive your point home.

Power poses.

The most viewed TED Talk of all time is Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk about body language. It talked about how body language doesn’t just shape how other people perceive you, it can also shape you you perceive yourself. Puting energy and dynamic movement into posing and standing in a way that can convey power doesn’t just make others look at you differently, it can make you actually feel more powerful.

Watch the video here:

Shifting Your Perspective

Part of being a creative problem solver, and effective communicator, and a revolutionary thinker, is being able to shift your perspective from your own current perspective. But how do you get out from underneath your current mentality and into a new perspective? How to do instigate inspiration?

Literally shift your perspective.

Is there a chair in your home you never sit in? Do you stand on the same spot on the platform every day because you know where the doors to the train car will be? Have you spent your last eight days off  from work running errands in the city? Change your view. Seeing your home, your commute, your city differently can refresh your brain. We grow stale with time and repetition, and getting out into nature, taking a different route home in your car, or shopping at a different grocery store can liven up your brain, and introduce you to new experiences.

Widen your scope.

In a story of animal abuse, a puppy was thrown from a moving car, to what one can only assume was it’s death. Looking at the event in a small scale focuses on the precipitating event, which is mired in cruelty towards an animal. Looking at the event from a larger scale, instead of seeing the violence of the act, you see motorists stopping other cars for safety, someone going onto the highway to wrap the puppy up safely, and taking it to a humane shelter where a volunteer veterinarian patched it up for free. From this perspective you see the work of many, the selflessness of the story, and how each individual act of kindness far outweighs the one singular act of cruelty. The stock market is a wonderful place to get a shift in perspective as well. Commodities of pork bellies don’t just raise in price overnight. When you trace the product, you find that too much rain made the grain moldy and the moldy grain meant the pigs were underweight, and the underweight pigs didn’t bear any piglets, and the next generation of pigs is a greatly reduced population, raising the scarcity. The further back you trace the reasoning, the bigger the scope gets.

Your thoughts don’t define you, your behavior does.

Being in a rut of unique thought or a spiral of thinking negative things does not discount your creativity or ingenuity or the good thoughts that you think. We all have thoughts we wish we didn’t have, but the actions that we take with those thoughts is what defines us.

From the book The Art of Happiness: “Once there was a disciple of a Greek philosopher who was commanded by his Master for three years to give money to everyone who insulted him. When this period of trial was over the Master said to him, “Now you can go to Athens and learn Wisdom.” When the disciple was entering Athens, he met a certain wise man who sat at the gate insulting everybody who came and went. He also insulted the disciple, who burst out laughing. “Why do you laugh when I insult you?” said the wise man. “Because,” said the disciple, “for three years I have been paying for this kind of thing and now you give it to me for nothing.” “Enter the city,” said the wise man, “it is all yours…”

How to be Persuasive

Part of being a motivational speaker, keynote speaker, or workshop leader is being persuasive. It is also important in being a successful entrepreneur, a positive leader, and a good networker.  Motivational speaking is not just “speaking”, it requires convincing people to open their minds and see things from a different perspective. And so how does one become a persuasive person? How do you change minds, open up possibilities, and positively influence the people around you?

Use powerful words. People are primed to react more viscerally to certain words. Adding the word “because” to a request made people 33% more likely to let someone cut in line, for example. When talking about an incident you hear the word “accident” very differently than you hear the word “death”. No matter if they have negative or positive associations, words that evoke deep feeling like “fascist” or “ascend“ are more like to get people emotionally involved in what you are saying.

Amplification: If someone already has set opinions, forceful language and certainty -either in favor of or against- will amplify those opinions. If you express uncertainty you will soften those opinions. Using an emotional attack on a fact-based thought attitude will increase resistance, so a cognitive attack will be more effective. The same effect happens in reverse. Using a logical argument has little impact on a person who is emotional whilst an emotional argument is more powerful. Use this to your advantage. A little research on your client, audience, or the attitude of a boardroom can allow you to shape your words in a way that they will be more receptive to.

Talk about them. Ask about them. Don’t talk about “this company” or “the world” talk about “you.” Even if you don’t expect or want audience participation from a keynote speech, ask questions as part of the speech. Ask questions while preparing your ideas. Ask people about themselves before you leave. The more that others feel listened to and understood the more likely they are to listen to you, to give you more information about themselves, and to take what you have to say to heart.

Learn to explain simply, but without condescension. This one takes practice, but it is imperative for every person who wants to be influential. You may be explaining concepts to people who have no background knowledge of your field, or teaching someone new how to accomplish a certain process. To be truly persuasive you need to teach yourself the language of teaching and breaking down concepts in a way that makes the listener feel engaged and intelligent, not belittled and spoken down to. This is either an innate talent or requires lots of trial and error. One easy beginning is to explain how you learned this process, and the pitfalls you encountered and the mistakes you made, even if you make those situations up. Putting the onus on you, and not on them, can be very persuasive indeed.

In the end it’s about putting yourself into the perspectives of others and speaking from that vantage point. The better you are at understanding human nature, the more persuasive a speaker you can be.

Nurture Your Business Relationships

No matter how many connections you have, people you have dated, or how good at networking you are, without nurturing your business or personal relationships continuously, you cannot succeed long-term with those connections.

People are inherently self-focused. This is not negative in any way, it’s a survival instinct that allowed humans to live and evolve over time the way that we have. It is how we succeed and thrive in the modern world. But it does make it hard for people to connect and empathize as instinct. It takes a conscious effort to nurture your relationships.

The biggest question to ask yourself is a question of participation. Are you engaged in what you do? Do you show up on time? Do you respect the needs of others and the demands that their workloads and personal lives place on them? Is this relationship better off because you are in it? If the answer to that last question is no, then you are not participating in the relationship. If you are not bringing something specific to the table, then you cannot count on this relationship to have a solid foundation.

Collaborate with others. Ask for input. Everyone wants to feel both valued and heard. The more that you ask for help, listen to input, and recognize talent and hard work, the more likely it is that people are going to want to keep working with you. Empathize with others. Everyone has bad days and a behind-the-scenes story that helps define the decisions they make. If you can’t look at a problem or a relationship from the perspective of someone else, then it makes it much more difficult to be an asset in the relationship. You have to create less stress and nurture creativity in any relationship to strengthen it, and without empathy you’ll be hard-pressed to find ways to achieve that.

Treat everyone the same. This is one of the most undervalued relationship nurturing techniques. Sure, show deference to your CEO or your venture capitalists, but also treat them just as well as you treat the customers, the employees, and your vendors. The guy that comes in to fix the copier is just as human and just as valuable as the woman in the corner office. They can all be loyal to you, they can all provide you with social benefits, just as you can equally enrich and be vital to all of their lives in return. People often forget the people lower on the ladder, but if there is a plumber who has sixteen buildings all in need of toilet repair, the first visit that plumber will make is to the office where they are welcomed warmly, treated professionally, and where there has been a relationship nurtured. That intern that makes copies has valuable input and may well be in a powerful position that could help you later on in your career if they remember the way you helped them with a technical issue or encouraged them to take thier good idea directly to the boss.

It is an easy thing in any business to turn work into a numerical, analytical landscape that loses the focus of what all of us are here to do. Without people, there is no business of any kind. Without humanity, there cannot be success. Focus on providing resources and value to your relationships, and in turn accepting help and value from the other parties in those relationships, and you will always have a leg up, personally and professionally.