Ask This One Question To Be A Better Speaker

Want to be able to powerfully speak to your audience? Ask yourself the question, “How do I want to be powerful?”

I don’t know if you’ve ever posed this question to yourself, but you should!

We’re all human, right?! As humans, we’re often so caught up in our own thoughts we don’t even consider how we want to be powerful.

We don’t think about how we want to make an impact on other people in day-to-day situations. Many of us don’t even realize we have the choice.

SPEAK DELIBERATELY!

When I say SPEAKER, I mean anyone who is using words to speak to their audience and I take it one step further with my niche audience to include “with the expectation of getting paid”.

Whether we call ourselves speakers, entrepreneurs, content creators, experts, influencers, etc., we are all SPEAKERS.

Knowing how you want to be powerful, how you want to impact — and make your audience feel — is a MUST for people who rely on speaking-to-sell.

In 2017, a cooking school asked me to speak at their graduation. They left the topic up to me, but said it should be “inspiring”. I remember thinking, “What is the most valuable subject I could speak to these students about?”

What could I share with them that could impact every interaction they had going forward?

What could I tell them that would make it easier for them to interact with other people ?

What tool could they use in their “adulting” arsenal? What would help them through the ups and downs of love and hate, advantage and adversity, fairness and inequity, and even everyday bad news with more skill, grace, and fortitude?

I realized the question I was asking myself about them was THE GIFT, the pearl of wisdom, I could give them.

I wanted to encourage the students to be intentional with how they want to make other people feel.

We get to decide how we want to be powerful when we are speaking-to-sell to our listeners.

Think about it. We speak for a specific reason. We have an intention in mind. We want to motivate, inspire, entertain, teach, etc. We want to make an impact on our audience. We want our audience to do or feel something in response to hearing us talk.

WHAT SPEAKERS WANT AUDIENCES TO DO

MOTIVATE => I want the audience to take action.

INSPIRE => I want people in the audience to consider changing their minds.

ENTERTAIN => I want to delight the audience.

TEACH => I want to help the audience solve a problem.

There are many possibilities of impacts and results for you your audience. You can certainly have more than one for your presentations.

I’ve listened to many speakers who are unclear about their intention and how they want to make an impact. As a result, their speeches don’t have the effect they want.

Being clear and intentional about how you want to be powerful is an essential skill as a speaker. When you can guarantee the effect you’re going to have, you can bank on getting paid as a speaker.

I never get up to speak without considering what effect I want to have on my audience. So can you.

When I sat down to write this blog post, I asked myself, what impact do I want to have on this reader? How do I want you to feel after reading this?

In this instance, I want to inspire you to be clear with your intention. I want you to be vigilant with your words and your emotions so you get the results you want from speaking. I want you to use this skill to get paid for your expertise and for solving people’s problems.

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ASK THIS QUESTION. REPEAT. REPEAT. REPEAT.

How do I want to be powerful?

How do I want to be powerful?

How do I want to be powerful?

Most people never ask themselves. It never occurs to them and didn’t always occur to me.

We are 98% self-absorbed beings.

For the most part, we react.

If we happen to ask ourselves a question, it’s “What can I get?” or “What’s in it for me (WIIFM)?”

Marketers always talk about WIIFM. The rule is to always write advertising copy that speaks to the benefits buyers are going to receive. What will they get? The features of the product you’re selling are secondary. Give ‘em what they want, sell ‘em what they need!

Today, I ask myself and other speakers, How do you want to be powerful? over and over, because it’s so important. But, I was not always this way.

I WAS A HUMAN TIME BOMB!

From the womb, I was pretty much the temper tantrum QUEEN — a toddling, teetering time bomb. I reacted to life with a bang! As long as things went my way, I was calm, even happy . . . some of the time. BUT, when things came up that I thought were unfair or if anyone WRONGED ME? BOOM! The Jackie bomb would go off. I threw myself on the floor crying and screaming bloody murder!

This happened with close relations. Oy, my poor mother! My brothers loved to poke the Jackie beast because I put on an amazing show.

It also happened at school, but only on the first day of school in a new school. Meeting new kids terrified me. To avoid them, I’d throw a tantrum and refuse to enter the classroom. I’d spend the day weeping in the hallway. Oy, my poor mother!

It didn’t matter to me who saw my outbursts. Until the school bully threatened to beat me up for crying in the hallway on the first day of school in fourth grade. GULP! That ended my hallway theatrics.

I calmed down a bit as I grew up, but my emotions could go full flamethrower in a flash.

I had a very volatile, but short marriage in Australia where I blew up at my husband every day. We were like fire and petrol — that’s what they call gasoline down under.

We owned a cafe, book, music store called “City Cafe” in St. Kilda, Melbourne, that had a backyard. To exercise some sense of decorum when the cafe was open and he’d piss me off, I’d summon him to the backyard and go off on him.

The problem was physics. I have a mighty set of lungs on me and my voice would carry over the building. People on the sidewalk could hear me losing my mind!

A dear friend told me how scared she was of me when she first met me after she heard me screaming at him in the backyard. That was a huge wake-up call for me. I realized that my temper made me appear crazy. I didn’t want to scare strangers.

RULE YOUR EMOTIONS

I realized I was letting my emotions rule me. If I wanted to choose  how I make people feel, I had to choose my reactions rather than let my negative emotions run me.

After I left my husband, I decided to change myself. It was NOT EASY. Expressing my negative reactions was like breathing to me  (LOL! It seems funny now — oh, how I have changed), after all, I’d been that way for decades. Choosing to react differently was like exercising a muscle I never used.

I focused on my negative emotions because no one ever accused me of scaring anyone with JOY! Lol! I forced myself to make different choices.

I decided when I got angry, I’d walk away until I calmed down. Once my fury subsided, I’d return and discuss the situation like a reasonable person. After choosing to walk away over and over and over, I was able to stop walking away. In the much, much longer run, I stopped even feeling like I would explode. The instant reaction almost disappeared.

That was the first time I thought about how I wanted to be powerful, but I didn’t call it that. I didn’t realize that by choosing my action and my reaction, I was choosing how I wanted to impact others. I was deciding how I wanted to make people feel.

BE STRATEGIC WITH YOUR EMOTIONS

Speakers, who want to sell, need to be able to express a range of emotions to communicate well. You have to feel them yourself in order to make your audience feel them. You also want to be strategic with your emotions. Ask yourself questions like:

• How do I want to be powerful?

• How do I want to make my audience feel?

• What results do I want?

• What do I want the audience to do once they’ve heard me speak?

• What feelings does the audience need to have to heed my call to action?

• Do I want my audience to feel happy, scared, loved, hated, talked down to, or empowered and uplifted?

When I write or plan a video, a show, a speech, a presentation, etc., I always ask myself how do I want to impact my audience? When I craft my presentation, I write it by mapping it out by emotions (LINK). I want to present my message in a way that is sticky so they remember it and me.

For me, speaking to an audience is a privilege. It’s like the passing of two presents. The audience gives me the gift of their presence and attention. I give them the gift of my presentation. I don’t take any of it for granted. I don’t want them to feel I’m wasting their time.

Imagine how you could use this tool to be a more effective at speaking-to-sell?

On the flip side, consider that every time you speak to an audience, you are making some sort of impact. Your audience is going to have an experience of your presentation. You get to choose what that is. Be deliberate about what you want them to experience. You don’t want to be confusing, dull, preachy, antagonistic, etc.

CLEAR INTENTIONS = MOST IMPACT

Have a clear intention about how you want to have an impact on your audience. Use it to guide every step of your interactions with others in pursuit of your speaking goals. Use it to frame questions you should ask yourself:

• How do you want to be powerful in your niche?

• How do you want people to feel when they see your website, your one-sheet, biz cards, etc?

• How do you want the prospective decision-makers who might hire you to feel when you’re pitching them?

• What impact do you want your speeches or presentations to have on your listeners?

IT WILL NOT WORK WITH EVERYBODY

I don’t want you to think that being deliberate is going to give you the ability to impact every audience member. Your aim is to make a greater impact on people in your audience who resonate with your message.

Don’t concern yourself with the people who don’t get the value of what you’re saying. The aim is to be valuable to the people who want the solution you’re offering for the problem they’re having.

Don’t worry about appealing to people who are outside your target audience. It is a waste of effort and energy in the speaking business.

NO ONE MASTERS THIS!

Again, this is like exercising a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger and more natural it becomes for you. I don’t sail through life being an emotional superhero. Believe me, there are still moments where I go from zero to hell bitch in less than sixty seconds. Hey, life is challenging and people suck (this includes me).

But I dial it back by pausing, biting my tongue, and thinking, what experience do I want to put forth in this moment? It’s work, but it’s worth it.

Pssssst, there are times when the hell bitch is completely the experience I want to bring forth and I do. It’s possible that the customer service representatives from a certain cell phone company (that rhymes with Horizon) may have my number on a “NEVER PICK UP THE PHONE” list. I’m okay with that.

It’s rare that a speaker would want to put the fear of God into their audience. The exception might be a fire and brimstone evangelistic preacher. Powerful speakers use the full range of their Speaker’s Emotional Arsenal. They use whatever it takes to have their desired impact on their audience.

PRACTICE MAKES YOU BETTER, NOT PERFECT

I learned when I trained to be a coach, that the most flexible person in the room has the most power. You can’t choose how other people are going to react to you but you have control over your actions and reactions.

I approach all speeches, presentations, workshops, writing, etc. from this point of view. I use it when I have uncomfortable human interactions that I have to deal with as well.

There will be challenges and opportunities that come up on your speaking journey. Look at them through the lens of the impact you want to have on your listeners.  Use how YOU want to be powerful to help you become a valued, well-paid speaker.

Jackie Gordon

I've been creating outside-the-box ways to get paid for speaking and performing since 1998 and even won awards! I've been coaching speakers to speak more effectively for years. Now I want to help them get paid for it.

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