17 Apr 2017 · 6 min
Sally Koering Zimney argues that audiences arrive generous and curious, not hostile. A speaker's generosity back—showing care, authenticity, and genuine interest—determines whether that goodwill survives. Dismissive or false behavior kills it fast.
Hey everybody, and welcome to This Moved Me, a podcast about creating talks that move the world. With me, your host, Sally Koering Zimney. Together with some fabulous guests, we will have a casual conversation about the art of public speaking, because a good talk can move the world and it'll be fun. Yeah, I would think making alien cows meaningful. That's not a small task. I love your giggle. Wow. Oh my gosh, so waiting for everybody to figure out the alphabet. All right, Boomers, how's it going? Yes, so we are in our Speaking Truth series. We are on Speaking Truth number 6 today. We've had, oh gosh, some really big good ones. Speaking in authenticity equals connection. Perfection kills connection. Be an unspeaker. Stories are the pathway to empathy. Speaking brings us to the truth of ourselves. Bam! So true. And here we are today, speaking truth number 6: audiences are generous if we can be generous with them. And so This is mostly, I think, some good reminders, reminders for us on this. I don't think the audience comes into a talk determined to fold their arms and sink into their phones dreaming of being somewhere else. I think most of the time audiences come in neutral at the very least, and often interested or curious. And I think even I've seen a lot of times Audiences be in awe of the person who is willing to get up and speak, the craft and the courage. And I think audiences are hoping that this is going to be cool, right? This is— this thing that's about to happen, that they're about to co-create together, isn't going to be boring. But that, I think, the difference between The crossed arms and— and of course this is not always true, but I think the difference is often between the crossed arms and the open curiosity is how we approach the audience. If we show a moment of disregard for them, if you— if they smell falseness in any way, if you carelessly ignore what's happening in the room, if you don't take the time to connect and show interest and and who these people are, well, their generosity will begin to wane. Because people's time and attention is such a gift. It's often right there waiting for us if we can approach that moment with care and love. Audiences don't automatically love us. We have to love them first. They're feeling us out from moment one. And so from moment one, it is up to us to be open, connected, interested, curious, generous. That's my word, generous. Love up your audience. Love them, not because they fill out feedback forms and their approval means something to you, and sometimes it really, really does, but because they're people and you are about to ask them to join you, walk with you in this experience. And your hope should be that it changes all of you in some way. Viewing that experience with that lens can be really powerful and change the way we approach our audiences. So some questions for you: What do you do to create that initial connection with your audience? Are you up in front taking care of your stuff? Are you out connecting with the people? Do you start with generosity or wait to see if your audience is generous with you first? And just remember, you have held them captive for this time. And so my feeling is that it's really up to you to reach out there first. Go meet them where they're at before you can ask them to come meet you where you're at. All right, that is number 6. We have one more in the Speaking Truth series, and that is this: if you want to be transformative, there are no shortcuts. Hey-oh! Oh man. I've said that a lot. I'm sure you all know that because we live it. This is a good reminder. If you want to experience this series via email, then you can kind of keep it for yourself and look at it. The email series has some awesome resources included in it to really help you bring all these things to life, some other Episodes that I reference to that can dig into these things deeper, things to read, different blog posts I found that help illuminate these ideas, downloadable resources, all kinds of good stuff. So the email series, you can, if you want in on that, just go over to my website, thismovedme.com, and you will see it there. Awesome team. This is so great. One more, one more tomorrow. Let's do this. Bam! Hey Movers, it's Sally, and man, it's sounding echoey in here today. Hmm. Oh well, going with it.
