Ep 195 How to Speak in Front of a Big Crowd July 13, 2016

How do you speak in front of a large audience or crowd?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in Life. Speaking with T.J. walker.

This is not a question that I receive that often, but I often ask my clients before a day of presentation training, where are you least comfortable speaking? And the number one response is, when I have to speak in front of a large audience, I get extra nervous. Now, of course, this is all relative. Once I spoke to a leader of an extremely large democracy. He was vying for prime minister, and I asked him, I said, where are you comfortable? Where are you uncomfortable? He said, TJ I'm very comfortable speaking to small audiences, but I get nervous speaking in front of large audiences. And I said, guess what? You're completely normal. Everybody says that. But then he said, yeah, T.J. i'm very comfortable speaking to small audiences of 5,000 people or fewer, but I get nervous speaking to 100,000. Well, that's not quite as common as I told him, but the principle is the same. Now, I'm going to go into a lot of ins and outs today of specific tips. The biggest thing you have to learn is that you just don't want to change what you do. If you speak to one person, one human being effectively, and that person finds you interesting, you already have all the skills you need to speak to a thousand people, five thousand or ten thousand people. Now, saying that and hearing that from me is easier than actually doing it. I'll give you more practical tips in just a moment.

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So here's what happens. According to evolutionary biologists, they have a school of thought I happen to agree with. It is that as human beings, we are animals and we are biologically programmed to fear certain things as a safety mechanism. If you are in primitive times, if you're in a jungle and you're isolated from the herd, it's just much easier. Especially if you're in a wide open place in the middle of a field or plain where everyone can see you, every animal can see you. You're a lot more likely to be eaten by a lion or a tiger or bear alligator, and therefore your body should be nervous. So your body starts sending adrenaline through your whole body. You start sweating in your palms of your hands and feet. So you can run and grab vines and run through sand, get traction to get away from that animal about to eat you. So that's how we are hardwired from a biological standpoint. The problem is of course, if you have to give a presentation to an annual sales conference because you're the head of sales, you're the CEO, having adrenaline in you, helping you run isn't going to help you. You still have to give that presentation. So these ancient biological urges are not going to help you at all. So a lot of people in my shoes, presentation coaches say, well, just be yourself, be natural, be relaxed. Completely worthless advice. The problem is if you are up on a stage and you're in front of whatever you consider to be a large audience, if you've never spoken to more than 10 people, then 50 people is going to make you. That group size is going to make you extremely nervous. If you often speak to 100 or two and now you're speaking to 500 or a thousand people, that's going to seem really large and that's going to make you nervous. So being natural is to be nervous. And when you are nervous, you tend to freeze. Your body freezes. Your voice, your hand motions, your facial expressions, you don't think as clearly. You may have an out of body experience, you may be thinking, get me out of this. So everything you do in normal conversation is gone. You're acting normal, you're acting yourself. It's just you're acting yourself when you're scared. So the whole key to being effective in front of large audiences is you have to be yourself, but you have to be the way you are when you are speaking to just a couple of people. And by that I mean conversational. Your hands move, your face moves, you're expressive. Sometimes your voice goes louder, sometimes softer, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. These natural variation things that can make you interesting to talk to with a friend or family member or spouse for hours, perhaps maybe even a week long trip across the country. Once you strip all those things up because you're nervous, that's when it becomes painful to listen to you. That's why if you've ever watched politicians speak at a political convention, now you think of politicians as experienced public speakers. But most politicians who are on the stage at a major national convention and are speaking in front of thousands of people in the room, millions of people watching on TV from home or offices, they're scared because that's the largest audience they've ever spoken to and that's why they sound robotic, they're reading teleprompters quite often. That's not the problem. The problem is they've stopped doing all the normal things they do when it comes to Communicating and speaking, they become robotic, flat. They start reading. And whether you're reading a teleprompter or the script, it's often a big, big problem. I'm going to give you some tips in just a moment on how to solve these problems so you can come across as completely relaxed regardless of the size audience you're speaking to.

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Number one way to be relaxed when you're giving a speech to a large audience is actually have the confidence in knowing you're giving a great presentation, a great speech. The only way to do that, as you've heard me say before, you've got to practice on video to the point where you like your speech. Now, to take it to the next level. For a really large crowd, try to get to the venue and practice on the very same stage in advance. Now, if you're speaking at a major political rally at the mall in Washington D.C. in front of 100,000, I understand you might not be able to rehearse there. But if you're speaking at a convention hotel and it's in front of a thousand people, you probably could get in the night before or the morning of it, rehearse on the actual stage. Get used to the size of the stage, the scope, how big the room is, what you can see, what you can't see when the lights are up. And you'll feel much, much more comfortable when you're giving the presentation. The next thing that's going to help you dramatically when you're giving a speech to a large audience is try to build direct eye contact with people. Look at one person, even if you're speaking to 20,000. Look at one person at a time. Have a private one on one conversation with that one person for just a couple sentences, just one thought, and then go to another person and mix it up randomly. Don't be going all over the place constantly having your head go back and forth like the top of a water sprinkler in a lawn. That will make you look nervous. And psychologically, if you're thinking, oh my gosh, I'm seeing all 20,000 people at once, that's going to scare you. It will actually calm you down to look at one person and act as if you're speaking to one person. Now, I'm going to define for the purposes of our discussion here, a large audience as anything over more than 100 people. Therefore, I'm going to Assume you have a microphone. And this is important because that's the only way most people will hear you, number one. Number two, it means you shouldn't yell. Now, if you're used to speaking to five people and all of a sudden you're speaking to 20 people, you probably don't have a microphone. So you might have to speak a little louder than normal. But one of the big problems that happens to politicians, happens to other people, is when they are in a room, a convention hall, a theater, a large venue, and they see a lot of people, even when they're microphone, they start speaking like this under the erroneous belief that they have to speak loud enough for people to hear them. Well, no, you don't if you have a microphone, because many of you are they thousands of miles away from me right now. But I don't have to yell. I have a microphone and you have a speaker. That's how you're hearing me. It's the same thing when you're speaking in the room with people and it's a large room and there are speakers and microphones. So don't yell. It's human nature to do that because you see someone who's 200, 300, 400ft away from you, so psychologically feels natural to project your voice. But by doing that, you're going to come across as yelling. Your voice will be flat, boring and monotone. Don't do it. Use a conversational tone of voice. The next big thing that trips people up is because the stakes are higher, the audience is larger, they feel like they have to play it safe. So people who normally speak just from notes or from a few bullet points on a single sheet of paper, feel the need to write out everything in their speech. Well, that makes it a lot harder. I'm not saying you can't do that, but if you write everything out, the stakes, well, the challenges get much bigger. Because if you try to read it, it's too easy to go flat and boring and monotone. The other big problem is when people write their speech, they tend to write it for their eyes, not their ears. They tend to strip out their stories, their anecdotes, their personal experiences. No, don't do it. The best speakers, whether you're talking about Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton, they have a little secret. They don't speak any differently. Talking to 10,000 people that they do for two people. And they use examples and stories and case studies throughout their presentation. Do that and you will be a huge success, no matter how huge your audience is. I'M TJ Walker. May all of your presentations in life, large or small, be a huge success.

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