When you are on stage speaking to an audience, you have several different jobs to do. And just like Liam Neeson, these jobs require a very particular set of skills.
Here are a few of those skills you need to have to be an effective speaker:
You can get out of your own head and focus on what your audience needs.
You can see a story in the most random things you encounter during the day.
You can tell that story in a way that transports your audience back to that moment with you.
You can match your body language to your message so there are no distracting discrepancies between the two.
You can transmute fear into excitement and use it to fuel your highest energy levels on stage.
Luckily you don’t have to have all these skills when you start out - because like any other skill, they can be learned! All you need is regular practice and effective feedback from a coach to continually improve.
While these are all great topics that I could do a week long training on, in this episode I want to hone in on the one skill that can help you connect with your audience more deeply than all the other skills combined.
That skill is telling a story that brings your audience back through time with you. Because storytelling is what creates deep connection between a speaker and their audience. As the listener, being able to put themself in your shoes lets them live vicariously through you, and it lets them recognize themself and their own struggles in the story - which makes them feel less alone in this world.
A highly effective way to do this is to use what I like to call snapshots. A snapshot is a highly detailed moment in a story where you paint a picture so clearly that your listener is transported to that moment. Snapshots are the magical parts of a story that you will always remember, even years later.
Let me show you what that looks like. Watch for the snapshots as I tell my story.
I remember being in an audience of several hundred people at a personal development event and listening to this incredible speaker telling a story about a skunk with a jar stuck on his head. I felt his anxiety of being sprayed, his shock at finding this skunk with a jar stuck to his head, his determination to overcome his fear and rescue this starving creature, and his eventual triumph when he finally was able to de-jar that poor skunk. I felt like I was there with him that day, and even more, I felt inspired to be like him. I felt the first stirrings of wanting to get on stage myself, and it was all because I felt so deeply connected to him through his story telling skill.
I soon decided to do something about those stirrings and found myself attending every speaking event I could find, first as a spectator and then as a student. In October of 2017, I was at a speaking competition in Sandy to not only hear the speakers, but more importantly to me, hear the feedback from the judges. I wanted to know what worked and what didn’t so I could follow my new dream of becoming a speaker.
This event was in a crowded side room of a bar with 4 rows of banquet tables at which we had just finished our lunches of burgers or grilled chicken salads. The judges had just given their feedback to the final contestant then after a short recess came back to announce the winner. I found it to be just as helpful as I had hoped it would be, and was very happy I had come.
Before we all stood up to leave, the EmCee stood up and announced that they had one spot left for next month’s contest and held up the clipboard, inviting anyone to come up and claim that spot. It was at that moment that I learned that sometimes your body can take over when you want something badly enough, because suddenly I was up and making a beeline for that clipboard to sign up for the contest in a month.
I was weaving my way through the clumps of excited people who were chatting and saying their goodbyes when I apparently blacked out because the next thing I knew I was a few feet from the exit with no memory of how I got there. I am assuming fear took back control of my body and was trying to get me out of there as quickly as possible before I got to that clipboard!
Luckily there is a restroom right next to the exit so I pivot and escape to the ladies room. There is a long row of wooden-doored stalls to my right and a long row of sinks to my left. I randomly fling one stall door open and flop myself down on a toilet to begin one of the most epic inner arguments of my entire life, going back and forth between future speaker Kelly and scared out of her mind Kelly.
During this 10 minute struggle with myself, I am serenaded by a chorus of flushing toilets, the deafening racket of the old-fashioned pump handle paper towel dispenser, and the occasional psshhhhhh psshhhhhhh of the industrial orange air freshener going off somewhere overhead.
Finally my future speaker wins and I stride out of that restroom like a woman on a mission to find the man with the clipboard. Just between you and me, I was also secretly hoping that I had been in there for so long that everyone had packed up and left. But there he was, pen in hand, looking at the clipboard, his back to me.
I brace myself and say “Hey!” He turns around and says oh hey! I thought I saw you leave. Did you forget something? Yeah! I forgot I want to be a speaker! Is that spot still open? I am still so scared of public speaking at this point in time that I burst into HTT. Hysterical tears of terror. After a quick flash of alarm on his face, the man with the clipboard tries to comfort me and when that doesn’t work, he gingerly holds out the pen to me and says “Well, we’d love to hear from you!” I take the pen and somewhere sign my name through the Niagara Falls of tears rushing down my face and in that moment I am fairly sure that poor man thinks he will never lay eyes on me again.
But the contest arrives and I show up ready to win - or at least hoping to not get booed off the stage. When he calls my name I nearly throw up and I start across the room like a zombie towards that stage of doom. About halfway to the stage I realize he kept talking after he called my name, and I focus on what he is saying in case he is giving me new instructions or something. But what I hear him say is, as I start the climb up the rickety narrow staircase to the stage nearly as tall as me, is this. You guys, Kelly left and came back last month to tell me she had to have this spot. She was so scared she was crying hysterically but she’s here today! She has got to be terrified out of her skull so give her a warm welcome!!!!
Now utterly humiliated, I walk out onto that very high stage (did I mention I’m scared of heights?) and go right up to the front edge, the tips of my shoes handing over the edge in thin air. The spotlight is hot and very bright, and I avoid raising my eyes too high for fear of getting blinded. The judges are lined up at a table right in front of the stage, staring at me expectantly. I am holding the microphone in one hand, and playing with the bottom button of my jean jacket with the other. I scan the audience and take a deep breath. And then much to my horror, I realize that I have completely forgotten how my speech starts. So I stand there and I try to remember it. Any of it!
You know how sometimes a speaker comes out on stage and they just stand there for a few seconds and look at the audience and you can feel the power of that pause and you just know this speech is going to change your life before you’ve heard a word of it?
I was hoping that that’s what everyone was thinking was happening - that I was just pausing for a super powerful effect! Before that pause stretched too long and became awkward, I made myself open my mouth and say something. Anything! The words that came out were “This has been the worst year of my life. And also the best. And it all started when I got fired in January.”
I went on to give a version of my speech I had never given before and I watched as my words made people laugh. And then made a few of them cry. And I realized that becoming a speaker was no longer a dream. It was my reality and I was actually doing it.
Let me pull the curtain back now and talk about what just happened. I told you a story full of snapshots in order to transport you back in time with me. Were you able to recognize what some of my snapshots were?
Hearing the skunk story
Weaving my way through the clumps of excited, chatting people
Blacking out on my way to the clipboard
The bathroom argument with the chorus of flushing toilets
The humiliating introduction
Hanging my toes off the edge of the stage
Those are several of the snapshots from my story. But what if I had told the story without any snapshots? It would have gone like this:
I heard this guy speak and he was so good I decided to become a speaker. I went to a speaking contest and after it was over I ended up entering the contest for the following month. I was pretty scared and had trouble remembering my speech, but I did it anyway and ended up winning and the rest is history.
That version is just data. No emotion, no connection, just information. That is why snapshots are so important! Incorporate snapshots into your speeches and you will be the speaker everyone remembers!
If you want to get on stage, or be a better speaker than you already are, the key is storytelling! Don’t know which of your stories to include in your signature presentation? Let me help! Download my workbook for free and use it to find those stories that will resonate with your audience and get you to your goal of changing lives from the stage. Get it here: