Being a relatable public speaker is one of the best ways to get engagement and powerfully persuade your audience. Even with the most interesting content, getting your audience to relate to you can be one of the hardest things to achieve.
Why is this?
In all my years of coaching leaders and public speakers, I’ve concluded that when people step up onto the stage, they find it hard to really be themselves and almost ‘humanize’ what they are presenting.
Being relatable simply means being yourself; presenting in a way that is authentic and true to yourself with an audience who through their own experiences, can relate to you in a deep and meaningful way.
Here are some of the ways you can make your speech more relatable:
Share your WHY behind what you do
WHAT you do is never as interesting as WHY you do it, so try to weave in how you landed to where you are today. What makes you get out of bed each day? What drives you to outperform and really add value to your clients?
When your audience are listening to your speech, your WHY can be translated into a story, introducing characters that have influenced your life and brought you to where you are today.
Get personal
Some people find it hard to scratch below the surface of their business persona and share real-life stories about themselves, yet this is what makes you more interesting as a speaker.
Don’t be afraid to let your quirks shine through! (heck, we all have them!) and you will establish better credibility and ethos, and your audience will trust what you have to say
if they can see you as a real person.
Remember, personal is good when creating relatable content.
Address issues your audience are concerned with
Understand who your audience are and what they are concerned with. Why are they in that room today to listen to what you have to say? Where are they in their lives, career, aspirations?
Don’t always assume the audience has the same views and opinions as you. They may have cultural or geographic biases that mean they won’t be able to relate to what you have to say. You may need to simplify your language to appeal to a cross-cultural audience or present your content using a different tone of voice to keep people interested and engaged.
Be disruptive and thought-provoking
Some of the most memorable speeches I’ve heard have been thought-provoking and made me think outside of my own box.
How can you challenge your audience to think in new ways? How are you going to be memorable long after you’ve delivered your speech? After all, this is the key to being a credible, persuasive, and relatable public speaker.
If you want to delve deeper into the art of persuasion and become a credible public speaker, enroll in my online course “The Art of Persuasive Speaking in Global Business.”
