One of your key aims in Public Speaking is to make your speech connect emotionally with the audience regardless of the setting. This especially includes business presentations. Too often a business presenter falls into the trap of believing that their speech need only contain statistics to move the minds of their audience. In reality the only thing achieved in a “statistical” monologue is the audience take the opportunuity for an extra twenty minnutes sleep!

At this point let me make one thing clear. I’m not against statistics or facts as the basis of the point you are trying to make when delivering your speech. Actually I’m all for it – there’s nothing worse than a speaker who moves the mind of an audience with pure emotion and no substance. However, the tendency of most speakers is to stay safely in the land of statistics, leaving stories for someone else. Assuming that their audience will be as excited about their statistics as they are. Often the excitement for their stats spills into their PowerPoint slides where they share every detail in carefully constructed bullet points which leave no room for the readers imagination. And, the detail on the slides converts audiences from listeners to readers.

With my background and experience working with people from the IT industry I have seen countless presentations and speeches that match the description above. In reality it doesn’t take a lot of effort to take a statistical monologue and convert it into a speech that will emotionally connect with your audience. All it needs is stories… not the once upon a time kind, but the everyday recollection of events that occur around you every day. After all your statitics are based on real world data (hopefully) – and when you find the stories associated with the real world data you find the emotion that your audience will connect with and be moved by when you share the story.

When you start to pay attention you’ll see that there are literally hundreds of stories for you to choose from based upon the events that happen around you. Create a simple story file and note them down so when you need a story for your next speech or presentation you have the weapons at hand that will connect you emotionally to your audience so you can change their thinking.

Happy Speaking

Mark.