Today I saw a perfect example of how an MC can make a speaker better.

I spoke at the client event called KLD for ASKO, the largest food distributor in Norway and the MC was Anne Lindmo, a famous Norwegian talkshow host.

During the whole day Anne made an effort to ask the audience to give the speaker whom she had just introduced a warm hand as he/she got up on stage.

She did it using a series of different phrases of course so that it did not feel repetitive, but every single time the instruction was basically the same: “Let’s make the speaker feel welcome by giving him/her a warm applause.”

For the first speaker of the day she said to the audience: “Let’s give the speaker a heartfelt KLD welcome!”

For the guest speaker from England she said: “So let’s give him a warm Norwegian hand to welcome him to our country.”

For the speaker after lunch she said something like: “Now that we are all feeling happy and content after a great meal, let’s use that positive energy to put our hands together for the next speaker.”

And so on.

And important to note: she did it in a way that made the audience feel that she really cared for the speaker feeling welcomed and at ease.

So what happened?

The audience felt the MC’s genuine care for the speakers and happily complied with her request for a warm applause.

The speakers felt the warm applause and walked up on the stage a bit more relaxed and at ease.

The audience got better and more enjoyable speeches.

I often go up to the MC before my speech to double check how they are going to introduce me, but I also take the opportunity to ask him or her to help me out by suggesting that the best way the MC can help me is to end the introduction with instructing the audience to give the speaker a warm welcome.

But today I did not do that, because with Anne I already knew that she would do that.

And sure enough, when she introduced me she introduced me as “the obligatory Swede”.

(A bit of background, it is very common for Norwegian conferences to invite at least one Swede to speak, in fact it’s so common that it almost feels like they feel they “have” to have one Swede speaking. So of course the audience laughed at her introduction of me as “the Swede” and I walked up on stage with the audience happy from laughing a bit and I could in my speech play on the fact that “as the non-norwegian Swede” I could tell them “the hard truth”. It worked very well.)

I got off to a good start with a happy audience because the MC made sure the audience liked the speaker even before the speaker got up on stage.

The next time you speak make sure to go up to the MC and (gently and friendly) instruct her/him to ask the audience to give you a warm welcome. It’s one of the easiest ways, as a speaker, to get off to a good start.

I regularly  meet with fellow speaker and authors to learn.

Learn how they think, work, write, promote, present and so on.

The last two days I met with Avi Liran and Kenneth Kwan, both Singapore based author and speakers who have just published their new books.

Avi on the theme of Optimism and Kenneth on Small steps to big changes.

I learnt about book writing, book publishing,and book launching from both of them. (And yes, I have written, self published and launched 9 (soon 10) books, but you can always learn new things, and in many ways I still consider myself a beginner in these areas.

Looking at yourself as a beginner and humbly learning from others while you take small, positive steps to improve yourself is a recipe for success.

When is the last time you sat down with a fellow speaker/author and picked their brain?

I do it (in one way or another) multiple times per week.

The speakers/authors who say they do not have time to do that I think undervalue the value that comes from taking time off to learn from others.

Today I had the pleasure of having fellow professional speaker Gabor George Burt over to my house which inspired me to write a blog post about collaboration.

I first met Gabor when we shared the stage at a huge conference in Ukraine where we spoke for 5000+ business people. We kept in contact and when he visited Singapore today we met up.

One of the things we discussed was a conference in Dubai that he is organising and where he has proposed me as one of the keynote speakers.

During our talk Gabor shared a few ways he collaborates with other speakers.

Designing as well as keynoting events. (Like the upcoming event in Dubai that he is designing and which he invited me to speak at.
Collaborative client engagements. (Where he partners with other speakers/thought-leaders to co-facilitate leadership workshops for clients, thereby providing them with a valuable combination of know-how. He does this, for example, with Ken Schmidt, global speaker and former Harley-Davidson executive)
Joint articles. (For example his current collaboration with Jamie Anderson on co-authoring articles about the role of humor in leadership)

And so on.

All the examples above that he told me about inspired me to want to collaborate even more with other speakers. But it was a story he told me around a small change he initiated at one conference he spoke at that really got my attention.

He told me how he had been one of the speakers at the World Marketing Forum and how the organizers had arranged separate evening programs for all the speakers, even though they were all staying at the same hotel.

When Gabor realized this, he suggested to the organizers: “Why don’t we all have dinner together, so we can get to know each other and share stories?”

So they did. And of course they all really enjoyed it.

As Gabor said: “In our job we have the advantage of sharing the stage with some fascinating people – we should use that. Use that be inspired to learn new things, to hear new stories, to be more stimulated.”

And it’s so true.

Many event organisers seems to think that speakers are like bulls and that you can not put two speakers to close to each other or the speaker egos will clash. (And yes, the speaker industry has some mega egos) But most speakers are genuinely curious and want to learn, so by putting the speakers together you actually help inspire both speakers.

Putting a bunch of speakers in the same care is just a small, symbolic example of collaboration, but it shows how a mindset of learning from each other and looking at other speakers as colleagues – not competitors – works to your advantage.

Speakers might often be lone wolfs, but we can all still benefit from hunting in a pack …