Here is an analogy that I came up with today: Speaking is like surfing and the audience is the wave.

Let me explain what I mean:
Get ahead of the audience and you crash. (Just like a surfer will crash if he or she gets ahead of the wave.)

Get behind the audience and they get bored and move on, leaving you dead in the water (Just like a surfer will be left behind if the wave moves on without him or her.)

But ride the audience just perfectly and the energy that is in this big group of people will propel you forward and give you the ride you are looking for. (Just like how a great surfer will ride a wave.)

It also means that just as a surfer need to become one with a wave, we as speakers need to become one with our audience.

Today I caught a great wave.

I did a speech for the global marketing team of Tata Communications who had gathered for a conference in beautiful Kerala, India.

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Before my speech my client had warned me about how the speaker that they had had the day before had not been able to connect with the audience and how that had resulted in a bad session with a disconnected group of people not listening to the speaker.

Hearing that the previous speaker had had a tough time might not be what you would like to hear just before you go up to give a speech, but for me it worked as positive fuel. It reminded me of the need to connect with the audience and ride through the speech together with them.

So what did I do?

I focused on really feeling the energy of the room, listened in on the mood of the group and pushed the audience just so far as they would let me.
And just like how a surfer needs to paddle fast in the beginning to catch the wave a speaker needs to build up just enough momentum in the beginning of the speech to get just a little bit ahead of the audience – but not too much – so that the audience will want to carry the speaker forward.

It worked.

The feedback from the client afterwards was : “I think this is the first time ever we have had a standing ovation at one of our conferences. (Fredrik is) scary likeable, and it was an amazing session.”

I am happy the client was happy – but a great speech is really a cooperation between the speaker and the audience.

They might have thought that it was an “amazing session” – but I also thought it was “an amazing audience”.

I am surprised when I read advice to novice speakers telling them to “pretend that the audience is naked” or “pick on person in the audience who looks like she likes you and speak to her.”. To be advice like that is making the speaker pretend that the audience is something it is not. I think that is terrible advice.

Instead I think speakers should try to get as much feel as possible about how the audience is really feeling, how it is reacting to the speakers message, how they are processing what you say. In other words: “dance” together.

Here is an observation: “A speech will never be greater than its audience.”

The audience is playing an important role in building the experience that a speech will deliver.

When you realise that as a speaker you get better at feeling the energy. And you get a deep respect for the massive power and influence that an audience has on a speech. Just like a surfer will have big respect for the power of the wave.

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Many people tend to think that to be a great speaker you have to be an extrovert. And yes, some of the characteristics of extroverts are great if you want to be a speaker; like the tendency

– to love attention and to get energy from big crowds of people
– to network before and after a speech
– to love to speak with/to other people
and so on.

Some of the best speakers in the world are extroverts.

But some of the best speakers are also introverts.

The fact is that introverts are in many ways better suited to be speakers. Here are some reasons:

– Introverts only speak when they have something to say. 😉
As a keynote speaker you usually have 1 hour – or less – to get your message a cross. That means that you have quite a limited time frame to play with. As an introvert you will be more careful with the words that you use and thus might be better suited to write a speech that is concise and to the point.

– The speaking is the cherry on the cake – the bulk of the job is research – and research is lonely work.
With a few exceptions you need to have done your research to be able to be a good speaker. Having a book is a great way to get credibility as a speaker, but writing a book is, for the most part, a very lonely process. You sit, by yourself, in front of the laptop and write, write and write. All of that writing and researching is generally better suited for a person who is comfortable on his (or her) own.

I have spent 1000’s and 1000’s of hours reading, researching and writing the material that becomes my speeches. The fact that I like sitting by myself with my computer on some deserted beach, or on my island, is a plus.

– Introverts like to observe their surroundings

The job of a professional speaker is often that of a messenger, of informing an audience of something that they need to know. For a job like that it helps to have a personality which likes to observe.

I remember when I once attended a Tony Robbins training. There were 1000’s of people jumping up and down and totally getting drawn into the message that was being communicated on stage by Tony. I was in the far right hand corner observing the audience (I was there to see how Tony Robbins worked with a group.). I suddenly looked around where I was standing and all around me where perhaps 10 other professional speakers, all standing in the far, right hand corner so that they too could observe the audience…

So see what is happening in a room it sometimes helps to not be the center of attention.
The same is true for trying to understand what is happening in the world.

– The job of a professional speaker is 90% travel.
If you speak internationally or globally the job is actually more of “professional traveler” than “professional speaker”.

I am writing this at the airport of Kochi, in Kerala, India. I left 8 PM Monday and will be back home 8 AM Wednesday. That is 36 hours.
Out of those 36 hours I will speak 1,5 hour. Network with the client for 1.5 hours (inclusive of lunch). That means 3 out of 36 hours are “social”.

The rest is all “lonely work”.
– Time on flights: 10 hours.
– Time in taxis: 5 hours
– Time in airports 5 hours
– Sleeping at resort: 7 hours.
– emailing and writing at resort: 4
– Sitting in the back of the conference checking out the crowd: 2 hours.
= 33 hours (out of 36 hours) is “alone time”.
If you are not an introvert that might kill you.
If you are an introvert, you like it. It gives you – me – time to think, reflect and write.

– You have no colleagues.
Almost all speakers work for themselves. They might have an assistant, not uncommonly a virtual one, but the whole concept of “colleagues” is usually lost on a speaker.(The reason why speaker associations are so popular with speakers is that it’s a way to actually get some kind of “collegial feeling” in a profession that is mostly run by solopreneurs.) That means that people who “need” colleagues might not like the workday of a professional speaker.

Again, I am not saying that extroverts are not great speakers.

I am saying that to make professional speaking your profession (especially being a global speaker which involves a lot traveling by yourself) it might actually help if you are an introvert.

Take it from an introvert who has been speaking professionally for 20+ years: if you are an introvert and want to be a speaker: go for it.

(Picture from me working by myself for a few hours in a hammock at the resort in Kochi,  after delivering my speech, while waiting for my driver to arrive.)

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Today at the EY Global Mobility Conference there were two keynote speakers: Me – and a robot.

When I came into the conference ballroom and saw the very robotic looking robot standing there I said to the client, just half jokingly, “Today there is pressure for me to perform; if I get beaten by a robot in the evaluations I might consider quitting this job on the spot…”

The robot was there to highlight the rapid changes in the industries of AI, robotics and machine learning and the hosts of the conference used it to perform a “dialogue” between themselves and some (pre-prepared) answers from the robot.

Based on the robots “performance” I will reflect on what makes a “live”, as in “real, human, emotional” speaker great.

– Move.
This particular robot did not have the ability to walk and seeing “him” stand still in the corner of the stage through out the speech made “it” look very much like a machine. I am a big believer in walking around on stage. It should not be done “according to a plan” and it should not be “deliberate”, but a speaker should let himself (or herself) be “drawn” to different sides of the stage as the energy of the room dictates.

– Do not move too much.
This robot moved his arms around a lot while speaking. It was very distracting. Body language should support your “speaking-language” but not take over. Too much body language is like when the drummer (or bass player) of a band think they are too important and start to take over. All you are left with is a blunt message drowning out everything else. Same with hand gestures and facial expressions (and props for that matter) – use it for support, not as your main act.

– Do not give canned answers.
As it would have it the person who controlled the robot happened to press the wrong button making the robot look silly when it to the question: “What else can you help us with?”, replied “Thank you for inviting me to this conference. I wish you a great day.”.

Some speakers seems to go into a similar “canned reply” almost regardless of what the audience has asked. That makes them look like robots.
The magic in audience interaction is the fact that we do NOT know what is going to happen. Assuming that you do will just risk making you look silly. (This is important to remember since many, many times we CAN predict what the questions are going to be, making it extra important to pay attention (just like how it’s easy to have a car accident on a road you have driven many times, because you get fooled into thinking you “know” what is going to happen because you know the road so well.

– Interact with the audience.

The more experienced I become as a speaker the more sure I am about the fact that the one thing that makes a speaker great is how he or she interacts with the audience. The robot did not do that at all. And many speakers do not do it at all either. And speakers who do not interact at all might as well be robots – or videos.

Should there be a point of having a person live in the room speaking then make sure you make sure you use the most powerful rhetorical weapon we have as speakers: our ability to interact with other humans.

Those where some of the thoughts I got after going up on stage after a robot for the first time today.

ps. Will robots take over also the job of a professional speaker in the future?

They might very well, but we are not there yet.

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Having said that after I and the robot had delivered our speeches about 4 people came up wanting to take a picture with me, and about 20 people went up to have their pictures taken with the robot… Seeing the audience line up to have their pictures taken with the robot really did get me to want to up-my-game as a speaker – having said that I do think I still got more future business from the conference than the robot. Human speakers are, at least for a while more, in demand. 😉

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