When getting up in front of an audience to deliver a piece of information, it’s important to understand what the goal or the objective is.
Very often people fear speaking in public because they don’t want to look foolish. Therefore, if you establish listener-centered objectives, it is going to dramatically improve your speeches success rate and consequently, you won’t look bad.
In this article you will learn:
The goal of your presentation
A speaker’s purpose is the reason for doing the presentation.
The objectives are what the speaker hopes to achieve by the presentation.
There’s a big difference between the two.
For example, a manager’s purpose may be to inform staff about new HR policies. However, simply delivering the information in a group setting is no guarantee that staff understood it.
Setting listener-centered objectives lets a speaker assess the degree to which the presentation succeeded (or not).
Why use listener-centered objectives in public speaking?
Objectives can be very simple and informal. The purpose of using some form of listener-centered objectives is to help ensure effective speaking.
They reinforce the importance of listeners, focus the presenter’s style and language to suit the audience, and prevent speakers from getting carried away by flights of rhetorical fancy.
As a speaker, it can be very easy to get carried away in telling a story that can drag on for hours.
But if you have a grasp of what they audience is looking for, you can edit the story in a way that captures what you want to convey without taking up too much time.
This is a real threat for presenters who have a natural “gift for gab.” These speakers often make the mistake of believing because they’re smooth talkers and can keep listeners entertained, charmed, or laughing, that their presentations have been successful. A couple of listener-centered metrics can provide a healthy reality check.
Characteristics of Listener-centered Objectives
Listener-centered objectives — those intended to help gauge the success of a presentation by its impact on listeners— adhere to three basic principles:
1. Listener-centered objectives are specific
It’s acceptable to say, “At the end of my sales presentation, prospective clients will understand my company’s services.”
But it’s much better to say, “At the end of my presentation, prospective clients will understand how my company’s services can increase their profitability.” The objective here centers on benefit to the listener.
2. Listener-centered objectives are achievable
A confident public speaker can be optimistic without being unrealistic. Every presentation has built-in limitations and constraints governed by listeners’ intellectual capacity, background, interest, time available, attention span, and the like.
Focusing on achievable objectives will protect the speaker and audience from frustration.
3. Listener-centered objectives are measurable
Metrics are extremely important in focusing a presentation. It’s worth a little extra time upfront for a speaker to think about how to judge how well the presentation went.
Here are a few examples…
Imagine that an insurance agent is giving a 25-minute sales pitch to fifty association
representatives.
The speaker’s metrics might include one or more of these outcomes:
- 5-7 reps will stay behind after the presentation to ask follow-on questions
- 7-9 reps will ask for more information
- 3-5 reps will want a follow-on phone call
- 3 reps will invite the speaker to do a presentation to their bosses
By having a set of clear benchmarks in place, it makes it much easier to define whether or not the presentation was a success.
What if a presentation is purely motivational?
How does a motivational speaker measure increased motivation? At first blush that seems a bit difficult, if not impossible task to measure.
But consider what people usually mean when they talk about motivating people. Do speakers typically aim to increase motivation as an end in itself, or are they trying to change behavior in some way?
By motivating people, speakers could be trying to:
- Increase work output
- Reduce the number of complaints in the “Suggestion Box”
- Double the number of staff volunteering for projects
- Increase the number of creative suggestions during staff meetings
- Improve adherence to work hours, office policies, corporate mission
A speaker whose objective is increasing motivation can see from the few examples above that increasing motivation is really a means to an end.
The short-term objective of the presentation may be for the audience to feel motivated, but the ultimate success of the presentation lies in its ability to modify or change listeners’ behavior.
Conclusion
There are many skills you will need to learn if you want to become a motivational speaker, but the key to effective speaking for many professionals lies in a keen understanding of the importance of the listener and adherence to specific, achievable, and measurable listener-centered objectives.