What an audience confirmed about the power of comparison

Posted: November 11th, 2010 | Author: jillfoster | Filed under: Practice, Public speaking | Tags: #GrowSmartBiz, lightning talk, power of comparison, Practice, public speaking, Shonali Burke | 5 Comments »

A friend gently poked fun at how much I was rehearsing for a recent speech (…for the wonderful Grow Smart Business Conference) held last Friday.

Honestly there were 3 reasons for the aggressive preparation:

• It was a new story for me to tell (about using Twitter and social media to improve public speaking skill). So there was plenty of brainstorming on how to storyboard and organize from this audience’s point of view.
• The speech was apart of a lightning talk round where multiple speakers would present in 10 or 20 minutes each. It was a mental wrestling match at times when writing and deciding what should be whittled out.
• Many of the lightning round speakers were also immersed on the regional and national speaking circuit. So the good ole law of comparison was in play.

Holy Compelling Feedback Batman
Presenting the speech was a blast. After speaking, I headed for the far side of the conference room to reflect about the audience dynamic (and read the conference’s robust Twitter backchannel aka hashtag #GrowSmartBiz). Then a conference attendee walked up and shared a fascinating and timely perspective.

He said:

“You know, it was a hard situation to be the speaker who followed Shonali Burke. She was awesome and to top it all off she has a beautiful British accent. But your speech did well and was effective even in comparison to her.”

I suppressed the desire to hug the man.

Another audience member in a different conversation shared similar insight. I appreciated the candor and how they underscored that…:

When presenting with a suite of speakers, no matter how conducive one’s content is to the audience, the human mind – will and often starkly – respond to speakers’ unique delivery and personal traits (like in this case, Shonali’s lyrical accent and voice).  This isn’t at all to discount the vital influence of content.  Yet when presenting in the midst of a boat load of great speakers, it presents an apt time to assess readiness from a specific vantage point.

These 3 questions help to foster a more honest evaluation of my own readiness:

How assured am I when engaging through this content? Is it enough to conversationally relate to the audience with clarity of mind and authenticity?  Or would more practice help dissolve any angst about being compared to another speaker’s style?

It was a great, educational, revealing day.

For more video about the GrowSmartBiz Conference, please enjoy here.

Image Compare and Contrast by Guanatos Gwyn, Creative Commons

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