What makes you tick?
What makes you uncomfortable?
What do you love?
Why are you speaking?
Share some or all of these things in the first minute and you’ll create a connection with your audience. Good communication is all about rapport, empathy, relatability, authenticity, humility, and humour.
Stand-up comics often start with the most important thing people need to know about them, e.g. what their name means, their physical appearance, their greatest obsession or fear. It’s a fantastic way to differentiate their speaking personas, and it can be very funny. I used to do one about looking like Lenin (which worked every time).
I find that when people speak in an important situation, they often enter their ‘professional’ speaking mode, in which they speak formally (sometimes in a verbose way), fret about making mistakes, and don’t smile. Unfortunately, this mode has no personality – their humility, relatability and humour are all switched off in order to impress their audience. These are the precise traits that the audience wants to see (and which the machines are desperate to emulate). So, the speaker comes across as cold, boring or uncomfortable. The audience doesn’t warm to them.
I like to:
– surprise people by being different.
– solve problems and get things done.
– use a sense of humour.
What’s Your Character Class
I’m a ‘Support Class’ character.
“What on Earth does that mean, Jon?” I hear you bleat.
Well, your Myers-Briggs type may be helping you, but I floundered trying to choose mine because I felt I sat in multiple roles. Instead, I find it far easier to describe my training role as a ‘Support Class’, a character archetype from board games and video games. In a game with a fantasy theme (such as ‘Lord of the Rings’), for example, you might have:
• Aragorn – Fighter: physically tough (close-range), but no magical abilities.
• Gandalf – Wizard: powerful magical abilities, but physically weak.
• Legolas – Archer*: a ranged weapons specialist.
• Galadriel* – Cleric: magical healing abilities. That’s the Support Class character!
* I know that Galadriel is actually a mentor in the story, but I see the Elves generally as healers.
In a military-based video game, you might see some equivalents:
• Infantry: good all-round soldier.
• Engineer: technical specialist, not great in a fight.
• Sniper: ranged weapons specialist.
• Medic: the Support Class character! Also a poor combatant.
(Side note: while allowing for you to play to your strengths, character classes with various specialisations makes teamwork necessary.)
I can speak in front of large groups of people, but I certainly don’t see myself as a leader. Once I realised I was a Cleric/Medic (…aaand possibly a Wizard/Engineer), it made me feel far more focused and fulfilled in my role.
So, consider the character you most relate to in your favourite book or game, and identify their role. Perhaps it will help how you see yourself and how you communicate that role to others.