Keeping It In Proportion

A couple of weeks ago I was at the Professional Speaking Association conference in Oxford.

Two and a bit days of hanging around with speakers.

Listening to speakers.

Talking about speaking.

Oh and speaking…

One of my favourite bits of the whole event is the Professional Speaker of the Year competition.

Every region has a set of heats and the winner of that heat then comes to the event to compete in the semi-final. That is on a smaller stage or in a smaller room, with three people going through to the final on the big stage the next day.

The energy around it is amazing.

Seeing how speakers support each other and show up for each other is a delight.

It is probably one of the noisiest places to be during the whole conference.

There’s a thing which has to change between that smaller room in the semi-finals and the finals on the big stage.

You need to bring a bigger energy.

And that doesn’t mean just being louder or brasher or waving your arms around more - it means really analysing the room and knowing how it fits in with how you deliver.

It requires you to understand your content, yourself, your audience, and also the space that you’re in.

I talked before in newsletters about always walking the stage and becoming familiar with the space that you’re going to be in. The reason you do that is so that you know what level to speak and deliver at.

One of my favourite speaker coach crushes is Patsy Rodenburg.

I remember being introduced to some of her videos online a while ago and just falling in love because it helped so many things to make sense.

It helped me to understand how I could show up as a speaker and how I could bring everything that’s about me to that place.

Because when I first started speaking I was watching other people, picking, choosing and *cough* borrowing to find what worked.

And that only works for a while.

In her book “The Second Circle” she talks about three circles of energy and you see these show up in all kinds of places.

First circle is very withdrawn, very quiet, very much of the past.

It’s inward and self-absorbed.

Third circle is big, brash, loud.

People show up with third-circle energy and the air gets sucked out of the room.

They are usually the people who are either shaming you in the audience or will tell you at some point to get to the back of the room.

Then we have the second circle.

The second circle is about presence and connection.

It’s the place where you are truly with your audience.

One of the great things about Second Circle is that you can choose to move into First Circle or move into Third Circle if it supports your delivery.

But it is always done from this place of presence.

When speakers start to think about this, it really changes how they show up.

And it changes how they connect with their audience.

Instead of becoming someone who reacts, they become someone who responds.

And it moves from a delivery, which is speaking at, to an experience, which is speaking with.

As a speaker you will be speaking on different stages of different sizes with different numbers in the audience.

Think about how you, your content, and your audience can all work together.

I believe a bigger stage does require some bigger energy.

But it has to be bigger energy, which is intentional and fueled by being present.

I also believe that audiences deserve better and as speakers we have the opportunity to do that.

If you want to have a chat about how this can work in your speaking, you know where I am.