Understanding your status as a speaker.

When you walk out in front of an audience and before you've said a single word, your audience has already made a judgement about you.

It's perhaps not conscious or deliberate.

But they have judged you. 

Even before that moment, there are so many things which will signal your status.

The fact that your name's on the programme or in the marketing, the clothes you wear, the subject you're speaking about.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

What sits under that are things like race, gender, and all the other hot topics that we see in the media at the minute. 

As a speaker at an event, you've been given a level of status. 

More than many others in the room, perhaps.

Add to that a microphone and a clicker with a big screen and a raised stage… and you can see how all of these things will change how you perceive yourself and how others perceive you. 

There are two questions I'd ask you at this point:

The first is - are you aware of this? 

The second is - what the hell do you do with it? 

You could approach your status as a speaker by using force and intimidation.

I have done this amazing thing, which is more than all of you have ever done, and you will therefore listen to me!

(Yes, I'm looking at you people who have climbed Everest in your underpants and then come down to tell me that because you've done it, I can do it too)

Or, you could approach it from a more subtle place using the knowledge and skills of how people connect with an audience.

Let me take you back almost 2500 years ago to ancient Greece.

Aristotle was a teacher who brought together logic, ethics, politics, and the study of living things and created what we now rhetoric. 

When he writes about speaking, he introduces the concepts of pathos, logos, and ethos.

Pathos is about emotion, making people feel something.

Logos is logic. Giving people a logical reason to work with the information you give them.

Ethos is about credibility and showing why you are the right person, to say this and why audiences should listen.

When I'm working with clients, we consider all of this.

We think about how each of these shows up in the work that we do.

You could almost consider it the seasoning for a speech. 

A bit like seasoning for a meal - too much or too little salt, and it will just taste crap.

Have a speech with too much logic and not enough emotional credibility, and it won't be great.

Perhaps the closest thing in that rhetorical triangle when it comes to status is the credibility part. 

You can force and intimidate your way to credibility, or you can find a way to connect with your audience. 

At a conference last year, I saw a speaker talking to an audience about how you host conferences, which is a very meta thing.

Speakers speaking about speaking - it will never catch on.

Before they even built up any trust with the room, they launched into a warm-up exercise..

You know, the one where it's everyone on their feet, everyone gets moving and dancing.

And those that don’t are singled out.

It's an instruction, and it's definitely not an invitation.

This kind of thing which makes my toenails scream.

Because as somebody who doesn't really trust their body coordination and is neurodivergent, it makes me feel deeply self-conscious and uncomfortable.

And I know I'm not alone in this. What happened was that most people got up and followed the instructions. 

Some people looked awkward, and then people like me just sat there and didn't do anything.

Even with those that did join in, how many of them had lost that trust but probably didn't understand why.

As a speaker, you have to be a safe pair of hands for your audience. 

In that one moment, they undermined not only the message and promise that they were delivering as part of their session, they also changed their status.

I can no longer trust that person to keep me safe.

I'm also not going to be present for what they're saying. 

And I certainly don't think of them as a credible person.

Your status as a speaker is a responsibility and an honour. 

It runs through everything you do in your work.

It begins in the brain, by knowing who you are, what you believe in, and why you're the right person to speak.

It travels through the page work where you are structuring your material and thinking about the clarity around what your audience needs. 

It's on the stage where it truly becomes visible.  Where is lives (or dies).

You have to be aware of it.

You have to prepare for it. 

You have to honour it. 

When it comes to speaking, don't just ask - am I ready?

Ask - have I done everything that I can to make sure that my status keeps my audience safe and honours the trust they're placing in me? 

In many ways, status is something that you show people. You don’t tell them.

And that work starts long before you get on a stage.