Sarah Lloyd-Hughes is a
popular speaker on confidence and inspiration, an award winning social
entrepreneur, founder of
Ginger Training & Coaching
and author of “How
to Be Brilliant at Public Speaking: Any Audience. Any Situation.”
In her speaking and courses, Sarah teaches that to become a more
influential communicator doesn’t involve pretending to be someone you’re
not – instead you must understand and unleash the six qualities of an
inspiring speaker that already live inside you.
Sarah wrote an article
titled,
Inspire through Empathy
(part 1)
about the role of empathy in public speaking andGetting
to know your audience (part 2).
Sarah
writes, "One of the biggest problems speakers face is focusing too
much on themselves and not enough on their audience. Developing an
empathetic approach to public speaking will help your speaking in more
ways than one… Empathy is one of the six qualities of an inspiring speaker, that I
write about it my book “How
to be Brilliant at Public Speaking”. So many presenters fail to
realize how important empathy truly is, focusing on their ever growing
list of information they wish to impart.
They
think more about what they want to say versus what the audience wants to
hear. Ever hear a speaker begin with, “Hello. My name is (fill in the
blank) and I’m here to speak to you today about… blah blah blah yadda
yadda”? That’s the very LAST thing that will get your audience engaged.
Why not try empathy instead?"
(Video
Transcriptions: If you would like to take empathic action
and create a transcription of this video, check
the volunteers page. The transcriptions will make it easier for
other viewers to quickly see the content of this video.)
Inspire through Empathy: part 1
"One of the biggest problems speakers face is focusing too much
on themselves and not enough on their audience. Developing an empathetic
approach to public speaking will help your speaking in more ways than
one…
Empathy is one of the six qualities of an inspiring speaker, that
I write about it my book “How to be Brilliant at Public Speaking” So
many presenters fail to realize how important empathy truly is, focusing
on their ever growing list of information they wish to impart.
They
think more about what they want to say versus what the audience wants to
hear. Ever hear a speaker begin with, “Hello. My name is (fill in the
blank) and I’m here to speak to you today about… blah blah blah yadda
yadda”? That’s the very LAST thing that will get your audience engaged.
Why not try empathy instead?"
"Inspire
through Empathy part 2 : Get to know your audience As we learned in part one in our discussion of Empathy, one of
the biggest problems speakers face is focusing too much on themselves
and not enough on their audience. In this segment we will focus on
learning about your audience. Because let’s face it… knowing exactly to
whom you’re presenting and HOW you’re presenting matters more than you
may think... Empathy is about questioning yourself about the needs of the
audience; their hopes and expectations of what they will “get” out of
your speech. Time and energy invested into this step will help you
create an empathetic talk that your audience wants to hear."
