What 3 Words Describe You as a Speaker?
How do you find your own unique speaking style? I see a lot of speaker's struggle with their identity at the front of the room. Who are you? How much of the real you do you want to show the world?
Amanda Genther who is the brand developer for passion-powered entrepreneurs had an exercise on her blog about coming up with the 3 words that get to the essence of your brand. What if we replace the word brand with the word speaker? Could this same exercise help speakers become clear on who they are as a speaker and what they want to give to their audience?
Using Amanda's exercise I came up with my 3 speaking words and then I'll guide you to find yours.
Table of Contents
Connection
Infused
Vulnerability
What excited me most about speaking forming connections with other people. When I am in front of the room, I love the energy exchange that occurs between myself and the audience. Sometimes that energy sends me rocketing into the atmosphere and other times it brings me down to earth and tells me I can do better. It's connecting with the audience and sharing a message that makes me want to speak.
I want to infuse my audience (just like a good shot of vodka) with inspiration and the power to embrace their imperfections as speakers and improve their communication. It's my goal to infuse them with knowledge. This word serves dual-purpose. For me as a speaker, I want to infuse every presentation with fun, my quirky personality and a bit laughter. If speaking is not fun, why do it?
I firmly believe speaking and putting yourself out their is a vulnerable act. Being vulnerable with your audience, let's them no that you are made entirely out of human parts. I'm not saying that you have to reveal your deepest, darkest secrets. It's an act of vulnerability to be yourself in front of an audience with all your flaws.
Let's use Amanda's formula slightly adapted for speakers.
Step 1: What do you want to do for your audience? How do you want to feel as a speaker?
Brainstorm a list of words that you love or that excite you about speaking. Thinking about why you want to speak (even if you have to for job). What do you hope to accomplish for the people who are listening to you? Write down every word that comes to mind. Like Amanda suggests, grab a Thesaurus or visit Thesaurus.com for help.
Step 2: What words resonate most with you?
Now take that list and whittle it down to 3 words that best describe you and the relationship you aspire to have with your audience when speaking.
Step 3: Find images that represent your speaker words
Go to Pinterest, Flickr Creative Commons, or a stock image site and look for images that resonate with you and best represent your words. Then you can add your words using a free text editor (or if you have a Mac you can do this in preview).
I made my speaker word collage with the help of Haiku Deck for finding images and Pic Monkey for putting the collage together.
There you go! You have the words that embody your own speaking style. Let me know what your 3 words are in the comments below.
Do yourself a favor and go to Amanda's site and sign-up for her newsletter. She has one of the most helpful and fun blogs on the Internet about branding.
Interesting way of thinking about speaking techniques and what you people to leave your conversation with… thanks for sharing this!
Thank you! It was fun to come up with the words with inspiration from Amanda!
Hi Michelle, I like your idea of using pictures to describe yourself as a speaker. That exercise will really help people visualize who they are and what they want to be.
I would say that my speaking style is enthusiastic. Usually when I’m asked to speak on something, it is related to tech, which is a passion of mine. I like that I can share my excitement with others through public speaking.
Thank you Carolyn! That is the goal. If we can’t visualize it, we can’t become it.
I’m an enthusiastic speaker too! I love to talk about my passions and my excitement just boils over. It helps keep the audience engaged for sure!
Passion –
Connection –
Engaging –
Michelle,
I enjoyed doing your exercise and look forward to making it into a visual. As a dad blogger, i know that I have to have passion about families and children. I have to believe that fatherhood (which I do) is so important that I shout it from the rooftops. It makes me want to connect and share with others and try to help people understand the importance of fatherhood. I have to be engaging, witty and scholarly to help others understand about parenting from a man’s point-of-view. I think all bloggers need to do some type of exercise like this! If we can visualize what we want to do it makes us more effective in doing our jobs and writing.
Aaron Brinker
Aaron – love, love, love your words and the reasons behind them. I also enjoyed how you made this exercise your own. I do think bloggers should do this as well as speakers. It’s a great way to guide them to remember WHY they write. Not just I blog to get client and improve SEO for my site. Those are reasons that aren’t going to get you in anywhere.
Oh you may have just inspired a spin-off post to this.
Michelle,
I am glad you liked it! I wrote a post in my blogging series about why do you blog – I know that we have to be able to visualize what we want out of blogging or we can’t be as successful as we should be. I just took your idea and ran with it. I believe its truly important that we understand who we are and what we want out of life.
Thank you for posting it – and keep me appraised of the spin-off 🙂
Aaron Brinker aka DadBlunders
I don’t think a lot of people know why they blog. This is probably why they don’t last long as bloggers. I’ll let you know about the blogging post!
Eye-opening post! I’ve been pretty fortunate that public speaking comes easy and naturally to me. It may be genetic – many of my relatives, my mother included, are public speakers, lecturers, or debaters.
Entertain, confidence, effectiveness were my words.
I’ve met a couple of people like you! It didn’t come natural to me at first. I was terrified then one day I realized I loved it. It’s an awesome skill to have and I hope you are using it well.
Great words – effectiveness – that gets at the heart of what audiences are looking for – a speaker who is effect and also has an affect.