Engaging the Audience

Engaging the Audience

When listening to the radio, we can often tell when a text is being read to us. It sounds monotonous and unengaging. Again, in an international conference, delegates often speak from a prepared text. The challenge is to disguise that fact and avoid a dull or disengaged delivery.

Part of the answer is to make eye contact with your audience or at least, if you cannot look fellow delegates in the eye, to look the Chair in the eye. Combine deliberate, meaningful looks with meaningful pauses to make your statement more engaging. Think also about which words to stress, again both to aid your listeners’ understanding of what you are saying and to emphasize important words.

Some delegates become highly proficient at memorizing their statements and delivering them with apparent spontaneity; others become skilled at reading without giving any sign of doing so, either in their voice or their movements.

Speed

Inexperienced public speakers have a tendency to speak too fast. This is particularly undesirable at international conferences. Interventions should be much slower and with longer pauses than in normal conversation.

Delegates want to retain the attention of listeners and too fast a delivery will cause many to “tune out.” Some listeners may be listening in a language of which they are not native speakers. They will have a better chance of understanding if one does not speak too fast.

Adequate pauses are also important for the same reasons. They are important for helping comprehension, especially by non-native speakers of the language which is being used and also for helping everyone understand the delegate if the language that they are using is not native to listeners.

It is far preferable for delegates to shorten a statement even if this involves cutting important elements, than to speak so quickly that what they say is not understood by the audience.

In informal meetings, one can speak slightly faster, but do not forget that being understood requires pauses and rhythm in a speech.

Emotion

To engage an audience it is important to show that you are engaged by your remarks. The sentiment that will most effectively transmit a message and make it resonate is sincerity. If one can find ways to communicate sincerity, this will help the message leap over cultural divides and political divisions.

An emotion that is even easier to transmit across cultural divides, but is unlikely to lead to a constructive outcome is anger. If a delegate conveys an impression of being angry or even merely irritated, they may be at risk of putting off the audience. Some may also think that the person has lost control and consequently that they are not acting rationally. In addition, the audience will construe such temperamental behaviour as inimical to the prospects for agreement and therefore to their own objectives for the conference.

Somewhere in between highly desirable sincerity and self-damaging anger lies passion. In extreme cases, well-controlled passion for a cause (that others can identify with) can be an important asset in conference interventions. But if it is manifested too often, for causes that do not warrant it and if it is not restrained by a sense of realism and a willingness to take account of the concerns of others, it rapidly becomes a negative, hence hindering the ability to sway the conference.

It is the other delegates who will judge, by their own sympathies and values, whether one has crossed these lines. The conclusion is that passion may inspire one’s actions, but if so, in most situations it is best to disguise that.

Formality

As previously noted, the essential requirements are dignity (because a delegate is representing an entire nation) and conformity to the customs and rules of the particular conference in which one sits (because that is the general expectation of from the audience and what they are best equipped to cope with; it is also a mark of respect for the audience). The level of formality in a conference will vary as the conference unfolds: opening and closing ceremonies and the General Debate tends to be the most formal, while the committee stage tends to be less formal than a Plenary and small group meetings tend to be even less formal. This applies to the style of speech as well as to all other aspects. One constant however is old-fashioned politeness. This consists of at all times showing respect for other delegations as individuals and for the governments, States, nations and causes they represent.