Have you ever had a presenter stand in front of you and lethargically
say, “Hi, my name is John, and I’m really excited to be here.” My
first thought is always a sarcastic, “It looks like it.” What am I supposed
to look forward to as someone in the audience? Energy is contagious,
and the audience needs to feel the passion and enthusiasm you want
to share with them. Your ability to genuinely exude your hunger and
to motivate and inspire your audience will get the group hungry to
receive your message. Words without energy are just words without
meaning—until you bring them to life.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book , eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only) purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I was practicing a very serious speech for the first time in front of a
co-worker. It was very personal and emotional. However, in a couple
of spots, I attempted to add some levity, to ease the seriousness of the
message. I saw no reaction to my attempts at humor. After the speech,
I asked my co-worker if it was inappropriate, ill-timed, or just not
funny. She said she thought it was funny but she wasn’t sure, given the
heavyweight of the message, if she was allowed to laugh.

The speaker needs to give some indication, whether it is a wink or
a smile or some other kind of non-verbal or verbal “permission,” for
the audience to come along on their journey. A well-placed pause, for
example, with an emerging smile, may be enough to connect with the
audience and let them know it’s okay to laugh.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book , eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only) purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

Comedians use quick-hitting humor and one-liners because they
don’t want to lose the audience. They work on timing and delivery
to get the biggest laughs. I learned that not everything a speaker says
needs to be side-splittingly funny. Going for a few chuckles can be just
as entertaining to an audience. You simply need to know what your
audience wants and expects.

Once you determine this, you can develop your humorous stories.
As with a quick-hitting comedic set-up, you must get to the humorous
part of the story sooner rather than later. I have watched speeches
crash as the audience knew something funny was coming but it took
too long to get to the punch. I was involved in a humorous-speech
competition and four of the first seven contestants went several minutes
into a five-to seven-minute speech before they delivered their first
laugh. Don’t get me wrong. My fellow competitors were hilarious once
they got rolling, but they had unfortunately lost many of the judges
and audience members, who were expecting the funny parts sooner.
Don’t let the audience wait too long to laugh.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only) purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

My personality leans toward being more serious than funny. I have
my moments, but I have to work hard to get some laughs. I have concluded
that I will never be a stand-up comedian, but I have had more
fun with myself, and the audience, once I stopped putting so much
effort into being funny. I found all I had to do was remember to just
look around me. We are surrounded by humor.

Self-deprecating humor is always a winner and usually won’t offend
the audience. It can be fun to go back and remember funny and embarrassing
stories from your childhood, from school, or from work. You
may even begin to chuckle when you unleash the repressed memories.
How many times have you sat around the dinner table and rehashed
humorous stories with family and friends? After dinner, jot down
some notes to help you remember, and throw them in that folder or
file.

Look around you. Have you ever passed a sign that made you laugh?
I have learned that humor isn’t all about one-liners or long, drawn-out
stories. The simple stories can get a great reaction. For example, my
wife was driving down the road when my fourteen-year-old daughter,
at the time, asked her about an old building they had just passed. My
wife said that it was an old topless bar. This is the part in the story
where people start getting very concerned about appropriateness. You
can relax. My daughter asked, “What did they do when it rained?” We
are surrounded with funny life moments.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only) purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I used to do a monthly presentation at work for newer employees.
The topic was often financial fraud, which can be a scary or fascinating
topic, depending on how the audience relates to it. I tried to have fun
with it to ease the mood and hold the audience members’ attention.
I started to receive consistent feedback that I was funny and engaging
on this potentially complicated topic. I went home and told my
wife and she simply said sarcastically, in the way only a spouse could,
“You’re not funny.”

I have retold this story many times and always seem to get some
laughs. I do have my funny moments, and it is important to inject
humor into your presentations, when possible. Not every presentation
is required to have humor, but if you can find a way to appropriately
add it in, even during serious presentations, you will give your audience
a release and the chance to get more involved in the presentation.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only) purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

Inspiration and motivation are often used interchangeably. As a
speaker, you must understand the difference in order to achieve the
full effect of what you are trying to convey.

An inspirational message typically takes the audience on a journey. It
often is a part of the individual speaker’s personal trials and tribulations.
The inspirational ride is driven primarily through an emotional connection
to the audience. However, motivational speeches carry with them a
take-away or a specific request of the audience. You’ll try to persuade the
audience to take some kind of action, whether to change their ways—
such as eating habits, for example—or to accomplish something, such as
running a marathon. Simply sharing your own personal successes with
an audience is not being specific enough to motivate them to join in.

If you want an audience to be motivated, you need to tell them or
ask them to take a specific action. Staying with the example of eating
habits, you may want to ask the audience to start reading the labels
when they get home, counting calories against the recommended
intake, and incorporating the appropriate amount of fruits and vegetables
into their diets. You must convey specifics if you truly want to
motivate a positive change.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only) purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

Many inspirational messages start with hitting rock bottom or
some type of roadblock. We want the audience to experience the
downs and ups of the message with us. Even as we relate to the audience
with a phrase such as, “We have all experienced hard times or the
heartache of…,” we need to ensure we carry the audience back out of
the valley to the uplifting high point. It may seem obvious, but sometimes
the despair is deeper than we think. We must be conscientious
about holding the hand of the audience and pulling them along with
us to the final inspirational message.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only) purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

Many presentations end with question-and-answer sessions. Here
are some of the basics to remember:
• Notice I said the end; outside of direct attempts to solicit audience
responses and intentional open-ended parts of the presentation, I recommend
saving questions for the end, to avoid jeopardizing the flow
and taking away from later material.
• Save your final key take-away points and/or message for after the
Q&A so you can dictate the final messaging.
• Repeat questions back to the audience to ensure they are understood
and for people who may not have heard them (this also buys you
some time to formulate answers).
• Avoid rambling; answers should be clear and concise. Yes, this
seems obvious, but it is a critical skill to master.
• Don’t guess. Offer to get back to the overall audience or to the
person who asked the question, or even look for a subject expert
in the audience who may be better suited to answer. It is better to
have the right answer than guess incorrectly. The credibility that
you earned throughout the presentation is still at risk during Q&A
time.
• Be an attentive listener. You should make every effort to not cut off
the question because you anticipate the rest of it. Give the person asking
as much courtesy as he or she has given you.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s business books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work received Honorable Mention in the General Non-Fiction Category at the 2014 Paris Book Festival and Honorable Mention in the Business category at the 2014 New York Book Festival
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World received Honorable Mention in the Business Category at the 2012 New England Book Festival
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference, Honorable Mention at the 2013 New York Book Festival, and Honorable Mention at the 2013 Paris Book Festival.

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

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When you are moving from the introduction to the main body of
the speech and then to the conclusion, make sure you use warm transitions.
You can’t jolt the audience with an eye-opening introduction
about aliens landing on earth and then go into the body of your speech
as if alien landings are completely normal by sharing examples of how
the aliens are getting along just fine on this planet. I was working on a
speech about my shy daughter’s triumphant solo chorus performance.
The message was about how her bravery of stepping out on that stage
alone led me to alter my perspective of a special needs co-worker
based on how he bravely participated in the Special Olympics. Early
versions of the speech received consistent feedback from friends and
family that the transition from my daughter to the Special Olympics
athlete was too cold. I needed more character description to paint the
picture of him as an individual first, before jumping in with both feet.

You need to add some semblance of a transition that enables the
listener to go back in time and put all the pieces of the story together.
We can effectively go from the attention-grabbing introduction into a
smooth changeover into the body of the presentation. Back to the alien
example: if you add small bites for the audience to chew on, such as,
“After an exhaustive struggle, the aliens found common ground with
the earthlings by…,” the audience can find the connection. I sometimes
hear this referenced as getting the string and pulling it all the
way through. I actually found two effective transition versions that
worked on the Special Olympics speech. First, I used a pondering
open-ended question for the audience about potential catalysts for
change in their lives. Second, I added a simple phrase that said, “A
few days after my daughter’s triumph adjusted my lens on beauty….”
Both changes received positive feedback relating to a smoother transition.
With a warmer jump between topics, stories, and key points, the
audience will be able to follow the flow more easily. Smooth transitions
allow easier understanding of the organization and content of
the speech.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only) purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com