The Value in Connecting when Presenting Well….
How convincing are you? Are you able to reach a person or group of people and hold their imagination in your hand? Are you influential and powerful in your delivery? Can you find the one thing which lights their excitement, interest or passion? Are you able to lead with power and conviction? Or do you find your story is poorly received, with little uptake and commitment by your audience?
Would you like to know how the best most influential speakers get the audience to follow them?
I attended a life changing “skillshop” in November, and this one workshop taught me the difference in delivery that makes the difference. And this difference comes from our deeply held values, which drives our passion. Not only our deeply held values, but how to come from a genuine, authentic place when delivering our appeal to an audience; namely the heart.
What Values?
Our positive values are what we work very hard to fulfil, and if we are congruent, we spend time, money and energy when living with them. These closely held values are often revealed in the way we respond to challenges, the way we judge others, how we are motivated and the way we admire people and causes.
If you have attended an NLP Course with me, you may have done a Values Elicitation at the NLP2 class level, where you first dig up out of your unconscious mind the values which mean the most to you. Then one by one they are challenged against the others to give a hierarchy. The top values are then checked against a question – How much time, energy and money to do you spend on achieving these values? If we hold a value high, yet are not spending time, money, energy on it.. then we are probably being incongruent, and not feeling authentic.
What do you do with Values to get the audience aligned with your purpose, intent or project?
The key thing here is to appeal to the higher, shared, collective consciousness… i.e. the shared values which you and the audience have in common. This is identified in the answers given to the deep seated “why” and “for what purpose” question… What do you and the audience have in common as your authentic reason for being involved, interested, and at the meeting in the first place.
Next – The message needs to come from the heart – not your logic, or reason, but the emotions of the heart – where your passion is seated, where your personal authentic meaning comes from. The difference between a convincing heart felt entreaty and a head reasoning logical appeal is in the response time – the heart felt, authentic entreaty seems to pull in agreement and alignment almost immediately – where the shared values are screaming “YES” and you have the audience awaiting your next step.
Summary
So how do you connect to your passion? – through your values – and how do you connect to the audience? – through the higher collective consciousness of shared values, coming from your heart. It takes some honesty, bravery and a strong alignment with knowing your truth, i.e. your authenticity. So what is your passion? What is your truth? What is your purpose? What is your point?
Maybe that is the question that really needs asking.
