Establish a cordial relationship with the audience

Play Up Prosperity

Prosperity is a pleasant subject unless it comes up at a time when our own state of affairs is tough. Very few of us can stand prosperity when it’s another man’s. In no period of history have so many people progressed from pick handle to putter in one generation. Our country grows more and more prosperous as our money buys less and less.  Only we Americans have mastered the art of being prosperous-though broke. Ours is the only country where, if a man can afford a Ford, he buys a Cadillac instead.

When families pay installments on more things than they can afford, we call that prosperity. Those who weathered the whoopee days when everything went way-up-shake their heads and predict that our prosperity is heading for misfortune, while their offspring shake their heads and call the senior citizens “squares.” No matter how hard you wring your hands about senseless spending and bat out your brains about the budget, you still can’t lick prosperity. Even the fellow who has none is excited about it-now that most households have charged the big steak in the installment-bought freezer.

Getting Going

Upon arrival at the meeting place, it is important for you to contact the Program Chairman and ascertain whether local practices include a question and answer period following your talk. If they do, have a few pertinent lead-off questions prepared and adroitly planted if possible. Don’t hesitate to interpolate a fitting incident, but otherwise don’t deviate from your manuscript or outlines to avoid running overtime. And it’s wise to confine your cocktails to water! Maybe martinis whet the wit of a veteran-but they can sure mix the metaphors of an inexperienced man.

It is vital for the speaker to establish a cordial relationship with his audience as quickly as possible, and generally a joke will do this. A speaker from the grass roots can flatter big city listeners by playing himself down . . . they know he’s lying but they love it.

Here’s a line a New York audience accepted: bumpkin, Hawg Jowl Junction, and all.

The speaker told them he came to New York to see the tall hen houses, and he wandered into an automat. He kept feeding nickels into the coin slots and while he didn’t win anything, he gained twenty pounds. Watching his first revolving door, he noticed that a man went in and a second later a woman came out. He shook his head and thought that was a real good trick-but how did that fella change his clothes so fast? At the Empire State Building he was fascinated by the elevators; he watched a little old lady step into one, and the doors closed. A minute later they opened again and a beautiful young girl came out. Bug-eyed, he turned to a passerby and said, “If I’d a knowed this, I’d a brung my old lady along.”

When the waiters have rattled off with the last coffee cup, the amenities of an introduction are over, and your joke has been told, oftentimes the audience registers the feeling of being “resigned to boredom.” This is a mood that will increase unless the speaker tears them away from their ennui with a startling or provocative statement; a subtle insult; an exceptionally interesting but little known fact; a pleasing but pat anecdote or a quick, vivid panorama of his topic.

“Wars are worth while” is an eye opener! It also is a natural argument starter. The speaker, after his audience sits up and takes notice, may expand that remark by continuing that adversity introduces a man to himself and while in itself adversity is a handicap, it’s also an excellent humanizer. Through adversity people become keenly aware that they are not wholly self-sufficient-they need help. That need makes them neighborly; a fact evidenced each winter when snowstorms are unusually heavy. There is then a noticeable undertone of satisfaction among people; they seem to secretly enjoy the discomforts that bring them close together and emphasize the value of cooperation.

That is why war-with all its tragedy and horror-fills a peculiar psychological need that peace never has been able to satisfy.

Tags: public speaking

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