S9 W6 E21-24 Audience Engagement - Secrets to keep them on the edge of their seats with Monique McDonald

Audience Engagement - Secrets to keep them on the edge of their seats


Today we are exploring how to keep an audience engaged.  Whether you are speaking one to one or one to many, this skill is essential.  Ask any expert and they will tell you that Business is all about relationships.  So being able to keep your clients, colleagues and team engaged with your ideas and content can literally sky rocket the growth of your business.  It will also make you the favorite presenter or speaker wherever you go.  Something that is rarely discussed is one of the most important secrets to mastering this skill…  

Hmm…I bet you’re wondering what that secret is.  Well, stay with me until the end of our program and I promise we will discover together what it is.

E21 The Strip Tease & Slow Burn

1. A good magician's performance tells a story. Each act should build on the next, becoming ever more engaging to fill the audience with wonder. It's a bud that unfurls into a flower, meant to woo the audience. ~ Laura Lam
   
2. This is one of my favorite lessons to teach.  Having worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs, this is one of the most difficult habits to break.  These amazing experts have so much information to give.  Their hearts are filled with wanting to give as much as they can so they feel they have earned the right to speak or to justify being in the front of the room.  It is admirable and comes from feeling responsible for giving their absolute best.  However, it often leaves the audience feeling like they have just been “fire hosed” with a whole bunch of information.  The listener often can’t put their finger on what happened; they just sort of grayed out and have no idea what was just said.  The speaker sometimes senses a disconnect but more often than not doesn't realize they have just poured out a bunch of words without taking into account how the words have been received.
   
3. Then I introduce the idea of The Strip Tease.  At first they are shocked that I went THERE.  They absolutely don’t expect it and it often makes them giggle because it is the last thing they expect a vocal specialist and charisma coach to say.  Then I explain that sharing ideas and content is like being the most experienced burlesque dancer.  The whole dance is about strategically revealing little bits so the audience can’t wait to see what comes next.  Then there is the final reveal which still leaves things to the imagination so people are left to come to their own conclusions and leaves them wanting more or at the very least, creates questions within them that they will want to discuss with you.  It is really fun to organize your content in this way which also engages you.  Clients often realize they have enough content for 3-5 presentations that they were trying to fit into one.  
   
4. The interesting thing about this idea is that it is also true for most conversations.  So often we are so intent on saying what it is that we want to say we just blurt it out.  This is usually because it is a high stakes conversation and it has taken a lot to work up the courage to have it. Try the “strip tease” concept here too.  By slowing down and sensing how the other is receiving whatever it is you are trying to convey you will be able to better communicate.  
   

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Known to many as “The Magnetic Voice,” Monique McDonald is a Grammy-nominated, award-winning vocal specialist and certified Conscious Transformational Coach. Initially terrified to audition or speak publicly, Monique studied intensely with excellent coaches to cultivate her confidence. As a result, she celebrated with outstanding Opera and Master Class performances throughout Europe, Russia, Japan, and the US, including Carnegie Hall, NYC, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. When Monique helps you unlock your natural charisma and your “Magnetic Voice,” you benefit from secrets learned in over twenty years through High Stakes Performance combined with her unique coaching style.  Her passion is inspiring charismatic communication and mastery of the human voice to empower entrepreneurs, speakers, and leaders.


Be sure to subscribe to The Magnetic Voice Show so you never miss an episode!

E22  Audience Engagement & Humor

1. “Once you get people laughing, they’re listening and you can tell them almost anything.” ~ Herbert Gardner, American cartoonist and playwright
   
2. Humor is one of the quickest ways to gain rapport with your audience.  Laughter is a great unifier.  It is the one thing that can always ease our way, yet it is also the one thing that some of us are the most afraid of.  It can be a double edged sword.  We want people to laugh with us, not at us.  Most of us are not comedians so I am not talking about telling jokes.  I am talking about finding interesting ways to bring humor to your content.  Find a few places where you can use a funny quote or talk about how ridiculously difficult it was to learn a particular lesson.  Laughing helps loosen your inhibitions and allow you to conquer whatever it is.
3. The idea here is to find things that make you smile or laugh and that will often bring your audience to joy with you.  It will allow them to see your humanity and it is so important to be able to see our leaders and experts as people who may laugh at themselves the way we do.  Think about the last time you were in conversation with someone and they shared something fun or funny about themselves and you both laughed.  Didn’t you feel a sense of inclusion?  
4. I was an interview host for a summit the other day and my first guest was really nervous and all I could get were one word answers from her.  Her topic was also full of numbers and statistics so her voice was taking on a monotone.  I could sense that the audience was starting to lose interest, so my only intention became to build up her confidence through her laughter.  I started to ask playful and ridiculous questions.  Little by little her joy broke through and all of a sudden, the audience started to ask more questions and become more engaged.  I watched her begin to shine as the expert she was as she answered questions.  It was a blast!  Take a look at your content and find fun ways to inject joy into it.  How are you going to use humor in your next presentation?  

TAGS: speaking mastery, public speaking mastery, public speaking, speaking mastery achievers, speaking mastery accelerator, success insider speaking mastery, speaking, public speaking training, reveal, the real, revealing the gift, great, speakers, millionaire speaker secrets, speaker secrets, secrets, speaker, humor, humor viral, deep humor, daily humor, sense of humor, humor me cimen,


Known to many as “The Magnetic Voice,” Monique McDonald is a Grammy-nominated, award-winning vocal specialist and certified Conscious Transformational Coach. Initially terrified to audition or speak publicly, Monique studied intensely with excellent coaches to cultivate her confidence. As a result, she celebrated with outstanding Opera and Master Class performances throughout Europe, Russia, Japan, and the US, including Carnegie Hall, NYC, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. When Monique helps you unlock your natural charisma and your “Magnetic Voice,” you benefit from secrets learned in over twenty years through High Stakes Performance combined with her unique coaching style.  Her passion is inspiring charismatic communication and mastery of the human voice to empower entrepreneurs, speakers, and leaders.


Looking for more 1-to1 help with your Message to the World? Check out my coaching packages at themagneticvoice.com Then click “Transform with Monique” to book a complimentary connection call and let’s see which one is a good fit for your needs!

E23  Storytelling to gain Rapport

1. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  ~ Maya Angelou
   
2. There is something that happens to me when someone tells me a story or reads a story to me.  I instantly get excited, because it is one of my favorite things.  I also settle into myself in a unique way.  No matter what has come before story time, I feel everything in me calm down and I get ready to receive.  There are so few times in life where all we have to do is relax and receive.  It can bring us back to a time in our lives where we felt the most safe and all we had to do was imagine.
3. Storytelling is the most important of the audience engagement skills.  It is how we gain rapport with our listeners.  Our voices naturally change into a lilt and our listeners feel a sense of relaxation and settle in.  According to psychologist Pamela Rutledge, “Stories have always been a primal form of communication.  They are timeless links to ancient traditions, legends and archetypes…they connect us to a larger self and universal truths.”  When we use storytelling in our presentations or any of our communication we invite people in and remind them of their own stories and how they made them feel.
   
4. When we use Storytelling as a way of developing a relationship of agreement, mutual understanding or empathy with our audience they organically become engaged.  As entrepreneurs, we often have to develop rapport quickly and easily in our conversations and presentations.  When I work with clients to develop their stories, we practice telling the same story in 3 minutes, 10 minutes and 20 minutes with all of the important elements intact. This gives them the opportunity to build their storytelling muscles so they can choose which story to tell and for how long based on what their intentions are.  We want to make sure we are not that person we all know who tells their story for so long we can’t get a word in edgewise.  What are your favorite stories that illustrate how you have become an expert in your field?
   

TAGS: storytelling, storytelling tips, art of storytelling, master storytelling, storytelling techniques, how to storytelling, storytelling examples, business storytelling, storytelling marketing, storytelling 101, great storytelling, storytelling video, visual storytelling, longer storytelling, corporate storytelling, speakers, millionaire speaker secrets, speaker secrets, secrets, speaker, speaking mastery, public speaking mastery, public speaking, speaking mastery achievers, speaking mastery accelerator

Known to many as “The Magnetic Voice,” Monique McDonald is a Grammy-nominated, award-winning vocal specialist and certified Conscious Transformational Coach. Initially terrified to audition or speak publicly, Monique studied intensely with excellent coaches to cultivate her confidence. As a result, she celebrated with outstanding Opera and Master Class performances throughout Europe, Russia, Japan, and the US, including Carnegie Hall, NYC, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. When Monique helps you unlock your natural charisma and your “Magnetic Voice,” you benefit from secrets learned in over twenty years through High Stakes Performance combined with her unique coaching style.  Her passion is inspiring charismatic communication and mastery of the human voice to empower entrepreneurs, speakers, and leaders.


Be sure to subscribe to The Magnetic Voice Show so you never miss an episode!

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E24  Pain to Gain or Burning Desire

1. “Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.”  ~ Dale Carnegie​
2. There are two popular ways to tell the story of what life has taught you.  The first is what we call the Pain to Gain story.  This story is about when life gave you lemons and you turned it into lemonade.  The pain to gain story is the one that quite a few of my clients have issues with.  They often feel like there isn’t a big enough “pain” in their life to tell a compelling story.  I remind them that it is not about how “big” the pain was but rather it’s about how the pain or circumstance became so great they decided to make a change that brought them to a new level of life experience.  The second is the Passion Story. It is usually based on a life experience that created a burning desire within you to make a change and live a better life and to inspire others to live better lives.  A great example of this is one I heard recently of a man who was blessed with 3 sets of twins.  This blessing created a burning desire within him to keep his feet to the fire until his business was a great success.
3. Evidently, including what many believe is the world's oldest recorded story (The Epic of Gilgamesh-an ancient mesopotamian poem), most of the best stories have universal elements and themes.  A common character or hero/shero goes on a journey, encounters romance, meets strange or exotic creatures, faces impossible obstacles and emerges victorious or at the very least completely transformed by the journey.  We have all seen that movie, right?  Well, by telling our own life stories using this tried and tested formula, we are guaranteed to hit at least one and often many universal themes that our audience can recognize as their own story.  Try putting your story into this formula.  I can’t wait to hear what you come up with.
4. My business mentor, Iman Aghay first introduced me to some of the more advanced storytelling and audience engagement techniques.  The first is framing.  Framing is using your words to point your audience to your intention for how you want them to feel or what you want them to do.  We prepare their expectations first and then put our content into this framework.  That’s what we do when we give an overview of what we are going to discuss. The second is loops.  This is one of my favorites and I didn’t realize there was a term used to describe it until I studied with Iman.  We open loops by beginning to talk about something and then pivoting to discuss it later.  That is what I did at the top of the show when I talked about the most important secret rarely discussed.  Well, here it is folks!!!!  Ta da!!  I have just closed that loop for you.  Want to know the secret to the secret?  Remember to close all your loops or your audience might feel slight irritation towards you and not consciously know why.

TAGS:  the hero's journey, hero's journey, heros journey, the heroes journey, journey, the heros journey, the hero's journey stages, joseph campbell heros journey, heros journey explained, shero's journey, the shero's journey, the journey begins, shero, speakers, millionaire speaker secrets, speaker secrets, secrets, speaker, speaking mastery, public speaking mastery, public speaking, speaking mastery achievers, speaking mastery accelerator


Known to many as “The Magnetic Voice,” Monique McDonald is a Grammy-nominated, award-winning vocal specialist and certified Conscious Transformational Coach. Initially terrified to audition or speak publicly, Monique studied intensely with excellent coaches to cultivate her confidence. As a result, she celebrated with outstanding Opera and Master Class performances throughout Europe, Russia, Japan, and the US, including Carnegie Hall, NYC, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. When Monique helps you unlock your natural charisma and your “Magnetic Voice,” you benefit from secrets learned in over twenty years through High Stakes Performance combined with her unique coaching style.  Her passion is inspiring charismatic communication and mastery of the human voice to empower entrepreneurs, speakers, and leaders.


Looking for more 1-to1 help with your Message to the World? Check out my coaching packages at themagneticvoice.com Then click “Transform with Monique” to book a complimentary connection call and let’s see which one is a good fit for your needs!