Chapter 47 to focus the audience

As a public speaker, I have to speak often, sometimes to a sparse audience in an afternoon hall, sometimes to a crowded crowd in a small hall at night, and yet, to the same joke, to a crowded audience in a small hall at night Laugh more heartily than the sparse audience in the hall in the afternoon.So why is there such a difference? On the one hand, the people who come in the afternoon are generally older women and children, and they are often less focused than the energetic and assertive audience in the evening, but this is only part of the reason.The real reason is that when the audience is spread out across the hall, their emotions are less susceptible to infection, because nothing dampens enthusiasm more than the empty space between them.

Henry Ward Beecher put it this way in his Yale Lecture on Preaching: People often ask me "Are you more inspired by a big speaking scene than a small one?" I don't think so.Because even if there are only a dozen people in the audience, as long as they can gather together and influence each other, then I can still give a good speech; The role of - so, when speaking, you must gather your audience, so that you will get twice the result with half the effort. When a person is in a group with a large number of people, he easily loses his personality. As a member of the group, he often has a herd mentality.Therefore, in a speech, the emotions of individuals will be stimulated by each other, and they will be more excited and excited than usual.

Therefore, in general, people are more likely to act as a group than as individuals, for example, in war, people tend to go forward regardless of the consequences.At this point, they were united; in the Anti-Fascist War, it was astonishing that German soldiers fought even with their hands handcuffed. crowd!crowd!crowd!They are a very peculiar phenomenon.All the great human acts and reforms in history have been carried out in a state of mind of crowds.Avette Death Martin has written a very interesting book on this subject - The Behavior of Crowds. For this reason, when we have to speak to a small audience, we should consciously choose a small hall, even if the corridor is full of people.It's definitely better than being in a hall where people are sitting sparsely.

And when the audience is sparsely scattered in the hall, you must let them sit as close to you as possible before the speech, remember this!At the same time, you should try to get closer to the audience, and don't speak on stage, unless there are too many audiences or there are other reasons to do so, because in the speech, we should try to avoid rigidity and rigidity as much as possible, and strive to create a sense of calmness. An atmosphere of intimate communication makes our speeches conversational.