There you stand at the front of the room. There sits your expectant audience, and the gap between you and them can feel as wide as an ocean. It’s up to you, the speaker, to bridge it, because only when you do will you have the full attention of your listeners. The question is, “How?” The answer: “By appealing to the correct part of your listener’s brain.”
You want your audience to think about what you’re saying. Therefore, your goal is to reach to the thinking, analyzing and decision-making part of their brain, the part called the “pre-frontal lobes”, located just behind the forehead. It’s a mistake, however, to imagine you will achieve your goal simply by appealing to that conscious, rational part of the brain. The route is more circuitous than that.
Words and images do not go directly from the ears and eyes to the pre-frontal lobes. First, the incoming sound waves and light energy are conveyed along nerves to parts of the cerebral cortex called the auditory and visual cortices. These are interpretive centres, translating the nerve impulses into recognizable sounds and pictures. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that the next stop would be the conscious part of the brain? Not so fast! Another destination comes first.
The limbic system is the seat of our emotions. It appeared in fossils hundreds of millions of years before evidence of pre-frontal lobes showed up. (The pre-frontal lobes, by the way, are also called the neo-cortex, or “new” cortex, since this part has only been around for three or four million years.) The most primitive part of our brain is the brain stem, or pons. The earliest evidence of this brain structure has been found in 500 million year old fossils of fish. The brain stem regulates the involuntary and instinctive functions in the body.
Emotions and instinct work in close partnership to ensure the survival of the human body that houses them. This brain stem/limbic system partnership is the next stop on the journey of information from the eyes and ears to the “new brain”. This partnership is a security guard, screening the interpreted sounds and images to determine whether or not they are a threat to survival. If the speaker is deemed safe, the incoming information is passed on to the frontal lobes for focused attention. If not, this “ancient brain” security guard has the power to barricade the pathway to the frontal lobes, and the speaker’s content is not allowed access to the thinking part of the brain. When that happens, the listener’s mind wanders off along any number of safer and more interesting paths of thought, and the speaker’s words are neither received nor remembered.
What’s important to realize is that the limbic system and the brain stem operate below the level of conscious thought. They don’t understand ideas and concepts. Their territory is behaviour, specifically body language and tone of voice. In plain terms, this means that everything you do and say in your presentation must pass scrutiny by the emotions and instinct before your listener’s thinking brain will pay attention to you. No matter how convincing your ideas are, you must show the security guard that you are both friendly and interesting to be deemed safe enough to pass its “gut response” test. How do you do that? By how you look and sound.
In my experience, there are six behaviours that will get you past the emotions/instinct security guard.
- Stand with energetic, open body language
- Speak with a vibrant voice and clear diction
- Make eye contact
- Tell stories
- Be yourself
- Smile
I’ll elaborate on each of these points in coming articles, but for now, stand tall, speak with enthusiasm and look your listener in the eye. And remember to smile! That security guard is your friend!
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