My husband and I recently had a photo shoot with our 4 grandchildren. As you can see from the above photo with two of them, this was not the typical posed photo shoot. It was wild, with an overwhelmed 17-month old, who had just arrived with her mother from New York that day, almost-3-year-old twins who were chaotic whirlwinds of energy, and a relatively calm 10 year-old, who thought the whole process was so fun that he asked, “Can we do this again?”
It was unlike any photo session I had ever participated in–high energy, directed by the photographer, but unscripted, with no static poses. I was skeptical about the results, until I saw the pictures. Energy and love, a passion for family is clearly evident. I’m tempted to share all the pictures, but I won’t!
This experience and the resulting photos reminded me of the compelling nature of passion. Bring passion to your speaking to bring compelling engagement with your audience.
All too often, especially among business speakers and content-expert speakers, presentations are dry, passionless PowerPoint info dumps. The speakers often care, deeply, about their topic, which is a starting point for passion, but the passion is lost in translation to a presentation.
Why does this happen?
There are many reasons, but three that I see often are:
- Ignoring or fearing emotional connection
- “The way it’s always been done”
- Scripting an entire presentation
These will be explored in detail as topics for the next 3 posts. Stay tuned to find out how you can be the speaker that holds an audience spellbound (at least some of the time) with your passion, not afraid to connect emotionally, not afraid to challenge convention, not afraid to drop the script.
Not afraid, but passionate.