If you have ever been impressed with a speaker’s performance it is because they know how to build rapport with the audience. Most of the renowned speakers build rapport by integrating stories into their presentations or speeches. So how does this simple form of story telling engage the audience? You are probably thinking well anybody can tell a story right? These skilled speakers will draw on relative experiences or trials that they have gone through that relates to the title of theme of their speech which is why you came to the presentation in the first place. For example “how to overcome public speaking anxiety” was the topic de jour and most people are afraid of speaking in public, so they show up at the seminar to listen how they can overcome this issue.
The speakers of presenters have their speeches planned and organized precisely to hook you so that you will be on the edge of your seat most of the time. So how do the speakers magically draw you in? Well they use the skill of building trust and rapport. When you trust someone you will listen to them because they have established credibility through rapport. What is good rapport? When a speaker tells a story they will draw on a life experience that they had to overcome an obstacle to produce a successful outcome. The story itself will engage the audience because there will be many instances in the story that the audience can relate to, when this happens the audience will experience a commonality with the speaker and hence feel that they can relate therefore building the trust factor. For example if the speaker is telling of his or her first experience speaking in front of a group whether it was in high school, college, PTA, work ect.. most of the audience if not all has had a similar experience. The speakers goes on to tell how his or her palms got sweaty , lost train of thought or froze up on stage so further relating to the audience. By the time the speaker gets through with their speech the audience has gained total “buy in” because they identify with the speaker and furthermore will believe that they will be able to overcome their fear of public speaking just as the presenter did because he simply built rapport with the audience which created trust and belief.
Stories are a very powerful means to attract attention of an audience because in addition to building rapport they also and should provide a specific time of occurrence, who specifically was involved and where it happened and finally what the outcome was. These aforementioned components establish factual credibility to further prove evidence to the story. Using rapport in your presentation properly will surely capture the audience for a memorable presentation of speech.