Success with Speakers Series – The Art of Conversation

There are times when a conversation is better than a speech.

Bringing in a speaker does not automatically mean they have to deliver a speech.  Sometimes it’s fun, interesting, and more engaging, to have them sit and just talk with a key person from your organization.

There are some great advantages to this format:

CHANGE IS GOOD – Mixing it up is a good thing.  Audiences get weary of a steady drone of talking heads.  A dialogue gives the audience a welcome break.

FLEXIBILITY & RELEVANCE – A speech simply cannot turn on a dime the way a conversation can.   If an interesting point gets made, a conversation can immediately drill down deeper and get more detail that might be really relevant.  In a speech – those moments wind up waiting for the Q&A session.  If conversation strays into an area that does not interest the audience, you can easily and quickly change the subject and move on to something more interesting to stop audience minds from wandering.

NOT EVERY THOUGHT LEADER IS A GREAT SPEAKER – Throughout my career there were times when the speakers – some of them incredibly well known – had brilliant ideas, incredible insights and sensational experiences to share – but were simply not the sparkling personalities that audiences would want to listen to for 45-60 minutes.  The conversation format was the perfect antidote.  It allowed for getting to the great content the expert had to offer while keeping the pace lively and the focus sharp so the audience was more engaged than if the same speaker took the stage solo for an hour.

There’s no question that this format requires a bit of extra work.  Someone in the organization has to prepare the questions and plan where this conversation is going to go, but the benefits of the conversation format are worth it.  Of course, bringing in someone from the outside to be the interviewer is also an option if it’s inappropriate/unworkable to have someone from inside the organization play that role.