• Understand how emotional intelligence can improve your public speaking

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and effectively use one’s own emotions and those of others in interpersonal interactions.

Understanding and Managing Your Emotions

Before you can effectively manage the emotions of your audience, you need to be adept at handling your own. Public speaking often evokes a mix of emotions, from excitement and passion to anxiety and fear. Emotional intelligence helps you:

• Recognize and Acknowledge Your Feelings: Understand what you’re feeling before and during your speech. This awareness can help you channel nervous energy into enthusiasm and passion, rather than letting it undermine your performance.
• Regulate Your Emotions: Maintain composure under pressure, adapt to unexpected situations, and stay focused on your message. This is key to delivering a clear and confident presentation.

Reading the Audience

A significant part of EI in public speaking is the ability to read the audience’s emotions. This skill allows you to:

• Adjust Your Delivery in Real-Time: If you notice your audience’s attention waning, you might inject a relevant story or shift to a more dynamic part of your presentation. Observing that the audience is confused might prompt you to clarify your points or slow down.
• Engage More Effectively: Understanding the mood and emotional state of your audience can help you tailor your speech to resonate with them, making it more likely that they will remain engaged and receptive.

Building Connections

Emotional intelligence facilitates deeper connections between the speaker and the audience. This connection is critical in persuasive speaking and in settings where you need to inspire or motivate. By being emotionally intelligent, you can:

• Empathize with the Audience: Show that you understand and care about their interests, concerns, and emotions. This builds trust and makes your message more appealing and credible.
• Respond to Emotional Cues: By effectively responding to what you perceive about the audience’s emotions, you create a dialogue. This responsiveness can make the audience feel valued and respected.

Enhancing Persuasiveness

An emotionally intelligent speaker can craft messages that not only inform but also evoke the desired emotional responses. This is particularly important in persuasive speaking. Depending on your reading of the audience’s feelings and values, you might emphasize certain points over others.

Some emotional cues you can look for:

• Facial Expressions: Pay attention to smiles, frowns, raised eyebrows, or furrowed brows. These can indicate interest, confusion, skepticism, or agreement.
• Body Language: Observe whether the audience members are leaning forward, crossing their arms, or nodding. 
  • When audience members lean forward, it generally indicates interest and engagement. They are physically moving closer to the speaker, showing that they want to catch every word and are actively involved in the speech.
  • Crossed arms can be a bit more complex to interpret as this gesture might have different meanings based on the context and accompanying body language. Generally, it can suggest that a person is feeling defensive or resistant, as if they are physically shielding themselves from what’s being said. However, for some, it might simply be a comfortable resting position, so it’s important to look for other cues like facial expressions to understand the true sentiment.
  • Nodding is usually a very positive response. It indicates agreement or understanding. It’s also a sign of encouragement for many speakers.
• Vocal Feedback: Listen for sounds like laughter, sighs, or murmurs of agreement. These vocalizations can give you clues about the audience’s emotional state and level of agreement or disagreement.

You can view the transcript for “The People Currency: Practicing Emotional Intelligence | Jason Bridges | TEDxWabashCollege” here (opens in new window).