Getting respected by the audience is somewhat relieving for us--public speaker. But asking them to respect us is not a polite action. Here are how to ask for their respect silently, indirectly.

1. Use easily understandable words

The first rule: Audience will never respect you if they don’t know what are you talking about. So please, use easily understandable words--in both your presentation slides, modules, and in the way you speak.

You can conduct an analysis to analyze majority of your audience’s level of intelligence. Then, you can measure how “easily understandable” the words should be. You can use a little bit complex words if majority of your audience is a group of genius people. But however, I still recommend you to use easily understandable words--the ones which are the easiest possible.

2. Be friendly

Can you laugh right at the front of short-headed army commander? Of course you can, but his rifle will be right inside your mouth.

Actually, what people do to you is a mirrored actions of what you do to them. People will respect you if you look respectable, and have enough “things” to be respected. What you need to fulfill first is to make yourself look respectable. Aside from wardrobes, coats, whatsoever, you can make yourself friendly to all people. Make yourself look like “I would like to help you, do you have any problem?” etc.. Make yourself friendly, and people will respect you.

3. Never give up on them

Have you ever seen an angered public speaker shouted to the audience to shut the fuck up? Maybe some of you had seen something like this--the public speaker gave up on the audience’s behavior.

What I recommend is to not to make yourself look stressed. Do not make yourself look depressed like everyone around you is putting you in pressure. Just speak. When the audience don’t listen, you can gladly and politely ask them to pay attention. Just don’t let your anger and madness to come up just because you’re giving up on your audience.

4. Make sure that you’re interesting

The next step is an absolute one: make sure that you’re interesting. People also respect you from your specialties. Yeah, I don’t know what is your exact “specialty”, but what I can give to you is some speaking tips to make yourself interesting, which you can find wandering all over this blog.

5. Talk to their eyes

To make people respect you, they must feel like you’re talking to them. It doesn’t feel so good when you look like talking to someone flying few centimeters above your audience’s head. So please, simultaneously see some of your audience’s eyes when you talk. They will feel like you’re talking to them.

6. Compliment them

This step is a little bit between direct and indirect one, but it’s okay, I think.

People will respect you if you respect them, actually, praised them. You can compliment the city where are they come from, you can compliment how enthusiast they are today. There are many things from the audience to be complimented. But please remember to never ask them to praise you back.

7. Try to impress them, but not too much

To impress the audience, you can use quotes, great but minimalist visual design, etc.. When the audience feel impressed, they will naturally do applause, which is a kind of respecting action. And remember to not to impress your audience too much. Because it will look like “you’re trying too hard, man. I’m not impressed anyway.”.

Okay, that’s it. I recommend you to some of these methods to see the proof, whether the audience respect you back or not.

Well, thanks for reading!

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