Jo Caulfield on How to Engage an Audience

Transcript

Jo Caulfield (comedian): I'm Jo Caulfield, and I speak to people for a living.

It's really important to engage an audience because we are animals really, and we judge people in very odd ways. So that initial, when you first go out in front of people I always think is very, very important, and you have to give them that moment to decide.

[Jo Caulfield speaking to an audience] "Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me have a look, see what this Tuesday night has brought me."

I'm sometimes at events and the CEO will get up and do a speech and people who are very high up in their business, and I'm always very surprised at how bad they are at speaking. 'Cause they sometimes do this thing where they just sort of come out and they know it's not really very interesting speech, and they're not really engaging, and they're not changing their tone, and they're not looking at the audience, and nobody really wants to hear it but they're embarrassed to engage. I think people, if they're unconfident they will pretend that they're not really trying to communicate. Rather than going, "I'm not really the best at public speaking, "but I'm so excited by whatever we did this year, "blah, blah, blah."

Get the message, so your message is what you're excited about. 'Cause as soon as you get into the information, if you are passionate about your information, people will listen.

[Jo Caulfield speaking to an audience] "Oh, we've got Gyles Brandreth looking at hats, Mary Berry is making a pavlova, and we've got one half of the 80s group Dollar, it's going to be brilliant."

If you want to engage an audience and you want them to follow you for half an hour just listening to you talk, they have to like you in some way. And I think the best way to sort of make people like you is try to be as much yourself as you can. Don't be fake.

Do you ever get caught out in a conversation because you're trying to bluff that you are more intellectual than you are? Because I had it with a friend visiting Edinburgh and she said to me, "Oh what's the Scottish Museum of Modern Art like?" So I went, "Oh, it's lovely, it's really nice." Right, 'cause I've been there. And then she started to ask what pieces they had. She goes, "Oh, I heard they had loaned a Rothko, "Do they still have the Rothko?" And then she started naming modern artists. And very quickly I had to go, "I don't really know, I've only been to the tea room."

Or even if they don't like you they might go, "Oh." But what they told me about themselves that has engaged me, "I want to know how they got there." So sometimes the story about yourself gets you the love from the people to get them on board to listen to you.

And I think it's quite nice because if you're apart from each other you get to miss the person. Don't you? And missing someone is quite a sweet feeling, it's very romantic, and you might play music and you sort of think about them and it's quite enjoyable. Although sometimes I think when you're missing them you're missing a better version of them. You know, sometimes when I get home and then I look at my husband, I'm like, "Oh, that's not what I had in mind."

'Cause we're all like that, we go, "Oh, I gotta listen to them. "Don't know why I like their voice, "there's something likable about them." Rather than someone projecting at you who's not actually trying to engage, they're just trying to tell you stuff. But what you want is someone who's going, "Oh, I'm trying to get into your brain "to have a conversation, "to actually engage like it is a conversation, "except I'm gonna do all the talking."

It's always interesting to me who people will say are good at public speaking. Politicians are very good to watch because most of them are bad. Like people are saying, "Oh Obama, he's a natural speaker." Not if you watch a Bill Clinton speech. Bill Clinton had a way of really making each person think he was talking to them, he really did. And a casualness and a kind of, "Hey, how are you?" "And here's some really complicated things about government that I'm doing." But he made it seem like he was in a bar talking to people. He was interesting, you thought you could go for a drink with him afterwards.

And that's what people want, that actually is what engages them. It's not people having any kind of fireworks at the end of their fingers, it's going, "Oh, he's talking like a person." "She's talking like a person." That's what you've got to try and aim for.