Good Audience Relationships: Be Polite

Video Transcript

"Now let's talk about being polite, and for the most part, it should be pretty easy for you to be polite when you're giving your speech. But there are a number of situations where you might not realize, but you're not, you just might automatically not be polite. It might be related to the subject matter. Maybe you're pro-life and your audience is pro-choice, or maybe there's some hostility in the audience to begin with before you speak. Maybe you don't know what you're talking about. Whatever it is, it is essential that you are nice to your audience. If you are nice and polite, your audience will appreciate that. They will start to have a good relationship with you. "Well she's nice. She's friendly. She's x, y, z." If you're aggressive and hostile and mean, why would anyone want to have a good relationship with you as the speaker? So it's real important to be polite, especially if you have a question and answer period in your speech. Maybe you get put under the gun. Well, don't yell at your audience members, be polite to them."