The Inclusive Speaker
Chapter Two (freebie)

Freebie – The Inclusive Speaker – Chapter Two

Chapter 2. Our “Come-to-Jesus” moment

“If you’ve designed your keynote, presentation, or workshop to fit the average audience member, then I’m sorry to say, in reality, you’ve essentially designed it to fit no one.”

It’s 2022, and DE&I (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is all the rage now.

Most organizations out there today — and probably yours, too — claim to be committed to maintaining a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion that fully represents the many different cultures, backgrounds, and viewpoints of their people.

Brands strive to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion by providing environments that are increasingly free from barriers. By enabling spaces where everyone feels valued and respected, where no one is denied opportunities for reasons unrelated to their abilities. Our society celebrates and welcomes the diversity of the workforce, clients, prospects, and audiences to foster a space that respects people’s dignity, ideas, and beliefs. Brands recognize, respect, and value diverse life experiences and heritages and ensure that all voices are valued and heard.

Brands and organizations demonstrate this commitment by providing non-discriminatory environments with a supportive culture that welcomes and encourages equal opportunities for everyone.

But do they really?

DE&I initiatives typically speak of “protected grounds,” the characteristics that cannot be used as reasons to discriminate against others, under human rights legislation. Sometimes called prohibited grounds, these typically include race, colour, creed, ethnic or national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, family status, and marital status. BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of colour) and non-binary being most popular these days.

But be honest with me now.

How many of the great diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in organizations also protect characteristics like age and disability? Yes, people of colour, minorities, and LGBTQ+ folks are more represented than ever, and they need to be, but what about recognizing and amplifying our ageing population as well as those who have with disabilities? Can we truly talk about DE&I, if our definition of diversity, equity, and inclusion doesn’t systematically also factor in disabilities and declining abilities?

I believe that as long as DE&I initiatives will not also factor in accessibility as a fourth and fundamental component, then our society will still have a long way to go before we can really consider it to be inclusive. And I strongly believe that there are no more efficient ways to bring about this change than through speaking professionals like yourselves, who communicate on behalf of those brands and organizations.

Again, be honest with me now.

How many times have you attended a talk where the speaker got to their Q&A session and dove right into answering questions from the audience without bothering to repeat those questions in their microphone first? How many times have you missed what the question was, either because you simply couldn’t hear it properly, or because you just weren’t paying as much attention as you should have? Do you remember struggling to understand the speaker’s answer because you lacked context?

Along the same lines…have you ever attended a breakout session or a workshop where the speaker or trainer declined using that same microphone, boasting something along the lines of: “Oh, I won’t need that microphone, this is a small enough room…. I can be loud… y’all can hear me, right?”

And then proceeded with their content as planned, unchallenged in their assertion as no one dared or bothered to say otherwise?

Of course, you have. We’ve all been there. Maybe you’ve even been guilty of doing that yourself. For all we know, maybe you were THAT speaker just last week, last month, last year, during this presentation you gave in front of that smaller group.

If you’ve been to a few conferences in the past or attended a few live, in-person, or virtual training sessions lately, I’m going to assume you’ve experienced such things at least a few times. And if you’re a regular to conference rooms and speaking events, then you’re painfully aware that foregoing the microphone is both a cardinal sin of exclusionary speaking and an absolute constant, even for the most experienced among us.

Maybe your own lived experience makes you a bit of an expert at knowing in your core just how frustrating speakers who decline the mic can be.

Though we know should better as speaking professionals, we all slip and do stuff like this every now and then. We let our guard down. We make assumptions. We don’t think about it twice, because in most cases, it probably feels like it’s not that big of a deal, anyway. Blame it on the spur of the moment. Blame it on the excitement of sharing our brilliant thoughts. Blame it on the wireless microphone being on the opposite side of the room. It doesn’t matter. Or does it?

Well, I’m here to tell you that it does matter. A hell of a whole lot.

Every time we decline or forgo the microphone — or whenever we find ourselves guilty of any of the other sins of professional speaking we’re about to discover together in this book — someone in the audience pays the price of exclusion. Someone feels left out, singled out, frustrated, or at the very least, annoyed.

And every time that microphone is declined because we think our voices carry far and wide, there’s probably at least one person in the audience who feels otherwise.

I’m also here to tell you that no matter how loud we think we are, for some people, it still won’t be loud enough. In fact, how loud we think we are, or how far we think our voice carries couldn’t matter less! What matters — the only thing that truly does — is how clearly the people in the audience will be able to hear us when we’re standing in front of them, delivering our message, and sharing our content.

To make matters worse, most people who experience these feelings of frustration and isolation would never openly admit to them either, out of fear of being singled out. Really, who would ever want to be pinpointed as the outlier who can’t hear properly? As the difficult audience member who expects you to pick up that microphone, when you just claimed you didn’t need to?

Very few people will. And so, the problem remains…it’s a bit of a vicious circle. Opening to inclusive speaking can contribute to breaking that cycle.

This happens all the time and goes unaddressed at most conferences and speaking events I attend each year. And believe me, I attend a lot of them. It even happens in the ones where professional speakers and trainers gather to learn best practices and techniques from one another.

That ought to mean something, right?

Most speaking professionals would be adamant about the fact that they’re very inclusive. Sadly, the vast majority are so blinded by their own unconscious biases that they can’t even grok the issues they cause others in their audience.

It’s time to wake up, folks.

How can you possibly be so damn sure?!

I learned about the importance of not neglecting the microphone the hard way myself in the fall of 2003…at an early digital accessibility conference, of all places. It happened in Montreal, my hometown. I’ll never forget the lesson I learned that day. It was a presentation in front of about 20 people, one of my very first public speaking opportunities as a matter of fact, and certainly one of my largest audiences up until that point. It took place in a room that couldn’t hold much more than that either.

You’ve all been in conference rooms like that one before…white eggshell walls, typical soundproof ceiling panels, no windows, bland fluorescent lights, a five-foot long draped table with two chairs in the front, and an old projector pointing to a squeaky suspended screen on the wall. That was long before the fancy flat screens with their amazing resolution, integrated AV systems, wireless microphones, and high-tech, Bluetooth-connected projectors. It was, to put it mildly, pretty crappy.

In essence, it was a small, impersonal room, with next to no soul and cheap equipment. And there I was, standing in the front, looking at the crowd I was about to conquer, doing all I could to look confident and in control.

I was that speaker who could’ve used a microphone that day but decided against it. Not only because I felt a little uncomfortable using it, but also because the speaker before me had not bothered with using it either. I guess it felt uncalled for. Overkill, maybe even. After all, this was a small group of people, in a small room. The last thing I wanted was to look obnoxious with that big, hand-held, bulky, wired microphone.

Like I said, we’ve all done it. I certainly wasn’t any different, and I clearly didn’t know any better.

And then my world came to an end. The unthinkable happened. After only a few minutes of going through my presentation, I heard a man’s faint voice coming from somewhere towards the back of the room.

“Mike. Please”.

I paused for a second, surprised, and wondering who that “Mike” person could be. But maybe even more importantly, wondering who had the nerve to interrupt me in my flow. In my little moment of speaking glory. Not seeing who that might be, I quickly resumed with my content, only to be interrupted again, this time a bit more insistently.

“I said, mic please. Can you use a microphone, I’m having a hard time hearing you.”

My eyes locked in on who my ill-mannered interrupter was. What the hell…, probably was the first thing that came to mind, as I looked at that average-looking, middle-aged man with glasses as thick as the moustache below them, a receding hairline, and a blue shirt. I quickly grabbed the hand-held wired microphone that was sitting on the table next to the projector, fought awkwardly for a few seconds with the wire wrapped around the table, and proceeded to not entirely lose face.

Feeling flustered and overly apologetic as only a Canadian can, I blurted some graceless excuse as to why I initially thought it was unnecessary but would of course comply if people felt it was needed…. Did people agree I should use it? That I was sorry…that I didn’t mean to offend…yadda, yadda, yaddaaaaaaaaaaa….

“I’ve been sitting through a full morning of web accessibility presentations, and most of the speakers so far have not been eating their own dog food! Very few have bothered using a microphone, no one repeats the questions from the audience, and I’m getting frustrated. How hard can it be? How can any of you possibly be so damn sure about how well others can hear you?!”

Clearly, not everyone in the room felt that using the microphone was uncalled for that day. That was now painfully clear. And some people in the audience definitely didn’t feel that using one was “overkill,” based on what was going on right then! I was mortified, sweat running down my forehead and shivers rushing down my spine. The embarrassment. The shame.

I don’t remember much about the presentation after that, but I’ll never forget how that man made me feel that day. As it turns out, he did me a huge favour, one for which I am still extraordinarily grateful. The lesson that he taught me shaped my career from that point on and is a lesson I have never forgotten.

I wish I could tell you that after my talk, he and I started talking, and we became the best of friends. That we are still laughing at the whole situation over beers, some 20 years later. But no. The man quickly left the room once my talk was over, and I never saw him again after that.

End of story.

That man, whom I’ve come to refer to as “Mike” over the years, came crashing down in my life that day. He radically changed my perspective as to what it meant to speak publicly. And to this day, though the memory of what he looked like fades a bit more with each passing year, the question he asked still haunts me to this very day.

“How can any of you possibly be so damn sure?!” It was, and remains, a critically terrifying question.

How much of what we believe our audience needs or expects is fact, and how much of it is just assumption? None of the speakers could be 100% sure that day, just as none of us can ever be at any given time. But we keep making that assumption every single time we decline to use the microphone, or don’t bother reformulating the questions coming from the room before answering them.

It’s not that we don’t mean well…it’s just that this consideration is simply not on our radar.

If you stick around through the next few chapters, hopefully, this is about to change for you, as it changed for me on this otherwise normal day of fall 2003. But without the embarrassment.

How can any of us possibly be so damn sure…. That may very well be the most important question anyone’s ever asked me as a professional speaker. The lesson I learned that day led me to rethink all that I took for granted, not only as someone who aspires to become a great communicator, but also as a consultant in general. Not that I knew a lot about either business back then. But whatever little I thought I knew was shaken to its core by that simple yet highly disruptive question.

And so, I ask the same question of you today. How can YOU ever be so sure about anything when it comes to what your audience members expect, want, or need?! Did you ever ask them?

How can any of us possibly be sure about anything when it comes to how our audience members receive our message, perceive our content, and understand what we ask of them? This one question has become so fundamental to me that I have no doubt it is one of the key pieces that led me down this professional journey toward inclusion over the years.

As Lao Tzu so eloquently puts it in the Tao Te Ching, a Chinese classic text dated from the 6th-century BC, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step (loose translation). The question “Mike” asked that day, for me, wasn’t my very first step as you’ll discover later in the book, but it was definitely one of the most significant and transformational.

By choosing to pay attention and to be mindful of the needs of those who can potentially be excluded, an entire world of opportunities opens for us as speaking professionals. I sincerely hope you can open your mind to the opportunity over the next few chapters.

As communication professionals, we hold the power to create a better, more satisfying experience for everyone. We already know our message can change lives. But most of us aren’t even remotely aware of how many more lives we could change, if only we were truly mindful about inclusion.

Over time, I have grown to view the principles of inclusive speaking as a series of collateral benefits to caring about inclusion. With little bit of luck, maybe soon, you will, too…. But more about that later.

First, let’s get officially started. Let’s go back to that dream of mine because it’s the main reason why this book came to be in the first place.

Enjoying these two chapters? Awesome. Then go and pre-order yourself a copy using the form below.