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The Holy Grail for speakers

So what if we were asked to define the Holy Grail for speakers?

What would you say?

This has me intrigued now.

So the Holy Grail is a feeling?

What is that feeling?

For me, then,

the feeling is natural

not forced,

confident without being egotistical,

though sometimes a performance.

It is uplifting,

a quiet satisfaction sometimes,

sometimes exhilarating.

It is absolute connection,

shared laughs, emotional highs, and sad lows,

sudden understanding

and joy in discovery,

all shared.

That is me, the speaker, but what about the listener,

the audience member,

what does that person see as the Holy Grail of speaking,

of being in an audience?

What does that feel like?

And I, like you, have sat in an audience, just as we have stood or sat or walked as the speaker.

What is that feeling, as an audience?

We wanted to feel that connection

that experience,

those emotions,

the energy,

those shared learnings,

that absolute connection.

Sometimes we wanted to be the only person in that audience, alone in the experience,

at other times we felt kinship with all the others sitting or standing or online beside us.

We wanted to trust,

for the feeling of communication to be natural,

unforced.

We wanted to feel somehow changed by the experience,

more prepared to face our challenges,

validated in our choices already made,

motivated to go ahead,

uplifted, entertained, bemused,

if only for the duration of the presentation.

Is this the holy grail of speaking,

and does it exist,

has it ever existed???????