Ep. 044 — Four World-Class Speakers Reveal the True Power of Audience Connection

Hosted by Roddy Galbraith

A Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production

Weekly highlights from The Speaker’s Edge — a Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production hosted by Roddy Galbraith. Learn how to communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact — in business, on stage, and in life.

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This Week’s Big Idea

World-class speaking doesn’t start with content — it starts with connection. When you connect first (care, common ground, authenticity), everything you say lands harder. When you don’t, nothing lands.

Key Takeaways

• Stop asking “What am I going to say?” and start with “Who am I saying it to?”

• Don’t try to impress — connect first, then the content carries weight.

• Avoid the “Martian effect”: if you seem unlike them, they assume your solution won’t work for them.

• Connection isn’t about elevation — it’s about identification.

• Affirm the audience early: make them feel bigger, not smaller.

• Create agreement and enrollment — don’t just “teach”; invite them into a journey.

• “Connectors go first”: you do the work to meet them where they are.

Quote of the Week

“Connection isn’t about elevation. It’s about identification.”

Resources & Practice

Practice before your next talk (10 minutes):

1. Write answers to: Where are they right now? What do they want? fear? feel?

2. Add one sentence that signals: “I’m like you” (a normal struggle, not a trophy).

3. Open with a quick affirmation (what’s good/true about them).

4. Replace one “teaching” line with an invitation (“Let’s look at this together…”).

Get the companion guide here > MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge

Full Transcript (Ep. 044 — 4 World-Class Speakers Reveal the True Power of Audience Connection)
Released: December 29, 2025

This transcript was auto-generated. It may contain minor errors. *Copy text adds attribution automatically

Hey guys, welcome back to The Speaker’s Edge podcast. The podcast dedicated to helping you to learn from some of the world’s very best speakers and communicators so you can learn to master your message and inspire your audience every single time you speak. I’m your host for this podcast, Roddy Galbraith, and I’m thrilled that you’ve chosen to join us again this week.

We’ve got a great episode for you today. I know I say that every week, but this is another great episode because Christmas is just a few days behind us. The new year is coming up any moment, isn’t it? So, at the end of the year, I thought we’d look back at some of the great world-class speakers we’ve had over the last year on the show, and we’ll take some of their wisdom and we’ll package it together.

So, we’ll do like a series of maybe four different Speaker’s Edge episodes. And in this one, we’re going to group three or four speakers together, and we’re going to look at the themes of what they have in common. And then we’ll do that each week for the next four episodes. So, very exciting.

But before we get into that, if you haven’t downloaded the companion guide, simply go to maxwellleadership.com/thespeakersedge and you can download the companion guide. And if you like the show, if you enjoy this episode and the show generally, we’d love it if you rate and review.

All right, let’s dive into this fascinating episode. So, over the years, I’ve been incredibly fortunate. I really have been very blessed indeed because I’ve had the opportunity to interview and work with and share the stage with and learn from some of the very best speakers in the world.

And what’s interesting about this is, why they all are—they’re all world-class. They’re all different. They’ve all got different styles. They’ve all got different personalities. They’ve got different topics and different stories. The very best speakers all seem to agree on one foundational truth. Speaking doesn’t start with your content. Communication doesn’t start with your content. It starts with connection. It starts with connection.

And yet, this is one of the things that most speakers, particularly at the beginning, they get backwards. They focus on what they’re going to say when the real question should be, who are they saying it to? Who are they saying it to?

So, in this episode, I want to share some of that great advice, as I said, from some of the best speakers in the world. We’re going to focus in this episode on John Maxwell, a key lesson from John Maxwell, a related but slightly different lesson from Paralympian Bonnie St. John, and then Les Brown, and then Seth Godin. And they’re all around this one big idea, this simple idea. If you connect first, then everything else lands cleaner and crisper and firmer and surer. But if you don’t connect, then nothing else matters because it doesn’t land at all and they don’t care. They don’t care.

All right then. So we’ll start with John Maxwell. You see, the best speakers, John will tell you, the best speakers are the best listeners. You have to tune in to your audience.

And after more than a decade—well, well, more like 15-plus years now—of working with John, he’s become a great friend. I know him very well. And I’ve had the opportunity to go through his material with a fine-tooth comb and really dig into his philosophy. And if you could boil it down into one kind of key idea, I think it would be this.

Don’t try and impress the audience. Don’t try and impress the audience. You want to connect with them, not impress them.

You’ve probably heard John talk about that. You’ve probably heard him say that if you’ve seen him speak, particularly when he’s talking about communication, the importance of communication. So, he says that they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

So, you can’t impress them before you connect with them. They’re not interested. They’re not listening. They don’t care. They really don’t care. So, connection always comes first.

So, in order to connect, the best way you can connect is be yourself at your best, of course. Be yourself, be nice, be kind, be an addition to their life, add value to their life, and they’ll love you for it, and they’ll lean into that.

So, it’s a great example really of John’s philosophy of how important it is not to try and impress the audience. They don’t care about any of that. They want to know that you care first of all.

So, know, like, and trust. And there’s an order to that—know, like, and trust. They need to feel like they’re getting to know you first of all. So, you need to be authentically yourself. That’s why it’s important to be yourself. And then they become interested in what it is that you’re going to say. Makes sense, doesn’t it? So, just simple understated genius from John, as you’d expect.

Okay, so building on that then, the next person that I want to introduce us to—or remind us for those of you that saw the original episode—is Bonnie St. John. Paralympian Bonnie St. John, she introduced us to the idea of the Martian effect. The Martian effect.

So, she said when the audience looks at you, very often if you’re trying to impress them, if you’re telling them all of the wonderful things that you’ve done, they look at you like you’re nothing like me. You’re not from around here. I’ve got nothing in common with you. And so it appears like you’re from Mars. It appears like you’re a Martian. That’s why she calls it the Martian effect.

So it doesn’t matter how impressive you are then if they don’t think that you’re like them. If they think you’re special, they think that you can’t help them. Because really, what do they need? They want help from someone like them. They want help from someone that also makes mistakes, that also is a little bit lazy at times, that also does stupid things. Because if you have all these magical powers, then of course it’s going to work for you. Whatever you’re selling, whatever you’re telling, of course it’s going to work for you, but it’s not going to work for me because I’m a regular person with real problems.

So I need someone like me. Show me the formula. Show me the roadmap that works for somebody like me. That’s then what I’m going to be interested in.

So you can see how tempting it is to try and impress the audience, but you can also see the fundamental flaw in that. They think that you’re different and therefore it won’t work for them. So that’s not going to—we’re not going to do that. We’re not going to do that.

It’s not about getting applause. It’s not about getting a standing ovation. It’s not about you being a great speaker. It’s not about people coming up to you afterwards and saying, “Oh, that was amazing.” It’s not about that. Really, what you want is someone to come up to you and say, “You’re just like me. You’re just like me.”

Now, one way that you can try to avoid this, she said, if you go to speak somewhere and you’re doing your pre-call and you’re asking for people that you can speak to who are going to be in the audience—which is a great idea to do so—you can get a feel who’s in the audience and maybe get a friend or two before you get there as well.

You’re going to speak to them, but they’re going to give you the people that are like the top performers. They’re going to give you the leadership team. They’re going to give you the people who are good people for you to speak to, but that’s not representative of people in the audience.

So, she said, “You don’t just want to speak to management. They’re going to give you management, but you don’t just speak to management because if you just speak to management, you’re going to sound like management when you’re speaking to them. You need to speak to the regular people.”

Speak to management as well, of course, if they’re going to be there too. But if there’s regular staffers, regular people in the audience, you need to be able to connect with them and tap into them. So, she said, make sure you can speak to some of them so you can hear from their perspectives, their problems, their side of the beach ball, if you like. You can tune into their perspective then.

Otherwise, you just sound like management and then you’re like, “Well, you’re different to me.” And of course, this doesn’t apply to me. So, it’s the same kind of thing. If you’re speaking like management, you’re creating a gap. And connection is not about creating a gap. It’s about closing a gap.

Connection isn’t about elevation. It’s about identification. They need to be able to identify with you. They need to be able to say, “Yeah, I like her. She’s just like me. She’s just like me.” So, great stuff from Bonnie St. John.

Okay. So the next great world-class speaker that I want to bring out then, again on this theme of valuing people, building a relationship with people, connecting with people, the next world-class speaker is Les Brown.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with Les Brown a number of times over the years, do a number of different programs with him, shared the stage with him, worked on a speaking curriculum for him. And one of the things that Les Brown says over and over is that I always look for a way to affirm the audience right at the beginning of my presentation. Right at the beginning, right at the start, he wants to build them up. He wants to look for a way to affirm them.

So, if you’ve seen Les speak, you’ve probably heard him say, “There’s something special about you. There’s greatness in you. There’s greatness in you.” Now, he believes that, but it’s one thing for him to believe it. It’s another for him to believe it and to tell you that because it’s a great way to build that relationship. Build that relationship.

So, I remember one time we were doing a two-day speaker boot camp years ago, about 2014, I think it was. And at the beginning of the boot camp, he says, “When I speak, Roddy, I want the audience to leave feeling good about themselves.” That’s my goal. I want them to leave feeling good about themselves.

He doesn’t want them to leave feeling good about him. He wants them to leave feeling good about themselves. Now, if you do that, they do leave feeling good about themselves, but thinking about you, and then they’re more likely to tell other people about you. And then they’re more likely to come back, and they’re more likely to bring people with you.

So, it’s not about them thinking that you’re great. It’s about them thinking that they’re great. And when speakers focus on showing the audience how great they are, they often make the audience feel small. But when the audience feels bigger, they’re much more likely to have big plans for their life and actually go and do something with the great information that they’ve learned.

And so making people feel good about themselves is a great way to connect. It’s a great way to build that relationship right from the start of your talk. And it’s a great way to lay the foundations of influence.

Okay. The last world-class expert we’re going to look at then is Seth Godin. I interviewed Seth Godin about eight or 10 years ago on stage in front of thousands of people and one of the things that he said that really stood out to me was teaching doesn’t work. Teaching on its own doesn’t work for all the reasons that we’ve just talked about. We need to build that relationship first.

And so he said the most important thing you can do to communicate—without actually saying these exact words, but the message is—you were right all along. You were right all along. That’s great, isn’t it? You’re trying to get the audience to feel that they were right all along because that’s what we think. That’s what we all think.

And so we create agreement there, we connect on common ground. It’s absolute genius when you think about it. So if we can create agreement, not disagreement, then people lean in rather than lean away.

Teaching kind of pushes the information at them and pushes them away because again they’re not ready necessarily to let us in at the beginning. So we want enrollment, he said, and enrollment then invites them into a journey. We want to take them on a journey. We want them to come along with us. And we need them to enroll in that journey for that to happen.

If all you want to do is teach, he said, then just send them a memo. Simple. But if you want to influence them, then you need to show up as a human being and meet them where they are.

So the big idea from all four of these wonderful world-class speakers, they’re all saying the same thing. Connection is not a tactic, it’s a platform. In fact, it’s a foundation. Connection is a foundation and it’s the first and most important foundation of influence.

So the next time you’re speaking, the next time you’re doing a presentation, formal or informal, ask yourself, where are they right now? The people you’re going to speak to, where are they right now? What are they thinking to themselves? What are they feeling? What do they want? What are they afraid of? Why don’t they have it already? That’s going to help you meet them where they are. That’s going to help you connect on common ground.

And remember, connectors go first. It’s your job to go to them and find those things, to find that common ground. Don’t wait for them to come to you. You’ll be waiting a long time.

Okay, so that’s it for this episode and that’s it for this year. 2025 draws to an end. Looking forward to working with you some more in 2026 on your speaking and communicating. Take care of yourselves. If you’re celebrating the new year, then have a wonderful time. I’ll see you next year.

Thanks for listening today. See you in the next episode. Take care. Lots of love. Bye-bye. God bless.