Building blocks for keynote speakers: what kind of relationship are you building with your audience?

Have you ever wondered how the best speakers capture a room? How do they get an audience to the point where they are completely enraptured in every word? On the flip side, what happens when a speaker unconsciously builds the wrong relationship with the people in front of them? 

These are questions newer speakers often miss and are building blocks for keynote speakers. They assume there’s only one way to approach an audience: with my voice. As if “voice” is a fixed instrument you simply turn on, like a microphone, and then your job is to be authentic and clear. And, right out of the gate, you’ve relegated yourself to irrelevance. 

Don’t get me wrong. I understand this impulse to preserve your voice as if it’s your most precious possession and any attempt to squelch that is stripping part of your identity. However, this is only true if you conflate voice with beliefs. They are not the same thing. Your voice is how you say it (a brand voice is your persona). Your beliefs make up what you say and why you say it. Yes, you should be true to what you believe but how you say it will change with every audience. 

Speakers who confuse voice with belief are missing the fact that every time they speak, they are doing something more consequential than simply sharing content. Instead, they are choosing a posture toward the audience. They are establishing roles – who is “above,” who is “below,” who is responsible for meaning, who is responsible for change. In other words, every speaker is building a relationship in real time, sentence by sentence. And the relationship you choose will quietly determine everything else: your tone, your pacing, your level of certainty, your use of questions, your willingness to make space, even the kind of stories you tell.

Your voice (how you say what you say) should always be aligned with how the audience is most likely to receive it. And you do this by tending to what they need, what they can hear, what they’re ready for. When this happens the speaker’s message has a chance to land. When it isn’t, the message may be rejected outright or simply evaporate. Not because the idea is wrong, but because the relationship you created made your message unreceivable.

I think of it as three different approaches speakers use for the same moment: talking at people, talking to people, and talking with people. Each is a relationship you construct with an audience. Each carries an emotional tone. And each changes what your “voice” becomes once you’re actually in the room.

One last thing before I get into the three approaches. Each of these approaches has their place. I can think of specific genres of speaking that have been used for millennia where each of these captures the voice of that particular genre. The problem is that most speakers don’t understand their options about how to connect and build a relationship with their audience. Here’s the point: make deliberate choices about how you say what you say. Know what you’re choosing and what you’re losing. 

Talking at people as a prophet/preacher

The archetype here is the prophet. At its worst, this prophet does not represent the best sense of conviction and moral courage. At its best, the prophet is an empathetic outsider who says the hard things. The latter is a good use of the prophet. The former uses words as blunt instruments and embodies a posture of proclamation. The emotional tone is certainty that doesn’t ask permission. It arrives with a kind of spiritual confidence: this is the truth, and my job is to deliver it to you.

Sometimes it’s earnest. Sometimes it’s performative. Sometimes it’s just fear or insecurity wearing the mask of authority. But whatever the motive, the relationship is one-directional. The speaker stands above the room, even if they’re physically standing on the same floor. They are not really in conversation with anyone; they are proclaiming a message.

You can feel this style in the way the speaker moves through their points as if the audience’s inner life is irrelevant to the timeline. The speaker interprets the room’s confusion as a failure to “get it.” Questions are treated as challenges. Resistance is treated as defiance. And the posture, however polite the words, is essentially: I have it. You need it. Accept it.

To be clear: this style can still “work” in the short run. It can create compliance. It can create awe. It can even create a temporary sense of unity. But it rarely creates ownership, because it asks people to submit to the idea rather than participate in it.

Talking to people: the lecturing professor (or parent)

The archetype here is the professor at the front of the room, or the well-meaning parent explaining how the world works. The emotional tone is controlled competence: organized, articulate, considerate, and often genuinely helpful. There is less edge than the preacher. There is more care. But it is still fundamentally instructional.

The posture is: I know more than you about this, and I’m going to explain that knowledge clearly.

This is where many high-performing leaders live when they give a presentation or keynote. They’ve done the work. They have the framework. They want to be generous with their expertise. And the audience can often tell: this person is prepared, thoughtful, and trying to do right by us.

The limitation is subtle. Even with warmth, the relationship is still speaker → listener. The audience’s role is to understand, absorb, and apply. The speaker’s aim is excellent delivery, while the listener’s job is uptake. If the audience doesn’t move, the speaker may simply give more explanation, more examples, more slides. Because the assumption is that the issue is the audience’s insufficient information.

In parenting terms, this is the “right now” parent: Here’s what you did. Here’s what you should do instead. Here’s why. Now do it. It’s not malicious. It’s often loving. It’s just oriented toward immediate correction and immediate comprehension.

This is a far cry from lasting impact, where you just can’t shake an idea because it resonates so fully with your experience. 

Talking with people: the Socratic teacher (or parent preparing them for what’s next)

The archetype here is the Socratic teacher – or the parent who isn’t merely trying to produce compliance in the moment, but capacity for the future. The emotional tone shifts toward openness, respect, and shared attention. Not softness. Not vagueness. But a kind of grounded presence that trusts the listener’s agency.

The posture becomes: I’m not here to win this moment. I’m here to prepare you for what’s next.

That is a very different kind of authority and one of the biggest mistakes that speakers make when shaping their speech. Because speaking for lasting impact is less about controlling the room and more about creating conditions in which the room can think. 

Let me say that again: speaking for lasting impact is less about controlling the room and more about creating conditions in which the room can think. 

The speaker still brings expertise, but instead of using expertise to dominate the meaning, they use it to invite meaning. They design the talk as an experience the audience participates in, not a message they submit to.

You can hear it in the way the speaker names the audience’s lived reality before moving toward a new idea. You can see it in the way they make space for reflection and for friction, because they’re not threatened by it. You can feel it in the questions that are not rhetorical – questions that are asked because the speaker actually wants the listener to do the inner work of arriving.

In parenting terms, this is the parent who cares less about having the last word and more about helping a child build judgment. They’re willing to tolerate a little discomfort in the present because they’re investing in maturity later. They aren’t just managing behavior; they’re forming a person.

And when a speaker talks with people, something almost always changes in the listener: they don’t just understand the idea, they begin to see themselves inside it. The idea becomes portable. It becomes something they can carry into the next meeting, the next hard conversation, the next decision – without the speaker needing to be there to reinforce it.

A simple test helps me tell the difference: when you finish, do people feel as though they have been managed, or as though they have been met? Do they tell you what a good speaker you are or do they ask questions that clarify how to bridge the gap between themselves and your idea?  

Building blocks for keynote speakers

For the best speakers, the goal is rarely agreement. Agreement is easy to fake, and plenty of rooms are full of nods that cost nothing. The deeper goal is agency. The sense that the listener has a real choice, and that the idea has become something they can hold in their own hands.

If you only remember one thing about the building blocks for keynote speakers, I hope it’s this: every speech is a relationship before it’s a message. You can preach at people, you can lecture to people, or you can build meaning with people. And the more you choose with, the more your ideas stop sounding like something you said and start becoming something they can carry.