by Jody Urquhart
I received a call from a company today who was looking to hire a motivational speaker. Their current stumbling block was deciding whether this speaker should be male or female.

Apparently the convention planning committee was split, half wanted to hire a female motivational speaker and the rest think a male would be more appropriate.

The reason for the stalemate is they have had good and unfortunate experiences with both genders. The convention planning committee also happens to be 50% male and 50% female.

Below is the thought process I would go through to decide if you need to hire a male or female motivational speaker. Consider:

The Audience.

What is the audience gender break down? There are no hard and fast rules, however if you have a primarily female audience, make sure your agenda has a good balance of female speakers. If I am speaking for a group of women I incorporate different content. Woman love to talk about relationships, family and connection so I will use more humor and examples from this perspective.

When I speak for primarily male audiences, I find they like to be a part of the motivational speech so I engage them through humorous interaction, possibly poking fun at certain “safe” people. I also layer in more audience specific content.

Past Experience.

It is no surprize that Men and Women are very different. We think, feel and behave differently and our perspective and life experiences are very diverse. If i were to guess, women motivational speakers would have more relationship ideas and examples and male motivational speakers may be more fact and content driven.

I have also seen the opposite to be true; where a female motivational speakers message is entirely content driven and male speakers who engage through relationship stories and humor.

If anything, it is important to balance your agenda to incorporate both male and female motivational speakers.

Type of Humor.

Women motivational speakers or comedians use more humor about topics like family, relationships and dating. Studies show that in groups, women laugh more than men. Therefore primarily female audiences may be more primed for laughter, so hire a humorous motivational speaker.

When it comes to humor, men do a lot more poking fun and find humor with a touch of sarcasm funny. It all depends on what would go over better with your audience.

I once spoke for a sales conference where they usually only hire female inspirational speakers. It was an all male audience who typically sold products to women. The executive believed that hiring female speakers helped these male sales professionals to better connect with women.

Apparently there are a lot more male speakers than Female inspirational speakers…Why is this?

Motivational, Inspirational Keynote Speaker Jody Urquhart, http://www.idoinspire.com has been a professional speaker for over 13 years. She speaks on humor, wellness, and is a top generational speaker.http://www.idoinspire.com/motivational-speaker-meet-jody/Jody wrote the book All Work & No SAY

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