Laptops Down!!! - How to truly engage your audience while presenting?

This is a guest post by Sridevi Sarkar. Sridevi leads Consumer Insights & Strategic Planning for automotive practice in Google India. She blogs at sridevisarkar.co.in.

I have attended countless sessions and conferences, big & small - both within the companies I worked & outside. I have noticed mainly 3 categories of presentations that one makes:

1. Shares one’s work (may or may not be one’s passion points)
2. Shares one’s personal experiences/passion
3. Shares information collated for the audience to know

Most of the presentations fall in the category 3 above. In many instances, the presenter or the organizer asks us to focus on the session by saying ‘this is a laptops down session’ (or these days ‘mobiles down’), but only occasionally I have come across presenters who are able to command the audience enough so that the audience won’t get distracted to their phones or laptops.

My learning from observations & experiences is that:

• The presenter is the key, not the slides. The presenter is there to present something, the slides are not there to present themselves. Slides are meant to just be a guide to the presenter.

• The key attribute while presenting is the eye-to-eye contact & the presenter is able to maintain the same only when he or she is not totally dependent on the slides.

Some of the benefits of maintaining eye-to-eye contact, which add to the presenter’s commanding the space are [you = presenter]:

1. Audience keeps looking at you throughout the presentation, avoiding any distraction. This leaves a great impact on the audience because they see the interest (& passion) in your eyes. The audience is very likely to be bound by a small amount of guilt on the idea of taking that phone call, and would try & avoid it.

2. Audience’s curiosity remains and they ask you for details, and won’t try to read & interpret the slides themselves. This helps build reliance & trust on you, even if anyone wants to get back in future with any questions or for any discussions, they would remember you & quote you. You would remain the custodian of the information.

3. You can have the slide represented in a manner that you like. Since you solely know & plan how to deliver the content, you are free to build the slides that best suit you & guide you when you present, for you to be able to do your best in achieving your objective.

4. Audience understands exactly what you want to convey to them. The only way the audience hears is when you speak, there is no other source for them to know any information during the presentation. This makes sure they hear exactly what you tell them and nothing else.

5. Audience takes notes. When you & your speech are the only source of information during the presentation, the audience would tend to take notes & there would be a high chance that they would refer to the notes later. This allows them to remember you more, recollect what you said; and the next time they notice you are presenting somewhere, there is a high likelihood that they would like to attend & popularize you.

Below are some guidelines that can help you achieve your ‘Laptops Down’ objective. These can be kept in mind while preparing the slides too. They are:

1. Never read from the slides. Have a piece of data or information or anything to guide you, on the slide & share the insight verbally as a story.

2. Never say what is coming in the next slide. I have come across multiple instances where the presenter says, “....that is what my next slide is..” and then navigates to the next slide. As much as possible, navigating & speech should go hand in hand.

3. No acronyms, dates etc. of the information on the slides. Acronyms should never be there, and the audience can always ask the presenter for the date.

4. Never say anything that you don’t exhibit. Long back I went to a ‘Time Management’ session which started 20 minutes late because the presenter reached late :)

5. Never say “This slide is self-explanatory”, then why are you there?

So, are we all ready to command “Laptops Down”?

 

The views expressed in the article are of the guest author and not of Jazz Factory. If you too want to contribute articles to our blog, contact vivek at jazz factory dot in.

Precautions to take while presenting to a new audience

We can present to two types of audiences; First, repeat audience. People to whom we have presented before and second, new audience. People who have never met us and are attending our talk for the very first time. When we present to our colleagues, it is usually a repeat audience but when we present to customers, investors or talk at TED or TEDx the audience is completely new.

Here are 5 precautions to take while presenting to a completely new audience:

1. Boost your credibility

2. Avoid the curse of knowledge

3. Avoid jargon altogether

4. Be more likable

5. Go slow

Since the audience has never met you, credibility becomes crucial. There are two types of credibility. One, your personal credibility and second is the credibility of your message. If you are a domain expert, you have personal credibility. An experienced professor of marketing talking at TED does not need to worry about his own credibility. Having said that, he still needs to worry about the credibility of his message. If you have domain expertise, ensure that it is communicated before you begin talking. Get introduce dwell. Otherwise introduce yourself at the start. The audience should start trusting you right from the start.

Why should the audience trust your message? You plant 'credibility boosters' all over the speech or presentation. A report from McKinsey or Gartner is a credibility booster. A quote from a domain expert. A story or a news article. All these are boosters. A startup presenting to a group of investors can show images of his customers using his product, his manufacturing facility or his own images of doing consumer research. This will add a lot of credibility to what you say. You might be honest, but the audience is meeting you for the very first time and they do not know that you are honest.

Since the audience is completely new, the other things to avoid is the use of jargon. You do not know your audience well and hence assuming that they will understand your jargon is a big risk you are taking. Using jargon does not make you look smart. It hinders understanding.

I was at a Demo Day in Mumbai. Startups pitch to investors on Demo Day. One startup founder was constantly using abbreviations like KVK and PST and the audience was completely confused. When you present to a new audience, you have to be aware of the curse of knowledge. Chip and Dan Heath, in their book Made to Stick, talk about this concept in detail. You know about your industry and your business. Your audience does not. But you do not know, how it feels not to know what you already know. Hence you use jargon. You assume the audience knows what you know and you speak fast.

Lesson 1 - Speak slowly

Lesson 2 - Avoid jargon altogether

Lesson 3 - Rehearse in front of a friend who does not know anything about your business. Ask her to make notes of things she did not understand while you were presenting.

Last but not the least, let us tackle the biggest thing; Likability. We do business with people we like. We invest in companies where we like the founder and his team. Since the audience does not know you, you have to become more likable. Be natural. Do not put on an accent. Do not come across as stiff. Talk with passion and with confidence. Do not hold yourself back. Answer questions directly and do not get defensive. A successful presentation is one where the audience likes the presenter. Likability trumps everything else.

3 Questions your Audience is asking itself during your Presentation

While you are busy giving your talk or your presentation, your audience is asking itself 3 questions. They will not articulate it and they will not ask you. They will ask themselves these questions and it matters to you.

Question 1 - Do I understand you?
Question 2 - Do I believe you?
Question 3 - Do I like you?

I have published a guest article on FPPT.com and you can read it by clicking here. Read it and ensure you answer all of them in the affirmative.

Infographic: 7 Tips to Keep your Audience Awake during your Presentation

Your audience: Alive & Kicking

Day long conferences are fertile grounds for presentation led boredom. When bored, people check their email or take a quick nap. The extra cool air conditioning makes matters worse and induces sleep.

The time that is most vulnerable to a sleepy audience is the post-lunch session. After a good meal in a 5 star hotel, people cannot be blamed for sleeping unless the next presenter is Steve Jobs or Sachin Tendulkar.

I attended the Nielsen Consumer 360 conference in Gurgaon, India sometime back and what they did was noteworthy. Just after lunch, when the audience was susceptible to falling asleep, they brought in...

Watch the pictures and continue reading...

Photos: Nielsen India's FB page

It was remarkable. Not a single person in the audience could sleep. Moreover it was a pleasant surprise. The performer made everyone dance, sing and what not. He played drums, his team danced and the audience was given simple instructions and people moved their hands, moved their bodies and shouted on top of their voices. It woke everyone up and established a very nice connect.

For people who follow cricket, notice that Rahul Dravid is there in one of the pictures.

7 Reasons why people sleep during corporate training sessions

Recently I attended a 90 minute training in my office. Though no one slept (including yours truly) many came to the edge. It reminded of the numerous times I have seen people sleeping off in such corporate training sessions.

There is something which the trainer does wrong. In this post we will understand why this happens and how corporate trainers (be it IT or HR or others) can make sure people are awake while they present.

Reason #1 Dark rooms

The environment has a role to play. If you keep most of the lights off, then be prepared to see people dozing off. I have realised over many years that keeping lights on makes sure less people sleep off. The dark room and the cozy air conditioning make a great case to sleep. I am already yawning just by the thought of it :-)

Reason #2 Too technical

If you are training sales & marketing people to use the latest IT system then you have a challenge ahead of you. When you conduct training sessions on technical matters, make sure you prepare that extra bit hard to ensure you carry every one with you. The moment someone misses out on what you just said, they loose interest. Loss of interest puts them off and they are off to sleep.

To make a presentation less technical talk to a few participants before you make the presentation. Not only should you understand their need, you must also know what they already know, what they want to know and how they will use your information. Then make the presentation and run it through a 'layman'. If your layman, who does not know what you know, can understand the presentation, they you have a useful non-technical presentation which anyone can understand.

Reason #3 Talk to the slides

If you are sitting and looking at your laptop while presenting then your audience cannot be with you. Get up, move around (use a wireless presenter to change slides). Establish eye contact with people. Make sure they know you are talking to them. You are helping them. Move around, touch people, go close, interact. The presentation I last attended suffered from this very problem. The presenters (there were two of them) sat down at one place and kept looking at the laptop while presenting. They kept looking at the laptop and we kept looking at the slides.

It would be great if you ask questions to participants regularly. This will tell you if they are understanding, this will keep them awake. You can try what I once tried during a training presentation. I gave away chocolates to people who answered my questions. It helped me and should help you as well.

Reason #4 Never ending saga

If your audience does not know how long is the training session, they might lose you midway. When we don't know how far is the destination, we always feel it is too far. So what we can do is to share, at the start, how long the presentation is going to be. Do not share the number of slides you have. Share how many minutes will your session will last. That will help the audience.

One more suggestion. Do not be slow and bore people. Move at a brisk pace. If you are constantly interacting with your audience, you will get to know (or will be told) to slow down a bit. It is better to be a bit fast than to be slow.

Reason #5 Merry go round

Repeating something very important is acceptable. But repeating small things too many times is not. It makes people switch off ("I do not want to know how to log in and log off two times. I already know it. So let me check my mail or look around here and there"). Do not repeat stuff in a presentation unless participants ask or you get to know from their body language that the last point you made was unclear to the audience.

Reason #6 Passion & Compassion

You might be an IT expert who loves the software. You know everything about it. But understand that your audience might not share the same passion for the subject. Hence you need to be passionate but also be compassionate. Realise that your audience has come to learn something from you and your job is to help them. Do not go overboard. Tell them how much they need to know. For more, some of them can always approach you later.

Reason #7 Voice modulation

I slept through many classes in my college days. But there was one professor who made me doze off in 90% of his classes. What was different between him and all others? Voice modulation.

He used to talk for 1 hour in the same tone. No up, no down. Like a dead man's heart beat. No excitement in the voice at all. If you talk the same way, most of your participants will doze off as well.

A last piece of advice for trainers.

To make sure no one sleeps make sure your content is interesting. Only being helpful is not enough. When we are interested we are awake. When things get boring we switch off (and doze off). We will not always do what is good for us. As a trainer you have to 'train us in a manner which is interesting to us'.

Why are you talking to the screen?

When I asked people a few weeks back what they hated most in a presentation, I got interesting answers. One of them was by Dr. Singh and he said; "I do not like when the presenter is talking to the slide and not to me."

Does it not ring a bell?
Many a times you as a presenter end up making this mistake. You look at the slide and start talking.

How does the audience feel when you do this? They are offended. They hate it. Hate it enough to remember it and share it with me when I approach them with a survey.

Why does it happen?
It happens when you are not prepared with your content. When you have not rehearsed well. When you prepare the slides a night before and don't even remember the order in which you put your slides. This forces you to keep looking at the slide so that you don't forget.

The obvious solution is to rehearse well and go. But let's accept the fact that you know what you 'should' do. Yet how often do you follow that. How many times have you prepared a presentation two days in advance so that you can rehearse it. Reality is, you don't even worry about rehearsal. Rehearsal is for others, not for you.

So the not so obvious solution is: "Keep a small paper pad in your hand and write down the main points, in the order you need to cover them. Avoid long sentences. Prioritize and DO NOT write down every thing. Write down 1 thing for every slide and do not make notes for all the slides. Make notes only for slides which are the most important ones."

If you are presenting with a laptop in front, then the chances of your forgetting are less. However, looking at the laptop most of the time would be as good as looking at the slides. Your audience is not going to like it.

If you think you cannot carry notes to the presentation and manage to keep referring to it, then the only solution which remains is to rehearse well. You are like any of your friends. Everybody needs to rehearse and so do you.

What your boss hates in your presentation?

As a presenter you want to do well. You want to be understood by your boss. You want to impress him/her with your presentation skills (and your work). But how can you do well? You don't even know what your boss likes and does not like? Do you know what your boss hates in your presentation?

And why should I restrict it to your boss? Even your colleagues and clients hate the same things about your presentations. But what are those things that they hate in your presentation?

Do you have the answer?

To find this out I asked this question to people from different fields of work:
"As an audience, what do you hate most in a presentation?"

Most of these people work in corporate India as managers and make (or see) presentations day in and day out. I asked HR managers, teachers, investment bankers, IT professionals, entrepreneurs and even a doctor who delivers a lot of presentations across India (and abroad). The answers were diverse but on a closer scrutiny one can find common traits. Most of the answers were kind of commonsensical (Ya, I know that). But the very reason they are in the list shows that you are making these mistakes very often.

The biggest mistake which audiences find in your presentation is: "Too much text on the slide." You would have heard this so many times. Every presentation guru would have said this a thousand times to you. Every other 'How to make a great presentation' tips would talk about it. Yet what is the result. You are still making the same error.

Please Note: If so many people are being put off due to excess text on the slide, it means that almost every presenter is committing this mistake. And committing it very frequently. Open your last presentation and see if you made this mistake.

The next biggest mistake you make is: "Reading out from the slides." Like the first one, even this one is a Fundamental Mistake of Presenting. It is like a Class X student committing a simple addition error in a maths problem. How can you do this dear?

The third biggest mistake you commit is: "Unclear objective and lack of direction." It is very interesting to note that this has come up in the top three. The answer respondents give to a survey reflects what is on the top of their mind. It is called TOM (Top Of Mind Recall). And what is at the top of their minds? Things which happen very often. That is why they are recalled faster.

So, unclear objective and lack of direction is a mistake which you are committing too often and hence is staying in the mind of your boss.

The other major mistakes (along with the top three) have been captured in the bar graph below:

A presentation is composed of three elements; Content, Design and Delivery. Content is the planing part before you start making slides whereas Delivery means presenting your slides to the audience. If we look at all the responses of the survey, 51% related to Design, 30% to Delivery and 19% to Content.

What does it mean?
The thing that upsets people most is not 'what you have to say' but 'how you say it'. Your mistakes in slide design and delivery are overshadowing your content. For all you know, your content might have been great, but yet your boss did not like it. Why? Because, that great content (coming out of your hard work and effort) got diluted by your 'excess words on the slide' and your 'reading our from the slides'.

Take cognizance of these mistakes. Accept the fact that you might be making these mistakes (and you are not even aware of it). Make sure that the next time you present to your boss, you do justice to your hard work and do not repeat them again.

Dramatize your presentations

My experience teaches me that presentations that are dramatic do well. Before I share with you why, let me define what I mean by drama.

Drama would mean creating some curiosity or suspense or humor. Something like a play or a movie. Ideally at the start and only in presentations which are not formal. You cannot dramatize a quarterly review presentation. Can you?

This month I gave 3 presentations to a group of 24 interns (if you have been following my blog you would already know I recruited these MBA interns and am getting some work done from them for my company). These 3 presentations were for the weekly review of their performance, collecting feedback and motivating them. Formal situation but required humor and there was a strong need to connect with the interns. To motivate as well as to make them comfortable.

The presentations were well received. The measure of success being the active audience participation and the fact that no one dozed off! (the review presentation used to be post market working when people were pretty tired).

There was something I did in every presentation. I gave every presentation a dramatic start.

Presentation 1. Image of Mahatma Gandhi's 3 monkeys
Presentation 2. Image of Sri Yantra with 4 numbers written on the four edges
Presentation 3. A scatter plot (with only dots and no x & y axes)

Every presentation started with an image. And this image used to be there from the start. While the students were entering the hall, were settling down. It was there staring at their face, making them think about it, discuss with each other trying to figure it out.

Day 1. They did not even know what it all was. Seeing the three monkeys they just laughed. But when I started my presentation, I talked about the 3 monkeys, asked them what they were doing on my slides. The 3 monkeys are supposed to 'see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil'. I asked them not be like the famous monkeys and to actually speak out everything in the 'feedback' session.

Day 2 was when they came across the Sri Yantra. Hardly any one knew what it was. The numbers at the edges made them make a lot of guesses but none were right. The numbers represented there were indicators of how the best and the worst students were doing in the project. Best and worst students and two parameters of evaluation. Hence the 4 numbers.

Day 3. A seasoned audience knew something would be on the slides again. They put their best fight to explain what it was. One came close and won a chocolate from me as well. But none could guess. Then I completed the chart, added the axes, put labels and went on to explain that the 24 dots resembled their performance on a 3rd evaluation parameter of the project.

These presentations taught me an important lesson. The importance of dramatizing a presentation and that too right at the start.

Honestly the first day was lucky for me. I put the image because I wanted to tell them not to keep their mouths closed and tell me how they were doing, what problems they were facing. It worked. And post that, I used an image in the next two presentations.

The reason it clicked was that every image was related to the theme of the day. Something that I wanted to discuss and something that was very important.

Day 1: Do not keep your mouths closed and speak out.
Day 2: Improve your numbers. Increase your performance.
Day 3: In chasing numbers do not lose sight of productivity (quality).

Obviously the choice of image matters and I did choose good images. But what matters more is the connect. The images gave me a platform to create enough drama at the start. Got the audience involved and all ears. And then I drove the point into their minds.

If you want to give a dramatic start to your presentation, try this out. First choose whats the most important thing you want to focus on. What's the so called theme of the day. Then choose a good image which creates enough curiosity. It should not be so obvious that you kill the suspense. Then add a bit of drama in your voice and body language and pull it off!

You will feel a lot better about life. Trust me.
Wish you luck!

Which side of the screen do you stand?

When you stand and present which side of the screen do you prefer? Is right, right or is left right? You must have heard people recommending where one should stand. My simple suggestion to you would be: "Do not stand at one place, keep moving."

Follow these three things in all your presentations:

Stand where you are comfortable,
Stand so that you do not come in between the projector and the screen, and
Keep moving once in a while, especially to the absolute back row.

What happens when you move?
The focus shifts to you. As humans we focus on things that move. On a slide, the eyes will go first to that object which is moving/changing. So by moving some bit, you get the audience to look at you and not at the screen. I remember I asked a colleague at work to give a talk for 2 minutes and he stood almost at one corner where no one could see him. And he stood like a statue. The result, no one listened to him. Remember you are more important than the slides. So get yourself into the limelight.

Secondly, when you move you connect more with the audience, especially if the gathering is large. When I present to an audience of 25 or more, I ensure I move around, keep my hands on their shoulders or shake hands, look straight into their eyes, ask a question. I also move towards people to answer something they have asked. I have found that it helps.

You may not require much movement across the room if your gathering is small. In that case a good eye contact becomes the primary tool of audience connect.

Tidbits which Connect with the Audience

In my June 11 post titled 'Early bird catches the worm' I talked about the benefits of reaching early to the venue before a presentation. There I talked about collecting interesting tidbits of information and using it in your presentation.

In this post I will write more about what are these 'tidbits of information' and how collecting them will help you connect with the audience better.

Around a month back I went to a MBA college to recruit some summer interns. While the projector was being set up by the staff of the college I kept looking around the place, the students, the classroom, the play ground outside the window and I made a note of one thing I saw. It was the motto of the college; "Why What How." Written in large fonts on the play ground.

During my presentation I was discussing the summer project and I was telling them about the projects' objectives. I wanted to know 'why something was happening, what should we do about it and how.' To say this, I used their motto and said "We want to know three things... Why What How..." and then went on to explain about the summer project.

Immediately I got their attention and the next moment they were all smiles. This small tweak in my presentation (I could have said it without using the three words of the motto) made a difference and reached out to the audience.

It pays to put that extra effort in knowing more about the audience, in being aware of your surroundings and picking up tidbits of information to show that you care. To show that you are interested. Remember, someone rightly said 'the way to be interesting is to be interested.'

Are audiences sweet-toothed?

If you are giving a presentation to teach a group of people or you are a trainer for executives/managers this post is of great relevance to you. Even if you are none of the two, you should keep your eyes & ears open to what I am going to say next.

Audiences are sweet-toothed. Offer them chocolates and keep them hooked on.

It's true!
I made a presentation earlier this week to a large audience of 40. Most of them were first year interns who had come to my organization for a summer project. To make the presentation interactive and to avoid anyone sleeping off especially post lunch I went with a bag full of chocolates. Over the four hour animated & lively presentation I managed to get their complete attention through regular (and generous) doses of chocolates. For every great question asked by the audience, there was a chocolate. For every right answer to my questions, there was a chocolate. All in all I distributed some 40 chocolates in just 4 hours!

Was it the chocolate that did the trick?

Well both yes and no. People do like chocolates but more than that they like appreciation. Don't think its only the students who love appreciation, its also the executives and managers irrespective of their age. We all love appreciation. But instead of only verbal appreciation, I decided to give them a small token in the form of a chocolate. It costed peanuts but did a great job of keeping the audience hooked on to every question I asked and to every word I said.

It made the presentation really and truly interactive. But more than that it made the presentation fun and made it memorable. Something my audience had never seen or heard before.

If you are going to present to a group of students or executives where the purpose is training/teaching or something related to that, try giving chocolates as tokens of appreciation. I bet it'll work wonders for you!

Do you remember sitting through any memorable and interactive presentation? Think for a second and tell me what made it memorable? What made it interactive? Leave a comment.

Learn to Forget PowerPoint If Required

It makes a lot of sense to stop the projector and just talk.

I attended a presentation this week where the presenter was addressing the business problem; 'Should we change the status quo?'. He was of the view that we should not. When he was almost nearing the end of his slides, the key decision maker intercepted him and started a discussion. Mr. Presenter made his case well and drove home the point as to why we should maintain status quo. As a result his slides which were going to come at the end were not needed any more (because in the discussion which ensued he made those verbally). The key decision maker accepted the argument and shook his head and said "Good, point taken'. This was a cue to Mr. Presenter to move to the next section of the presentation. But he did not catch the cue and kept presenting the last few slides. He just could not resist to skip them. He was just not aware of the verbal and non-verbal cues.

After five minutes the key decision maker very unhappily had to say "Can we move forward now?"

What does this do to the presentation?It spoils the good job done. After having made his point well (not through slides but through a discussion) the presenter could not pick up the cue to move on. He kept presenting the slides in the order they were made originally. He was a captive of his slides and forgot that the objective of the presentation had been met. His inattentive style irked the audience. He almost spoiled the good work.

Moral of the story: "Keep your eyes and ears open. If your talking without the slides can do the job then why do you need the slides?"
What is your job? To present the slides or to prove your argument?

How do you make eye contact with the audience?

You make presentations to sell, share, convince or inform a group of people. In doing so eye contact becomes important. How are you going to convince if you are shying away from making eye contact? You need to make a personal connect. Many presenters just do not worry about these things. It's time they did.

A lot has been written about the need for eye contact. Making eye contact will establish a rapport with the audience. It will tell you whether the audience is understanding or it's going over their head. Are you boring them by dragging things or are you too fast? You can also sense some anxiety in the audience and ask them to share what's bothering them. All of this will help ensure you take the audience along and achieve the objective of your presentation.

So how do you make eye contact? I remember an old trick. Choose two people at two ends of the group (in case of a large group) and occasionally looking at them so that the audience 'feels' that you are looking at them. Doesn't work anymore friends. Even if it does, it doesn't help.

Try this. Look at a member of the audience eye to eye and hold it for a few moments. Then move on and choose another person and do the same. Keep doing this every once in a while. You need not have eye contact 100% of the time.

"The idea is to make eye contact long enough for the person to feel as if you've connected with them, and to give you some sign that you've connected. May be it's a nod. May be it's a smile... Great eye contact happens when you look at individual members of the audience long enough to feel like they are responding to you." says Joey Asher in his latest book. He further adds, "...hold eye contact for five seconds before moving on."

This kind of eye contact is easy to make provided you are not preoccupied with what you have to say next. Rehearsal and knowing your content comes first. Having rehearsed well this eye contact will make the audience feel connected and you will also be able to gauge how your presentation is going.

Do you try to establish eye contact while presenting? What techniques you use and what problems you face? Leave a comment.

Pick of the Week: Audience Engagement Should Add Value

Audience engagement is essential in any presentation. In my earlier posts (Feb 5 & Feb 7) I had talked in detail about what do we mean by engagement and how to engage the audience.

But should you engage the audience just for the heck of it?
Meaningless engagement will not add any value to your presentation or the audience. Olivia Mithcell's March 25 post talks about getting the maximum value from audience engagement.

Here is a summary of the main points in her post:

1. Audience will not start to engage unless they have built a comfort level with you and have started trusting you.
2. Involve the audience only where it will add value to them and to the presentation.
3. Do not single out your audience and ask questions. It might put them in an awkward situation. You can make them talk in pairs (to each other).
4. Prepare beforehand the questions you will ask in the presentation. Do your homework on where you want to engage the audience with which question.
5. Give clear instructions to the audience. Do not hurry. Better, write down the instructions on the slide. The audience needs to be given time to understand and follow the steps.
6. Keep the control of the presentation in your hand. Pull the audience back into the presentation tactfully. Do not let the presentation go haywire.

However, be ready to share some control of the presentation because you are engaging the audience. Be ready to manage deviations in time once audience engagement picks up. Read her informative post to know more.

What has been your experience of audience engagement? How have you fared? What works, what doesn't?

Engage the Audience: what why how (Part 2 of 2)

In Part I we discussed what does engaging the audience mean and why is engagement required. Before we find out how to engage the audience, let us recap what engagement means.

• get audience attention
• hold the attention
• induce involvement
• which will lead to:
• understanding & recall (audience remembers what you told them)

In Part II we will discuss how to engage your audience when you make a presentation. What should you do to get attention, maintain attention and involve the audience.

We can learn from the book Made to Stick which talks about what makes some ideas sticky. The book talks about two emotions; surprise and interest. Surprise gets attention and interest maintains it. To surprise, you need to break a pattern. Unexpected, unpredictable events attract attention. Remember the New Zealand cricket umpire Billy Bowden. Do you think anyone who sees his 'actions' the first time will ever forget him? He does something totally unexpected.
So how can you start engaging your audiences. In order to do that I propose what I call the '10 tools of engagement'. You can start using these tools right away. They are simple and are used by every good presenter.


1. Start well - An unexpected and solid start sets the tone of the presentation. Rather than starting with an agenda slide, start with a story, a problem or a visual. If you are proposing something new, write down a problem statement on slide 1 and then move on to proposing your solution.
2. Tell stories - Stories are perhaps the best way to get attention and aid recall (you cannot forget a good story). If you have a story, always begin with it. Avoid stories at the end.

3. Q&As - Take questions all the time. Acknowledge good questions posed by the audience. An ideal technique for trainers & teachers who make long presentations is to reward students who ask intelligent questions. This will ensure students pay complete attention.

4. Make the audience dance - Make your audience shout, stand or write something. Seek a volunteer or a show of hands. Make them do some activity. The last time I heard Stephen Covey in Hyderabad he made audiences stand, shout "hee haw" and write down a few things. This engages the audience very well.

5. Use relevant videos - Videos breaks the monotony and explain your point well. You must use videos when you have a long presentation. Do not use two videos back to back.

6. Repeat important stuff - Repeating important stuff does not mean keep saying the same thing again and again. It means you link back every idea to the core message. This helps recall.
7. Use images - Text has a soporific effect on the audience. To keep them awake use images. Images that supplement the idea. A good image reinforces understanding.

8. Use props - This is my favorite tool. Using a prop well makes it very dramatic for the audience. If you are talking of conserving water, how about pouring a glass of water on the stage and asking the audience "Do you want to continue wasting water." This is better than saying "Please do not waste water.".
9. Ask a question - Who says only the audience can ask questions? Trainers and teachers use this technique all the time to gauge the level of audience understanding. Why don't you use this in your next presentation?
10. Be enthusiastic - Enthusiasm is contagious. Be passionate and the audience will love you.Your body language is a precursor of how your presentation is going to be. Start with a smile and maintain eye contact with the audience.
You need not use each of these 10 tools in every presentation. Depending on your objective and your comfort level choose your tools of engagement. If you are not a story teller, try out props or make the audience dance.
Which of these 'tools of engagement' are you already using? Which are the tools you would like to adopt? Drop in a comment.

Engage the Audience: what why how (Part 1 of 2)

Recall the last presentation you attended. What do you remember? What was the topic and what was the core idea? Were you excited during the presentation or waiting for the speaker to finish. If the answer is in the negative, then the presenter was unable to 'engage' you.

If you search 'how to engage your audience' Google will throw 1.2million search results in 0.07 seconds flat! But what do you mean by audience engagement during a presentation?

understanding?
involvement?
attention?


Are you sure? Think about it before you read on.

This two part post is an exploration in audience engagement. In Part I (which is now) we will understand what engagement means and why is it needed? In Part II I will discuss how to engage your audience.

So, what is audience engagement?

Did you think about it?
Most people assume that we all know what 'engagement' means. Yet if you ask 5 people what engagement means to them, you are likely to get atleast 3 different answers.

The word 'engagement' does not only mean to 'get attention' but it also means to 'hold attention'. You cannot let go of what you have already got! You can start your next business review presentation by dancing on the podium (you get attention) but you will lose all of it (and much more) after you have stopped being Micheal Jackson.

The word engagement means all of the following:

get attention
hold attention
induce involvement

which will lead to:
understanding &
recall (audience remembers what you told them)

Why do you need engagement?

I don't think there is any debate on that. You can present to inform, entertain, educate, discuss, decide, seek or change. To fulfil each one of these objectives, you need to ensure the audience is engaged. They are attentive, they are involved, they understand and they remember. Next time when you are conceptualizing your presentation and designing your slides remember to ask yourself these questions:

Is this making sense?
Is this going to generate interest?
Is this going to be understood in its current form?
Will this induce people to think / to ask / to discuss?

If the answer to these questions is a NO then remove that content from your presentation.
Before you go to Part II and find out 'how you can engage the audience' I would like you to answer a simple question?
What do you currently do to engage your audience? Leave a comment.