Interaction in your presentation: a must!

I start this newsletter with a startling fact from the conference world: speakers who add interaction to their presentation score one point higher in conference evaluations than fellow speakers who don't.

Scientists unraveled the reason. During meetings, your audience has two needs fighting for priority: the "need for connection" and the "need to be heard."

Interaction kills these two birds with one stone.

So, important question when speaking is: what can you do to make your presentation interactive so that your audience feels heard and interconnected?

I'd like to share three tips:

Tip 1: The classic: the question with a show of hands

This one often goes wrong! Speakers ask the audience a question and get "the blank stare."

Reason: the audience is not yet coded on show of hands and bravely answers the question in their heads. So how do you do it? Use these 7 steps.

1. Take a step toward your audience.
2. Say: I have a question for you, which you can answer by raising your hand
3. At that moment, raise your right hand yourself
4. Ask a (relevant) question for the meeting: "Which of you came by train today?".
5. Then say, "Hands please," while also raising your own hand again.
6. Make an estimate of the percentage of hands.
7. Give that number back to the room.

Don't forget step 7! The audience gave you something, give them something back. After all, you have the overall view of the room which they do not.

The addition of "relevant" to step 4 is also an important one. Your audience doesn't like bland questions. And, always go for a wording where you get the most hands.

Tip 2: The closed question

Conference audiences have become increasingly empowered in recent years.

What I often see happen as day chair is the following. A speaker asks a question to someone in the audience and the person answering the question grabs the microphone, gets off on a tangent and meanders on endlessly.

At that point, you involuntarily lose control.

Solution: choose the following clever wording.

I have a question for you: "In a word, what is it like for you to work at NS today?"

Then you randomly point out a few people in the audience yourself.

Which makes everyone think, "Oh dear, in a moment he will point to me, what will my reaction be?!" This keeps the whole room actively involved in your story, because standing with a mouth full of teeth is something no one wants.

This clever method is also widely used in education.

Tip 3: The Assignment

The best method to apply the needs for connection and to be heard is with The Assignment. At a certain point in your presentation, you let the audience answer a question in pairs.

Example: in your presentation you have presented 3 ideas to make train travel enjoyable again. You then ask your audience to work in pairs to find a^fourth way. For this they get, say, 1.5 minutes. From the stage you monitor the room and after 90 seconds you thank them and walk into the audience. You then ask, "Could you briefly explain your idea?" You repeat this three times. You thank your audience at length for their input.

It's a win-win. You yourself gain useful tips and your audience feels like they are part of future solutions. Recently, a speaker asked his audience to write down ideas and throw them in a box at the exit. That way you capture all the input.

The disadvantage of a blog, of course, is that you can't interact directly.

But if you have your own speaking examples or ideas for interaction during a presentation? Nice to connect and hear from you this way!