Review the Image This Image Would Best Enhance a Presentation to an Audience That Is Interested in
Reference: Hartley J and Davies I "Note taking: A critical review" Programmed Learning and Educational engineering, 1978,15, 207-224 cited by John Medina in Brain Rules
Keeping audition attending is more important and more difficult than grabbing audience attention. A reader emailed me:
"What can I do to go along the audition'southward attention through the whole of my presentation. There are always people who don't seem to be listening."
A 1-way presentation is 1 of the worst possible ways of transferring information from person to person. Information technology requires discipline and endeavor to simply sit and heed passively to someone speak for any length of time. Go far easier for your audience by following these seven guidelines:
[Alert: The showtime three guidelines require that y'all know your audience – exercise the work to discover out what your audience is interested in, their background knowledge, level of experience etc.]
one. Talk about something your audience is interested in
Y'all may recall this is obvious and that y'all'd never make this mistake. But I see many otherwise intelligent people talk about what they're interested in rather than what the audience is interested in.
Terminal calendar week, a business organization banking specialist started designing a presentation he was planning to evangelize to accountancy firms in his city. Virtually of his talk was nearly the internal organisational changes they had made in their team which would allow the team to service their clients better. Simply practice his audience care about the internal organisational changes? No. His talk should have been focused on the services they offered to clients.
If you're speaking at a briefing, people come up to your session because of the synopsis – that's what they're interested in. Don't change it merely because it suits you. Many years agone, I saw one of New Zealand'south well-nigh successful professional speakers brand this mistake. Her session was advertised every bit beingness on email marketing. But, she'd merely got entranced past Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites. She announced at the start that she didn't want to talk about email marketing, but almost SEO. The she asked how many people in the audition had a website. About 5 people out of 100 put their hands up. You'd remember she'd change tack – merely no. 95 people were subjected to a talk on a subject area they had no interest in.
ii. Tell them why they should listen
Before each of the presentations skills courses nosotros run, we enquire each participant to fill in an online questionnaire. The most disquisitional question is this:
"How important are presentation skills to you?"
They answer by clicking on range of multichoice answers from "It's vitally important" to "It's not that important". If a number of participants click on "Information technology'due south not that important" then we know we accept to kickoff the course by demonstrating the benefits of developing presentation skills. I get-go past telling my story of how developing presentation skills has enriched my career. Then Tony tells of speaking at his father's funeral and the feeling of completion that that gave him. Now they've got a reason to listen.
So if your audience don't have an obvious reason to be interested, tell them why they should bother listening to yous. This can be challenging. I've had email discussions with a number of readers who present on topics such every bit health and safety issues or environmental regulations. The audition accept to be there, but they have no intrinsic interest in the topic. The solution is to tell them why they should care. If you're speaking on health and rubber, tell them stories of people injured in your workplace and the consequences it had for them. I even so remember being an audience member in a presentation on Occupational Overuse Syndrome. The speaker had suffered from it herself and described how she'd been unable to brush her own pilus.
And if you lot can't find a reason why they should heed – don't requite the presentation!
iii. Don't make it likewise easy or too hard
You've probably heard of the concept of "menses" developed by Csikszentmihalyi. Flow is a state of being where you are fully engaged and fulfilled in what you lot're doing. You lose rails of time, your mind never wanders. When yous draw a speaker as "compelling" that's probably because yous were in a land of flow. The ultimate goal is to have your audience in a state of flow (h/t to Chris Atherton and her post When giving presentations, the simply dominion that matters is the dominion is attending.)
There are many factors to reach that nirvana, but one of the prerequisites for flow to occur is for the task to be not too easy and not also hard. When listening to a presentation, the principal task is thinking. The thinking task you fix has to take only the right level of challenge for the item audience you lot're speaking to. The level of challenge required will differ for different audiences – their confidence in the topic and their background knowledge existence disquisitional factors.
Listening to somebody talk through a series of bullet points does not require challenging thinking. And so information technology gets boring very quickly.
Conversely, if the speaker puts upwardly a complicated flow nautical chart and dives right into the detail without explaining what information technology's virtually, the thinking task will be too challenging. Daniel Willingham, in his volume "Why students don't like school" describes doing merely this (as an experiment):
After about 15 seconds I stopped and said to the audience, "Anyone who is however listening to me, please heighten your hand." One person did.
So audit every minute of your presentation in terms of what is the thinking task that you're request your audience to engage in. Is it too easy or too hard?
four. "Change grabs attention"
The heading comes from Daniel Willingham's book that I've quoted above (yes, it's what I'chiliad reading at the moment).
We notice change. Yous notice the hum of the air-conditioner when it comes on and when it goes off – just not in between. Yous tin utilize this natural man propensity to call up your audition's attention.
There are macro changes and at that place are micro changes:
Macro-changes
- Change the visual medium eg: from slides to flipchart and back again
- Change the concrete land of the audience eg: from sitting around a table to standing effectually a flipchart
- Change the location of the room that you present from eg: from the front end to the back
- Change the activity your audience is engaged in eg: from listening to yous to discussing a problem with their neighbour
- Alter presenters
- Alter topics.
Micro-changes
- Make the edges between subtopics in your presentation clear eg: "So that's the problem we're trying to gear up, let's wait at present at what some of the options are." If somebody has mentally checked out this gives them a cue to check dorsum in again.
- Show a curt video
- Apply silence before and afterward critical statements
- Change your manner of commitment according to the content. For instance when you're making statements of fact, use a measured deliberate tone and stand still. When y'all tell a story, speed up, get chatty and move effectually.
As a guide, I utilise a macro-change at to the lowest degree every 10 minutes, and micro-changes continuously.
5. Tell stories
Every presentation expert extolls the power of stories. There's prove that people are difficult-wired to listen to stories (see my post Are our brains wired to bask stories). When you lot say " I'll tell you a story most…" your audience will perk up. Your stories should of course reinforce the point yous're making. Take a wait at your presentation from the signal of view of stories. Are they sprinkled throughout your presentation – or bunched together? Sprinkle them out for all-time effect.
For more strategic insights into when and where to tell stories run across When to tell a story and what story to tell.
You can besides exploit the power of story to keep attention by structuring your whole presentation using a story structure – I'll write more on this later (meanwhile if you lot know of any good links to this concept delight do post them in the comments).
six. Have frequent breaks
Build in frequent breaks, only if you see people starting to flag in their attending suggest a "microbreak" for 1-2 minutes where people people tin can refresh their drinks and have a walk around. Moving is the most effective way of reviving people at run a risk of dozing off.
vii. Arrive short
The nigh constructive mode of keeping your audition's attending is not to get on for too long.
For more great points on keeping audience attention run across Chris Atherton's post When giving presentations, the only rule that matters is the rule is attention.
Success! Check your electronic mail for a link to download the SpeakerMap. And if you have a presentation coming upward, do make utilize of the interactive email tips we'll send you lot.
Source: https://speakingaboutpresenting.com/content/7-ways-audience-attention-presentation/