Focus on Your Audience!

“To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from “What information do I need to convey?” to “What questions do I want my audience to ask?” – Chip Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

If you don’t deeply engage your audience, you will not have presentation success. Have you ever thought about that? Your engagement with your audience will determine your speaking success. Full stop!

Your engagement with your audience is directly proportional to your presentation success: low audience engagement – no presentation success; medium presentation audience engagement – some success; full audience engagement – excellent presentation success. As a speaker, you cannot escape this iron rule.

Make this iron rule permeate every aspect of your presentation creation, practice, and delivery.

Below are three things you can do in your speaking to fully engage your audience.

How to Keep Your Audience’s Attention

Your audience will remember the beginning and end of your presentation. So your opening must grab your audience and not let go even after your presentation. You want your audience to “eat, sleep, and drink” the information in your presentation. You want them to implement what you say. So your opening attention step must be able to do this.

Opening with a story, preferably a personal story, is the mainstay of experienced speakers. Your story, of course, must be relevant. You or the subject of your story should have had to endure something disruptive in their lives and overcome it. Without conflict, there is no story.

You can use other rhetorical devices, such as a startling statistic or a relevant quote. The key, again, is to grab your audience and not let go even after your presentation is done.

So you have delivered an excellent attention step. Now you have to maintain your audience’s attention.

With the advent of computers, the Internet, and social media in the last forty years, the average attention span of adults has shortened considerably. As a speaker, you need to plan for this and change your delivery method every ten to fifteen minutes to keep your audience’s attention. What do I mean by “delivery method?”

Examples of different methods of delivery include lectures, small group exercises, and videos. This is not an exhaustive list, but it will get you started. Questions you ask your audience is also a great way to engage with them.

So, you must keep your audience’s attention on your message for a successful presentation.

I surveyed several STEM professionals a few weeks ago, asking about their frustrations and concerns about delivering presentations. For example, someone asked how to talk “with” their audience instead of “at” them.

Talk “With” Your Audience Instead of “At” Them

The best way to talk “with” your audience instead of “at” them is to have them identify with you. The best way to do this is to speak to your audience before the presentation.

I always arrive at the presentation venue at least an hour before my presentation start time. I do this for three reasons: (1) reaffirm the operation of all the electronics I checked out previously a few days before, (2) to have time to engage audience members in conversation as to why they came and what they hope to get out of my presentation, and (3) make me more comfortable with the audience.

The amount of information you can discover by talking to your audience before your presentation is impressive. You can weave in a story in your presentation you heard, redirect your main message to be more relevant, or reconfigure your presentation “on the fly” to tell a relevant personal story.

When you have met some of the individual members of your audience, you have started to bond with them, which is always a good thing. This will make you more comfortable with your audience, and they will become more comfortable with you. Again, these are two good things to have as a speaker.

Another way to talk to your audience instead of at your audience is to start an audience-wide discussion. Some speakers are apprehensive about doing this because they feel they will relinquish control of time in their presentation. However, there are ways to stop the discussion when you need to move on, such as, “That’s all the time we have for discussion. Thank you.”

You can also use a discussion point from the audience as a transition to the next part of your presentation. The key for you as a speaker is to ask questions whose answers will be a bridge to your next discussion topic. With a bit of practice, you will become quite good at this.

So far, you have learned how to keep your audience’s attention on your message and talk “with” your audience instead of “at” them.

The last point we will cover is when and how to use humor with your audience.

Using Humor with Your Audience

Using humor in your presentations gives you many advantages:

• It lightens the atmosphere of your presentation and opens the minds of your audience members to your message

• It causes audience members to laugh, releasing chemicals in their brains and giving them good feelings

• It is, in a sense, a different method of presentation that we have seen above that refocuses your audience’s attention on your message.

First, humor is not telling jokes. Appropriate presentation humor pokes fun at a particular situation relevant to your message without poking fun at a specific group of people. That last part is critical. Your audience members will be “turned off” if you poke fun at any group of people, whether they belong to that group or not. Humor at the expense of others is a “minefield.” You may “blow up” your presentation with humor about others. The best way to prevent this is don’t do it, no matter how enticing it may be.

Second, humor should be used sparingly in your presentations and should support your main points. Remember, you are the message. You want your audience to focus on your message and not your humor.

Third, self-deprecating humor is the best humor up to a point. Self-deprecating humor shows you are human, just like your audience members. But, at the same time, too much self-deprecating humor will decrease your credibility with your audience. Additionally, if your audience members can view themselves as making the same faux pas as you tell them in your humor, all the better. This helps them identify with you, which is always a good thing.

In this article, you have learned how to keep your audience’s attention on your message, talk “with” your audience instead of “at” them, and when and how to use humor with your audience.

Focus on your Audience!

Call to Action

• Establish and maintain engagement with your audience with an attention-grabbing opening and by changing your method of presentation often (e.g., lecture, group discussions, and videos)

• Meet audience members before your presentation to have them identify with you and discover your audience’s wants and needs you can weave into your planned presentation

• Use humor in your presentation to lighten your presentation’s atmosphere, give your audience good feelings, and provide yet another different method of presentation.

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product of service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter F. Drucker, legendary management expert

Frank DiBartolomeo is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and award-winning speaker, presentation and interview skills coach, and Professional Member of the National Speakers Association. He was awarded Toastmasters International’s highest individual award, Distinguished Toastmaster because of his outstanding work in public speaking and leadership.

Frank formed DiBartolomeo Consulting International (DCI), LLC (www.speakleadandsucceed.com) in 2007. The mission of DCI is to help technical professionals to inspire, motivate, and influence their colleagues and other technical professionals by improving their presentation skills, communication, and personal presence. Reach Frank at frank@speakleadandsucceed.com and (703) 509-4424.

Don’t miss Frank DiBartolomeo’s latest book!

“Speak Well and Prosper: Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Better Presentations”

Available now at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com

Frank DiBartolomeo is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and award-winning speaker, presentation and interview skills coach, and Professional Member of the National Speakers Association. He was awarded Toastmasters International’s highest individual award, Distinguished Toastmaster because of his outstanding work in public speaking and leadership.

Frank formed DiBartolomeo Consulting International (DCI), LLC (www.speakleadandsucceed.com) in 2007. The mission of DCI is to help technical professionals to inspire, motivate, and influence their colleagues and other technical professionals by improving their presentation skills, communication, and personal presence. Reach Frank at frank@speakleadandsucceed.com and (703) 509-4424.

Don’t miss Frank DiBartolomeo’s latest book!

“Speak Well and Prosper: Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Better Presentations”

Available now at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com