Getting Your Audience Involved - an Example

Last week we discussed the idea of getting your audience to interact with you. Doing so typically captivates them so their attention remains on you.. A couple of easy ways to do this includes asking questions during your presentations and getting your audience to ask you questions.

By the way, you will get far better results with the previous two techniques if you offer an incentive. Giving rewards to those who respond during a presentation will inspire others to get involved as well. I have used everything from chocolate bars and little toys from a dollar store to copies of my book. It doesn’t matter as much what you give as long as you do it in a fun way.

You can go much further in getting your audience involved. Getting them to fill out surveys and handouts is effective. Even more valuable is when you get can get them active. Here is one trick that I have used with a lot of success.

Now I thought that this tactic was pretty clever - but I was extremely pleased when I got this feedback from a subscriber to my newsletter...

Robert Rosen wrote:
This (colors discussion) is the most interesting and effective speaking tricks I have ever heard of. Thanks.

The Colors Discussion

I often speak on the topic of leadership. One of the points that I make is that a leader must have three attributes – they are Competence, Integrity, and Enthusiasm. If a leader is missing any one of them, s/he will lose the ability to motivate any followers.

After describing the need for competence I tell the audience that we are going to try a little experiment that involves activity. I ask them to all stand and think of their favorite color. I then ask the people who are thinking of a primary color (red, yellow and blue) to sit down. The audience is instructed to look at the proportion of people who are still standing verses the number sitting. Next I tell those who are thinking about a secondary color (green, orange and purple) to sit down. The audience is again instructed to notice the ratios. This goes on with black, white, and grey, then brown and other colors such as teal, pink and anything else.

Once the entire audience is sitting down I immediately start talking about the next point – integrity. It only takes a few seconds before I start to see confused looks on the audiences face. A few moments later and I start to lose the attention of people.

At this point I stop myself and ask the audience what I did. I explain that I had an exercise that they got involved in but it did not tie into what I was talking about. Because of this I appeared to be incompetent and actually started to lose my influence over the audience members.

At this point most of them realized I had at least some amount of competence by not only tying the exercise into the point but also getting them to experience an emotional response I was describing (how people respond to a leader who is incompetent).

With a little creativity you will be able to come up with similar methods of involvement that will captivate even the most reluctant audience members.

I wish you the best of success as you try this out (even on a very small scale) and look forward to hearing how it works for you.

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Copyright © 2007 David Mudie All Rights Reserved

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