Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Engage”
Your first words are important because your audience is judging you. They are scrolling through questions in their mind:
Should I listen? How long will this take? Do I trust the person? How painful will this be? When will we get to the relevant part? What does this mean to me?
The purpose of your opening is to grab their attention, establish rapport and set the direction.
Most importantly – grab attention. How might you do that?
Pause right before an important point to create suspense and heighten the value of the important point because they need to catch their breath and wait a few seconds for the message.
How to open your presentation
Your first words are important because your audience is judging you. They are scrolling through questions in their mind:
Should I listen? How long will this take? Do I trust the person? How painful will this be? When will we get to the relevant part? What does this mean to me?
The purpose of your opening is to grab their attention, establish rapport and set the direction.
Most importantly – grab attention. How might you do that?
I asked him to clarify the purpose of this presentation. That’s the first place for you to start when designing, reviewing and adapting your presentation. That’s also how you should measure the success of your presentation. He paused briefly to think about that, then started to ramble. I smiled and cut him off. “What do you want people to think, feel or do after your presentation?” I could see the light bulb go on in his mind.
Think, feel or do?
Open Your Presentation with Contrast to grab Attention. Why open you presentation with contrast? To grab attention, to engage, to trigger thinking. To highlight the difference between two opposite choices and the resulting outcomes. To create curiosity, stimulate interest and insight intrigue.
Questions are much more engaging than statements. Use questions throughout your presentation to keep your audience interested. Sprinkle these three types of questions within your presentation to make it feel more like a conversation instead of a lecture. Use all three types of questions and you’ll keep your audience actively engaged during your presentation.
How and where can you find stories to support your messages?
These stories are not the ones you tell to entertain your friends. These are stories to help you reinforce a point.
Tell your stories in conversations, meetings and presentations to be more effective in conveying your messages. You might wonder, “Where can I find my stories?”
The short answer is “All around you.”
When you tell stories in your presentations you will sell more, persuade more effectively and enjoy greater results from your presentations. You’ll also feel better about speaking because story telling is more comforting than giving a speech.
Most of us would rather tell stories than give a speech. Ask someone to choose between telling a story or giving a speech guess what they will pick. While public speaking gets high rating as a fear, storytelling does not.
Include stories in your presentation because it helps you deliver your message. Follow this simple formula to make stories work for you.
Use rhetorical questions during your presentation to better engage your audience. This technique is simple yet powerful.
A successful presentation is about moving people in the direction you want. What must you do to achieve this during your presentation?
