Remember that teacher who rattled through his course for fifty minutes, as if he was paid by the word? You looked at the clock, sighed deeply and were mostly relieved when the bell rang.
Exactly. Rattling it off didn’t work back then. Today, with an audience that has its phone within reach, it works even less.
From passive listener to active player
Want people to pay attention, think along and remember something? Then let them play along. Literally. Let them choose, guess or respond.
- Break the rhythm with a question. Even a rhetorical question gets heads thinking.
- Turn a figure into a quiz. Have a striking fact? Don’t show it straight away. First ask: what do you think, A, B or C?
Let your audience respond
Ask your question in a way that lets people raise their hand. When I saw a show by the Flemish comedian Arnout Van den Bossche, it struck me straight away: he does this all the time. For example, he asks: “Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a meeting where you thought: couldn’t that have been an email?” The room laughs, hands go up everywhere. Everyone feels addressed, nobody stays passive. With one question, the whole room is awake.
Here’s how to really get those hands up:
- Choose a question everyone can say yes to. Something from their daily practice, nothing they need to be ashamed of.
- Raise your own hand first. Then the room dares to follow.
Why it works
Our brain only really remembers something when it has had to make an effort. Psychologists Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke of Washington University demonstrated this neatly in 2006. Students read a text and then had to either reread it or recall what they remembered themselves. Right afterwards, the rereaders seemed to have the advantage. But a week later, the group that had to test themselves remembered up to half as much again.
Repeating feels efficient. Thinking for yourself is what sticks.
So: let your audience fill something in, guess or answer. That little bit of mental effort anchors your message. In a webinar, that works with a poll or a question in the chat. More about that in the tip on the narrative arc.
In short
Let your audience do something, and your story becomes a little bit theirs.
Curious where interaction fits in your presentation? With the Presentation Check, we look together for the moments where your audience can take part. In the training, you get a whole toolkit of interaction formats, for the room and online.
