Twelve Tips for Involving Your Audience:Wake ‘Em Up with Questions
By Karen Susman
If you want to engage your audience and keep them listening all the way through from your introduction to your conclusion, then get them to participate. Participation doesn’t have to mean role-plays, team activities, or scavenger hunts.
Here are easy ways to use questions to keep your audience with you.
- Ask for a show of hands. This is non-threatening if you haven’t asked an embarrassing question. And, why would you ask an embarrassing question unless your aim is to curb participation? A show of hands can give you valuable information such as, “By a show of hands, how many of you are first timers at the conference?” Or, “Who here manages ten people or more?”
- Ask questions everyone can answer. Adults don’t like to look foolish and may refrain from risking a wrong answer. The goal here is to make the audience feel comfortable about participating. An example might be, “What is your favourite vacation spot?”
- Ask participants to make a guess about something relevant to them and your topic. For instance, if you're talking about how to organize an office, you might ask the group to guess what percent of emails are printed out and saved thus adding to the paper clutter.
- Ask a question and have participants write down their responses. You involve them twice here. Once by having them think about an answer and secondly by having them write something down. You can have them refer to their answers again and again as proof of your thesis. For instance, let’s say you ask audience members to jot down their biggest source of stress and how it affects them. Then, later in your presentation when you’re talking about the mind/body connection, you can ask them to look at those answers again. If earlier an audience member wrote down “Traffic/Headache,” he or she can clearly see that traffic stress leads to Excedrin moments.
- Have the audience answer questions on a handout. Ask them to give feedback after each question. By the way, writing down an answer before being asked to answer aloud takes away the fear of being called on. They are prepared should you volunteer them.
- Use a handout with blanks to be filled in as you proceed through your presentation. The audience will listen so they can fill in the blanks.
- Use a quick self-assessment to determine knowledge, skills or attitudes.
- Develop an action plan handout. Have audience fill in an action after each point you make. For example, if you’re talking about financial planning, one area you might cover is credit card debt. After your credit card debt discussion, have the audience write down what action they will take to eliminate credit card chaos.
- Ask rhetorical questions for reflection and silent answers. “Ask yourself, ‘How could you make the world a better place?’ ” Or, “Think about where you’d like to live during your retirement years.”
- Collect responses written on 3” x 5" cards and transcribe to a flip chart for general discussion. There’s a degree of anonymity here that encourages participation.
- Ask the question to the entire group first. Let the group think. Then ask for individual responses.
- Don’t ask “Gotcha” questions. These are trap or embarrassment questions. Respect your audience. The goal is not to show how smart you are, but how smart the audience is. Involve them with questions and they’ll learn from themselves, from each other, and from you all the way through your presentation.
Karen Susman is a Speaker, Trainer, Coach, and Author of 102 Top Dog Networking Secrets. Karen works with organizations that want to maximize performance. Programs include Humour at Work; Balance In Life; Networking Skills; Presentation Skills; and Building Community Involvement. Order new guidebooks on humour, networking, time management, and community involvement by calling 1-888-678-8818 or e-mail Karen@KarenSusman.com.. www.KarenSusman.com.
Published in Networking Today, February, 2003.
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