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5 Ways to Energize an Audience

by Drew on November 24, 2009 in How-To Humor

A tired audience is an impatient and distracted audience. To help ensure your presentation is actually heard, it’s important to energize the audience.

Here are 5 ways to energize the audience before your next presentation:

photo by jpsdg

photo by jpsdg

1. Warm up the crowd by conducting a symphony.

Conducting an audience symphony is one of the easiest ways to get an audience engaged and energized at the beginning of a presentation.  To do so, have separate sections of the audience say different syllables that, when combined, sound out the title of your presentation.

For complete instructions, check out Warm Up Your Audience by Conducting a Symphony.

2. Have everyone stand-up and do the thumbs exercise.

The thumbs exercise (demonstrated in the video below) can be a great way to warm-up the audience. It’s something unique that they have likely never done before and gets both the left and the right side of the brain warmed-up.

photo by gakiku

photo by gakiku

3. Throw on some music and encourage dancing.

Dancing can be a fun way to energize a room and get people moving.  At the start of the presentation, put on some music and just start dancing.  The courageous will join you, the others will at least be entertained by your mirthful movements.

Of course you could take dancing to the next level and dance to shorten meetings–it’ll certainly encourage shorter meetings and give you a chance to explore different types of music.

photo by bilywifta

photo by bilywifta

4. Get the audience to applaud 3 times.

One of the things I learned from a few stand-up veterans is the importance of the MC to bring the audience together, transforming them from strangers at a comedy show to a collective audience, laughing together.

One way to do that is to get the audience to applaud at least 3 times together.  The act of doing it all together helps them settle in as a group and get focused on what’s about to happen on stage.  This is way many comedians will start with statements like “You ready for a good show?”, “Give it up for your headliner,” and “Applaud if you like breathing.”

photo by thrasher

photo by thrasher

5. Do the Wave

The simple act of standing up can wake the body up.  Standing burns twice as many calories as sitting and raises your heart rate.  Doing it multiple times to create a wave in the audience not only increases the energy of the room, but also gets the audience to do something together.

Have a favorite energizer? Share it in the comments.

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Roman Quote on Art

“Ars est celare artem.” (The art is concealing the art.) – Roman Saying

Make Presentations Not PowerPoint Demonstrations

by Drew on July 7, 2009 in Learn with Humor

gettysburg-pptIf you actually want to be effective in the corporate world, it’s important to learn to make presentations, not Power Point demonstrations. What’s the difference? Good question.

Presentations versus Power Point

If you were to go by what you see most often in the workplace, you would think presentations and Power Point were synonyms. But they are not. Power Point is merely one tool that you can use to give a presentation.

Yet when we must present an idea, proposal, or review, the tendency is to simply create slides and then read from them in front of our audience. This is technically a presentation, but it’s boring, ineffective, and lazy.

The key to making effective presentations is treating them as an experience, one that will end with the audience arriving at the same conclusion as what you are proposing. Doing so is deceptively easy, but requires a little more work.

1. Think Outside the Power Point

The first way to break out of the mold of boring presentations is to think outside of Power Point. There are thousands of ways to present an idea that don’t involve firing up Microsoft, or even using a computer.

What if you gave an active demonstration of the recommended product, or held a panel Q&A with experts on your topic. You could use Power Point to complement your discussion if necessary, but it doesn’t have to be your only means of communication. Whatever you can do to drive interaction with the audience will make it more memorable and engaging which will ultimately improve retention.

2. Be Prepared

This should go without saying, but based on some of the meetings I’ve had to sit through, not everyone knows or follows this guideline. If you don’t care enough about the work to prepare for the presentation, why should the audience care to listen to it.

It goes back to one of the keys to successful selling–be passionate about what you are presenting and that enthusiasm will spread to the audience. Plus you are giving them an experience, you want to make sure it is a good one. One note is that there is a such thing as over preparation. You want to strike the right balance of knowing what you’re talking about but also sounding conversational and not like a monotonous robot.

3. Do Not Read the Slides

We’ve all been in those meetings where the presenter just stands up front and reads the slides, as if we were illiterate or incapable of getting the right pronunciation of the words. Of course most of us have also been on the other side, where either because of a lack of time or creativity, we gave an oratory account of our slides.

It’s understandable. If we write everything that is important to say on the slides, verbatim, not only do we not have to memorize anything, but we also can send the Power Point after the meeting either as a summary or for those that missed the presentation. If that’s your style, why not just cancel the meeting and send out the slides? You’ll be saving every one a lot of time.

4. Do Not Read the Slides

OK, I already said this one but it bears repeating. Your slides should look more like an outline than an essay, if you decide to even use words at all. Pictures really are worth a thousand words when it comes to presenting–they are more visually appealing and are more memorable than a bunch of words.

A general rule of thumb many people toss it out is 4×4. No more than four bullet points per slide, and no more than four words per line. I don’t think there’s a magic number, but if that helps you to keep your slides brief, then go for it.

Make Presentations Not Power Point Demonstrations

The most important thing to keep in mind when preparing for a presentation is that it is an experience. By following the tips above, you can make sure that it is a positive one. Need more? Check out some of the best presentations tips from Humor That Works.

What rules do you follow when making presentations? Share them in the comments.

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Selecting a Metaphor for Better Presentations

by Drew on June 29, 2009 in How-To Humor
photo by scol22

photo by scol22

Last week I talked about the simple presentation tip of using metaphors to improve understanding and retention of your material.  But how do you find a good metaphor?

What Makes a Good Metaphor

Not all metaphors are created equal.  Some can help you explain every detail of your presentation topic, while others barely provide any benefit.

What makes for a good metaphor?  While there is no exact science, there are some guidelines:

  1. It Should Simplify – The metaphor should actually simplify your topic, not make it more cumbersome to understand.
  2. Your Audience Should Get It – An amazing metaphor relating a new reporting system to thermodynamics isn’t helpful if your audience doesn’t understand thermodynamics.  That’s not say your metaphor has to speak for itself–you can explain what it is you are relating to, but the audience should be able to get it with only a brief explanation.
  3. It Should Be Extendable - The best metaphors are those that you can extend throughout your presentation, simplifying each individual component and then bringing it together all at the end.

How to Select a Metaphor

The biggest barrier to using metaphors in a presentation is actually finding one that will work for your topic.  We don’t have all day to think of different metaphors and apply them to our work; we do have to actually get the work done.  But taking time now to ensure your audience understands what you’re saying will save you a lot of time, and trouble, in the future.

Generating ideas isn’t that difficult.  The first step to finding an appropriate metaphor is limiting your brainstorming–there are only so many references that can adequately describe a new reporting system.

Some helpful hints in brainstorming metaphors:

  1. Think of Things Everyone Knows - The best metaphors are those that require little explanation.  Relating to things people already know well makes your job easier.  Some common concepts most people already understand include cars (dashboard, engines, overall design), cities, computers, technology, pop-culture, and sports.
  2. Think About What You Are Presenting – Oversimplify what it is you are presenting or proposing and get down to it’s most basic level–is it a change in process, a revolutionary product, a way to simplify?  Then think of something that at it’s root level is the same.  Compare the change from one system to another to the transition of newspapers to online news sites.  Compare the new product to the iPod.  Compare the simplification to a car dashboard.
  3. Think About What You Know – A metaphor that requires hours of research to pull off correctly can be too time-consuming to actually use.  Think of the things you know well, or are passionate about.  I often use stand-up and improv comedy concepts as metaphors because I love comedy, it’s interesting for the audience, and I know it.

Once you have a narrowed list of possibilities, you can just apply the guidelines for a good metaphor and choose one.  You don’t have to find the perfect metaphor, just one that highlights your key points.

And not every aspect of the metaphor need apply–many people reference pyramids as an example of how a strong base is important to the overall structure, but few mention that the pyramids of Egypt were made by slaves. It doesn’t mean the pyramid isn’t analogous, just that it isn’t a perfect metaphor.

Applying Your Metaphor

After you’ve decided on the metaphor, applying it to your topic is the easiest part.  You can do this by examining each of the high-level items of your proposal (title slides, paragraph headings, etc) and mapping it to your metaphor.

From there, you’ll find you can express your metaphor in natural ways in your presentation or writing.  The end result?  A better presentation that is engaging and improves retention and understanding.

How do you pick the metaphors you use in your presentations? Share some ideas in the comments.

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