August 1st 2008 09:41 pm

How to Involve your Audience

To increase the effectiveness of your presentation, allow your audience to get involved: to question, clarify, or to redirect what you are saying. You can allow questions before, during, or after your presentation; each time has certain advantages.

Taking Questions at the Beginnings

This assumes your audience knows a good deal about your subject and has questions before you begin. By getting these questions out ahead of time, you get an idea of what people want to know and can reassure them that their questions will be answered during your presentation. It allows you to tailor your material to the needs of a particular group.

Like any strategy, taking questions before you talk has its limitations. You really have to know your subject matter well and be able to think on your feet so your presentation will be responsive to the concerns of your audience. Your prepared material should be broken down into chunks which can be rearranged as you go along.

It’s good to record the questions as they come out. Use sheets of butcher paper or an overhead projector for a large audience. Then you can say, “Okay, we captured your ideas over there. I’ll try to cover them in the course of my presentation except for numbers five and eight, which I am not prepared to deal with at this time.”

Business BlogTaking questions before a presentation is not recommended unless you have lots of experience making presentations.

Taking Questions During

If you’re talking to a small group of people (less than seven) and want to keep it informal, you can say something like “Please feel free to raise questions as we go along. I don’t want to lecture to you.” This keeps people involved and lets you know if you are getting your message across. The questions can get out of hand, though. If there are too many interruptions, your presentation can become fragmented and lose its continuity. You can get thrown off your train of thought and brought to a standstill by an embarrassing question. There are ways of buying some time to think, like repeating the question: “Do I understand you correctly? You want to know if . . .” This gets you a couple of precious seconds to think, but in general, you or the facilitator have to keep some control.

If your presentation is getting bogged down by questions and you see your audience getting restless, you may have to say, “Okay, I want to be able to deal with all your questions, but I think it may be best now to complete my presentation and then use the rest of the time for questions and discussion. So please hold your questions until the end of my report.”

You can also stop periodically and ask your group how you’re doing: “Have I been clear so far? Am I getting across? Are there any question?” If heads nod, you can proceed with more confidence. If there are questions, you can field them until you have made up your mind how to proceed and then turn them off: “Okay, now that I have a better idea of your concerns, let me continue with the presentation.”

Taking Questions at the End

A question-and-answer period at the end of a presentation is the traditional way. Its advantages are that there is a clear transition between presentation and discussion; you can give a prepared presentation without interruptions; people can leave if they don’t have any questions; and it’s a good way of dealing with very large audiences. Of course, the big disadvantage is that your presentation may have been misdirected in some way, and you won’t know it until you’re finished. Your audience may be totally turned off and have forgotten any questions it ever had.

When it comes time for questions and discussion, the format of the meeting should change. Give a brief summary and let people know that you are finished. Once the floor is open for anyone to ask a question or give comment, all the basic meeting problems arise. Turn the meeting over to the facilitator or chairperson and step out of the limelight. Let the facilitator field questions, recognize people, and clarify communication. It’s easy to get defensive when tough questions come your way, and the facilitator can help protect you and keep the meeting on a positive note.

How to make it Visual

People retain only about to percent of what they hear in a presentation and 2o percent of what they see, but about 5o percent of what they both see and hear. That’s what the 3M Corporation reports from its research. That’s such an astounding increase in audience comprehension, you can’t afford not to make your presentation visual as well as verbal. Graphics have other advantages:

  1. They provide a focus of attention for your audience, just like the group memory. By controlling what you reveal, you can keep people focused on the point you are covering and no other.
  2. By getting people to look at your visual presentation, you can step out of the focus of attention for a while. In a small group this can help alleviate the uncomfortable business of being stared at while you talk. In a large group it can give you an occasional chance to think while people take in the graphics.
  3. The process of preparing graphic material forces you to organize your information and to simplify and shorten it.
  4. A graphic presentation demonstrates to your audience that you are prepared and well organized.
  5. The graphics serve as notes. When you turn to the next transparency or page, the display will remind you of what you were going to talk about next. This can help to lessen the “presentation jitters.”

Putting together visuals to support your presentation doesn’t have to be a big production. Many people shy away from doing anything graphic because they think that “to do it right” would take a lot of time, expense, and skill. Just a few sheets of clear hand printing in multicolored marking pens can be enough. Anyone who knows how to record can prepare a few sheets on a flipchart for a presentation.

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2 Responses to “How to Involve your Audience”

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