Speaker 1: In this video we're going to look at how you can engage your audience in your presentation. The first step of course is to create your content to know what you want to share and then the second step is to figure out how to maximize the engagement and interaction between you and your listeners. And we're going to look at six strategies to help move you in that direction. Hello there and welcome back. If this is your first time tuning in to Communication Coach this channel is here to help people probably like you, rising leaders who want to increase your impact so you can lead the people around you to higher levels of excellence. We're doing a two-part series on how to engage your audience. In this video we're going to look at six quick tips and in the next video we're going to look at learning style. So make sure that you look for that video either I'll link it to a card above and I'll also put it in the description below. So in this video I want you to look at these six strategies for engaging your audience. Think about which one will be the easiest one for you to use in your very next presentation. So tip number one, ask more questions. Instead of just talking at your audience you want to create a feeling of a discussion. So you can ask what they call rhetorical questions that you don't need anybody to answer. You just ask the question and they think about it during your pause or you can actually ask them to respond. But make sure you ask them a nice easy question. Something light. All they have to do is maybe raise their hands or shout out a one or two word response. Nothing too complicated. You want to keep it nice and easy. Another thing that you can do is ask your listeners to do something physical. This is tip number two. Ask them to do something like say I'd like you to take an object out of your pockets or I would like you to open and flip through a book that you might be looking at. I once saw a speaker for example ask everybody to cross their arms and then once we all had our arms crossed they talked about comfort and comfort zone a little bit. Then they said okay now cross your arms in the opposite direction and it really helped the speaker make the point because there was a bit of discomfort when you start. You can try it right now when you switch your arms the opposite way that you're used to folding them. It is a little bit uncomfortable so it really drove home the speaker's point but by having us do something physical it made it that much more powerful. The third tip is to give your listeners something to react to. It's not just you as a speaker and your listeners. Maybe you put up a relevant quotation or image on a slide and then you ask them to react to it in some way like by asking them a question or in some other way. That is much more dynamic than just you and your listeners. Now it's a third part of the puzzle that they're reacting to. Stimulus response. That'll usually get people thinking and get people talking. The fourth way to get people more engaged is to ask a volunteer from your audience to come up on the platform or the stage up to the front and do something with you. Demonstrate something with you. What happens when you bring a volunteer up is the other listeners put themselves in the volunteers place and so they're much more likely to relate to it. They find it much more engaging and entertaining. For example, I teach college and at the beginning of every semester almost every course I teach students how to shake hands professionally and I bring up a volunteer and they're laughing, they're engaging because they can see themselves in the volunteers spot and they all get better handshakes and they do a better job. Then we have them practice it more as a group as well. You can ask them again to do something physically later but just bringing the volunteer up is another technique that you can use to get people more engaged. The fifth tip is to use a real object, some kind of prop, instead of just simply the PowerPoint slides. For example, if I'm talking about camera lenses, I want to have a real object, a real prop. A real camera lens is way more engaging than a picture, for example, of a camera lens up on the PowerPoint. If you've ever flown on a plane you know this. When the flight attendant is demonstrating how to buckle the seat belts they use the actual object which is much more interesting to look at than let's say that little pamphlet they put about the seat belts in the seat pocket in front of you. I don't look at that pamphlet but I do look at the person with the object and I always find a little interesting how they handle that seat belt because it's a real object. Much more realistic and interesting than a simple image. And the last tip, the sixth tip, is that you can be the prop. Your physical body can be a way to engage your listeners. So the way you gesture, the way you come alive, the way you move around your speaking area. You might even go a little bit into your audience like up an aisle for a little bit. That's way more engaging than just standing still in one place the whole time. Now you have to be careful. You don't want to move for no reason. You don't want to pace like you're nervous. You have to move with a purpose. But when you move with a purpose it's much more likely to bring people into the interaction, get them much more excited. So those are my six quick tips on how to engage your audiences more effectively in a presentation. Just wanted to remind you there is another video right after this in the card above here or in a link in the description below about how to use learning styles as a schema for interacting with your audience in a more dynamic way. So thanks, God bless, and I will see you in the next video.