How do you design a high-impact presentation? Engage your audience.
- Barbara J. Mayfield, MS, RDN, LD, FAND
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
What is a high-impact presentation?
According to Communicating Nutrition, of which I am a coauthor, it is “a presentation an audience will pay attention to, engage with, and act upon.”
This post is the third in a 3-week series sharing content from a webinar titled “Designing and Delivering High Impact Presentations: Envision, Enlighten, and Engage,” based on Section 4 of the book, which I presented with coauthor and colleague Sonja Stetzler.
In the first post, we explored what it means to envision the outcome of a high-impact presentation and the path to get there. In last week’s post, we explored what it means to enlighten an audience. In this post, we explore what it means to engage an audience.
What does it mean to engage?
The dictionary defines engage as "to participate in, connect with, or become involved in something." A high-impact presentation goes beyond the transfer of information to an audience to an exchange of ideas and feelings between speakers and audience members.
What are the benefits of engaging an audience?
Audience engagement…
Captures and maintains your audience’s attention:
An audience’s attention span only lasts about 10 minutes. By engaging your audience and soliciting participation and active involvement you will keep them attending to your message.
Enhances learning:
The human brain has the most difficulty maintaining focus when learning is passive rather than active. Experiential learning is more effective than passive learning.
An audience will have many different learning style preferences. There are many ways to incorporate audience participation that will appeal to all types of learners. Active learners prefer group work, discussions, and experiential activities. Reflective learners prefer to reflect and observe. Any of the above can serve as audience participation.
Increases retention:
When we learn in a lecture-type setting, we forget about a third of what is presented within minutes and most of what is learned within a few weeks. Research shows that retention is greater when we incorporate audience participation strategies. When audiences are active learners by writing, speaking, problem-solving, or applying information, they are much more likely to remember what they learned.
Promotes self-efficacy:
Self-efficacy is the belief that we can do something, which is fundamental for affecting behavior change. Take, for example, the learning that might occur during a food demonstration. Observing someone preparing something promotes doing it yourself more than simply hearing about how to make something.
Even better is when an audience member actively participates in the food preparation during the demonstration. Even watching a volunteer from the audience increases self-efficacy over watching the presenter. There’s a feeling of “If they can do it, so can I.”
Provides ongoing feedback:
Engagement provides you, as the presenter, with feedback. This goes beyond applause. It can include a puzzled expression or a question asking you for further clarification.
Provides assistance with presentation tasks:
Audience participation can also provide you with assistance with presentation tasks. A good example of this is during a brainstorming activity. A volunteer can list audience responses on a whiteboard or flipchart, allowing you to maintain eye contact with the audience and solicit more ideas.
Provides speakers with a break from being the focus of attention:
When an audience member is speaking, the attention is on them and not on you. When the audience is engaged in a small group activity, they are focused on each other. This can be helpful if you’re feeling nervous or want a chance to catch your breath or regroup your thoughts.
I often encourage presenters to include some type of audience participation activity near the beginning of a presentation if they have a tendency to feel nervous when all eyes are on them.
Promotes connection with the audience:
Last, and possibly most importantly, engagement promotes connection with the audience. As we discuss in the Communicating Nutrition book, audiences need to feel a connection with you, the presenter, before they trust you and what you’re saying. One of the best ways to connect and build rapport and trust with an audience is through audience engagement.
There are so many ways to engage an audience and build these connections:
Open with an ice breaker.
Intersperse questions to your audience and from your audience.
Break the audience into pairs or small groups.
Classic activities like think-pair-share work in so many situations.
Have a brainstorming session.
Play a game.
Do a role play.
Practice a skill.
The list goes on and on.
Engage audience members throughout a presentation, enabling them to fully attend, learn, apply, and ultimately retain and put into practice the intended outcomes.
For more on audience engagement, see these posts:
“Persuasive communication involves enthusiasm, animation, audience participation, authenticity, and spontaneity.” ~ John C. Maxwell
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