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Energizing Your Audience

Here are some notes I took at a recent seminar taught by Bob Pike. He encourages some type of audience movement at least every 9 minutes. This 3 hour seminar was packed by so many useful training ideas that it was beyond belief. His newsletter looks excellent. Here are some of the ways he encouraged audience movement/involvement:

• Asked for a show of hands.
• Got the audience laughing.
• Asked a question.
• We were seated at round tables which facilitated group interaction. To enhance networking, he had us number off and then used these numbers to re-scramble all of the tables, since most people sit with people they already know.
• He often had us do 30-90 second discussions at our table. Sometimes in pairs, sometimes we would pair up with someone at another table. Variety! The more senses you involve, the more ways you involve people, the more likely they will act on the material. He quoted Confucius "What I hear I forget. What I see I remember. But what I do I understand."
• Recursiveness: "I always use the thing to teach the thing," says Mr. Pike. He modeled (demonstrated in his own teaching methods) dozens of ideas he never explained, and often had the table groups brainstorm lists of the techniques he had used in various categories. "People don't argue with their own data," he says, and by discussing what he has done at your table, you hear his ideas from your peers, and are thus more likely to accept them. This technique also shifts the paradigm of each participant to that of a teacher as well as a student. * He had a variety of handouts each printed in a different color on different sized paper, in different fonts, etc., and had the table select group leaders often to lead certain activities or go retrieve the next set of handouts.
• He rewarded audience participation (questions, responses to his questions, volunteers, people who volunteered comments, people who solve puzzles he presented, etc) with small books, packages of Post-it! flags, colored markers, etc. These people were invited up to receive their rewards, and the audience gave them an applause after they received it.
• Gave the table groups a choice to make together, which launched discussion.
• Occasionally asked the audience to remind him to do something at a certain point in the seminar: "If you are interested in hearing about x, remind me at 11:09 to tell you about it."
• Made outrageous statements.
• Told a story and put the audience in it: "Imagine that you are 24 years old and just got a job as a ..."

The key lesson I learned was that audience movement/involvement does not have to be anything major as long as you use lots of variety.

To paraphrase Mr. Pike: "It doesn't take that much time during the seminar to incorporate variety into your presentations. It does take planning."

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