>>Audience Participation

Audience’s input could fully enrich the quality of a presentation. This is exactly why the same Professor teaching the same materials to a Engg. class and an MBA class would end up with two totally different scenarios. Below are some of the key elements to encourage audience participation:

1. Short answers or yes/no questions

During your presentation, it’s difficult for your audience to reply if you ask a long-answer type of question. Your audience could be worried about going off topic. Nobody wants to be embarrassed! Therefore, get some quick feedback from the crowd to start with. The quick “how many of you have the experience in......” type of questions work well in warming up the crowd. People only need to put up their hands to participate. Once people start participating, they will be more willing to participate again later on.

It is also easier to correct the participant’s points when their response is not too long. You have a higher probability to twist their points and correlates to your own points.

2. Never criticize participants input

Never criticize participants input even if they made the most stupid comments on earth. In this situation, the response should be “this is a very good comment and let me come back to you”. And then, try to rephrase what they said or twist it a little bit and say something meaningful. If others see that even the worst commenter on earth was rewarded for participating, the more intelligent ones will participate and say something as well.

3. Choose the right audience to start with your presentation

Pick the ones that appear to be more helpful. One thing you can do is to mingle with the crowd and know more about the audience before the presentation - identify their background and look for the friendlier ones. You will have a better idea of knowing who we should ask for feedback on certain topics.

4. Control your time

If you are giving a PowerPoint presentation, try to limit the number of questions per slide. Always reserve enough time for each questioning period in your presentation. There are always some participants who like to ask follow-up questions.

5. Control your crowd

There are situations where an intelligent audience has raised a debatable question and then the crowd starts talking with each other. Try to control such situation by quickly answering the question. Invite a few other people in the room to respond to the comment if time permits.

Getting audience input is not an easy technique to master. If you are able to get good input from your audience, you are going to be rewarded with a fun, interactive, and convincing presentation.