Hugh Culver

Business of Speaking

  • Blog
  • About
  • Speaking
  • BlogWorks
  • Contact

Hero Habits

Get my free guide on the power of habits and improve your performance every day.

Download it Now (for Free!)

7 easy ways to get audience participation in meetings, keynotes and seminars

6 Comments

How to get audience participation in meetings, keynotes and seminars
Never miss another update.

There you are – yapping away about leadership, time management, social media taking over the world, or next year’s marketing plan. You’re on stage delivering a keynote, leading a seminar, or maybe facilitating a planning session.

You know this stuff is pure gold, but are you really making an impact?

And making an impact starts with connection. “The biggest challenge for any public speaker” says public speaking expert Jesse Scinto in Fast Company, “is connecting with the people in the room.”

The reality of audiences is you can’t create change if people are tuned out. And they’ll tune out because either they’re distracted, bored, worried, uncomfortable or just plain tired.

The reality of audiences is you can’t create change if people are tuned out. Click To Tweet

When you see “Arms folded with a scowl on our face and skepticism on our minds” says Seth Godin, “we get what we deserve.” The worse thing (usually) is to keep tossing out more bait, hoping they bite.

You job, dear reader, is to get them involved in the process.

Over the years I’ve field test dozens of team building games, creative thinking exercises, small group breakouts and group process exercises.

Some bombed because they were silly, took took to long, or were overly complicated. Eventually I arrived at a short list of tried and true favourites (I’ll save team building games for a separate post).

The basic ingredients for a great audience exercise are:

  • standing and movement (new research proves that standing in meetings increases creativity and attention).
  • relevance – sure, it’s okay to have a (very) short exercise that’s simply for networking or fun, but the more relevant the exercise the better the results.
  • direction – every participation exercise should move you closer to your goal. Even an exercise like “What I most want” (below) gets helps focus participants on what they need to achieve in the meeting.
The basic ingredients for a great audience exercise are: movement, relevance and direction. Click To Tweet

Here are my 7 go-to exercises to get any audience participating, leaning in, and learning together:

  1. dyad – have them stand, find a new partner. Next I give specific instructions, like: ‘discuss how this lesson relates to your work’, or ‘discuss one challenge you’ve had in this area’, or ‘share with your partner how you would introduce this lesson to your staff/team.’ Finally, tell them how much time they have (keep it short – they can cover a lot of ground with even 90 seconds each), and say “Go!”.
  2. small group break out – same instructions as a dyad except they form a group of 4-6 people. After, invite a volunteer to report on their conclusions.
  3. two-column list – super fast way to dissect a problem: the columns could be Pro’s and Con’s or what worked (like in their last campaign)/what needs to improve, etc. This can be done with the whole group, individually, or in small group break outs.
  4. dyad + coach – like a dyad, except a third person volunteers to observe and then give feedback to their small group. This is great for practicing coaching or conflict resolution skills. Try to rotate each person through each role (leader, subordinate, coach).
  5. peer-to-peer coaching – super easy to set up: tell them who’ll be ‘coach’ first (like: person with shortest hair, person with birthday closest to today, etc.), tell them how much time they have and instruct the ‘coach’ to not give advice – only ask open-ended questions.
  6. “What I most want” exercise – one of my favourite ways to start a seminar is after I present the objectives (usually a list on the screen) I ask everyone to complete the sentence “What I most want to leave with (or ‘learn’) today is…..” I typically bring 3×5 index cards for this exercise. Next, I have them stand up, find someone they haven’t talked with yet, read their card, their partner reads their card, they switch cards and then repeat this routine two more times, each time with a new person. Now, they’ve networked, learned other people’s wants and, if I have time, I can call on people to share what they want and there’s no resistance because it’s no longer their card.
  7. ‘Art gallery tour’ – this only works if you love flip charts: as you create each flip chart, tape them around the room, going clock-wise. When you return from a break, form groups of 3-6 people and position each group at a flip chart. Next, give them 3 minutes to review the flip chart they’re in front of before asking them to move to the next one (hat tip to Harv Eker).

I talked more about these techniques in the post “7 Deadly Mistakes to Avoid When Designing Your Next Seminar” and “How to get powerful audience participation every time” and “How to Keep Your Audience Leaning In”

The trick with all of these is to weigh impact and effect against time cost. Some, like dyad and peer-to-peer coaching, can be done in under 2 minutes (it’s a good idea to practice your instructions so you only have to explain the exercise once and not have to waste time of confuse the audience repeating yourself or giving two versions of instructions).

Whatever you choose, done right, a short exercise will set you apart (at most conferences I speak at, I’m the only one getting the audience involved) help your audience internalize and process the lesson and make the whole experience more memorable.

And that’s what you want right?

Never miss another update.

Related Posts

  • The secret to making any meeting, speech or presentation outstandingThe secret to making any meeting, speech or presentation outstanding
  • Death of a Public SpeakerDeath of a Public Speaker
  • So, you want to be a speaker…So, you want to be a speaker…
  • A Quick Easy Way to get Any Audience to Take ActionA Quick Easy Way to get Any Audience to Take Action
  • How to add video to PowerPoint and Keynote like a proHow to add video to PowerPoint and Keynote like a pro

About Hugh Culver

Speaker, author, athlete and founder of BlogWorks. I speak and write about getting stuff done and the art of growing younger.

Categories: Blog, Expert/Speaker Tagged: audience participation, keynote, keynote speaker, meetings, public speaking, seminar, speaking

Comments

  1. Motivational Speaker says

    September 25, 2016 at 7:57 pm

    Thanks Hugh, these are great tips to keep an audience motivated and engaged. Especially handy after the post lunch coma session!

    Reply
    • Hugh Culver says

      October 3, 2016 at 4:00 pm

      Love that “post lunch coma session” – we’ve all been there.

      Reply
  2. Victoria says

    January 17, 2017 at 10:59 am

    Great tips Hugh. I’m doing a 3 hr. leadership workshop next week. I’ll be using one of these for sure. And definitely looking at impact/time cost. What I’ve found challenging, is making sure each interactive exercise really offers a good punch of relevance. but I’m learning. Thanks, Victoria

    Reply
  3. Hugh Culver says

    January 17, 2017 at 2:24 pm

    Victoria – this is one of my favourite topics! Over the years I have experimented with timing, activity and relevance. For example, I find the getting your audience involved immediately after your review of the agenda/objectives is a great way to get buy-in. Also, for every lesson, think of one simple, quick activity to anchor the lesson, like a simple dyad, or journaling.
    A favourite of mine is the “art gallery tour” mentioned in this post – it’s a great way to reinforce learning and to get everyone on their feet.
    A rule I follow is that if I can get 100% involvement I can steer the audience where I want them.

    Reply
  4. jody Urquhart says

    June 9, 2017 at 9:03 am

    Great Post! I find some audience participation is ” filler” unless it really relates to the content. It has to be short, timely and valuable. However, anytime audiences take time to think about what they are learning it really reinforces it

    Reply
    • Hugh Culver says

      June 9, 2017 at 11:47 am

      Jody I totally agree. Learning how to orchestrate a 5 minute exercise with 300 people is the trick. Any confusion and you do more damage than good (you and I have both seen that happen!)

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Blog
  • Books
  • Expert/Speaker
  • General
  • Habits
  • Life
  • Productivity
  • Speaking Tips
  • Wealth

My Most Popular Posts

SPEAKING

— 10 Easy ways to make Awesome PowerPoint
— 9 stupid things speakers do on stage
— How to Negotiate your fees and get hired

MAKING MONEY

— Why $100,000 won’t make you rich
— How to make your first OnLine course
— How to make money NOW as an expert

PRODUCTIVITY

— Organize your life with Google calendars
— Why you need to kill your To-Do list
— Do the hardest 50% in the first 90

Meet Hugh

Speaker, author, athlete and founder of BlogWorks. I speak and write about getting stuff done and the art of growing younger.
Learn More…

As featured on:

As featured on:
  • Blog
  • About
  • Speaking
  • BlogWorks
  • Contact
© 2021 Hugh Culver. All Rights Reserved · Website by ModernTraction.com
  • Legal Disclaimer
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter