I asked my workshop students what they wanted to gain from the class. The first student responded with,  “I want to be a more engaging speaker!” My initial response was delivered with a smile and a wink, “Don’t we all!” Of course, we certainly covered that topic in our class. To many peoples’ surprise, it’s not as difficult as you might think… but it does take some planning.

Here are three simple ways you can engage any audience with your messages.

Engage with Solid Arguments

Whatever you propose to your audience needs to make sense. If your recommendation is not backed by experience or research, the audience may find your proposal illogical. If it doesn’t make sense, they won’t agree to it.

Creating solid arguments just means you provide the answer first (executives love this) and then the supporting data; or you provide your thought process which logically leads to your conclusion (answer last.) Either way, there needs to be agreement with you on how you came to your conclusion and your proposed solution.

One simple tool used by speakers is the “What-Why-How” tool to construct the body of their message.

WHAT – is the situation you’re currently facing. Make certain you can paint this picture as less than ideal.

WHY – should we make a change? This should include the costs of not doing anything. Just leaving things as the status quo is going to be unacceptable. What is there to gain by changing the current situation? It’s important to get their emotional buy in here.

HOW – can we get it done? This is where you need to offer the logical solution to the situation.

Engage their Imagination

You know this is true, you love when a speaker paints pictures in your mind. It’s so attractive to an audience we will sometimes get caught up in the imagery and time seems to slip by. Building a tapestry of elements attractive to the mind’s eye can take a skilled orator and years of practice… or you can use this one short cut:

Just tell your audience to “Imagine if…” or “picture this for me…” and you are on your way. I know it sounds to simple, but it actually works. When you tell someone to picture something or imagine something, they will.

We relate to ideas and concepts we can picture. If we can’t picture the concept of your proposal itself, get us to picture the outcomes of your proposal. What would it look like if we succeeded? Help them create a future in their minds and you just became more engaging!

Engage their feelings

It’s true you’ll remember how someone made you feel even more than what someone said to you. Feelings are always a part of any decision we make. In fact, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio made an interesting discovery while working with people who had damaged brains. The area of their brain which was damaged controlled emotions. They could not feel any emotions. Here is something interesting about the group. They were unable to make decisions.

If you want to move your audience toward a decision, you will need to engage their feelings! One of the best ways to do that is with a story. You’ve seen plenty of speakers use stories to entertain and engage audiences. Stories are one fo the best ways we engage feelings because we can all relate to the story being told. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that stories require us to use our imaginations too!

Just do this one thing…

You can really boil down all of this advice into one simple tip. If you want to be an engaging speaker, just give the audience what they came for! When the audience gets what they want, they will love you. It will require a little more work on your part, but it will pay huge dividends in results and your audience will love you for your preparation!

Always give the audience what they came for!

See you next week,
Russ