“I can feel it.  People’s minds get very quiet when I start to talk. They’re totally quiet until I’m completely finished. They’re really listening to me.”

Mateo, a recent graduate of Mastering Virtual Presentations, wrote that to me last week.

Why are they quiet?  Because they turned off all thinking. 

When do audiences do that? 

They do it when they find you that interesting.

When you can get an audience to turn off their thinking and just listen all the way through, you know you’ve made it into the upper league of presenters.

You see this happen in a really great movie. Recently, many people have been seeing the movie Top Gun.  Did you see it?  Were you thinking about other things as you watched the movie?  Or were you just completely absorbed in what was happening on the screen?  Completely captivated?

When it’s that good, you completely turn off your thinking.  You’re swept away.

You could say, “That’s easy when you’re in an action movie. How do you do it in a corporate presentation?”

You have to be very, very good.  It’s done by the great ones.

I was giving a talk to approximately 150 people recently.  One of the questions that came up was, “How do you get an audience to stop multitasking?”

I boldly stated that the presenter had to be good enough to earn the audience’s full attention.  I said that attention and interest are indicators of how good you are, how relevant you are, how interesting you are, how well you communicate. 

I said that the audience gives their attention and interest freely when it’s deserved.  That when you’re good enough, you captivate.  That you have to keep getting better, keep demanding a higher skill of yourself, until you captivate your audience completely.

It’s a challenging road, but travel it you can.  And arrive you can.

Someone jumped in to disagree, saying, “People are so busy, they NEED to multitask, you have to understand why they’re not paying attention.  You can’t expect them to stop multitasking.  It’s just not realistic today.”

Yes, you can look at it that way and put it all on the audience.

But that does nothing to improve you.

If I told you that an audience in a movie theater got restless and started to multitask in the middle of the movie, would you think there was something wrong with the audience?

Or would you conclude that the movie was not that interesting?

Would you go see a movie if you heard large portions of the audience multi-tasked through it?

It’s easy to blame it all on the audience.

The problem is that it isn’t true.  And it doesn’t help you improve.

The key is to develop your skills so that when you speak, there’s nothing wasted, it’s all relevant, it’s all interesting, it’s all valuable, it’s all engaging.  So that it’s worth dropping everything to pay attention to you. 

When you can do that, you’ve earned the audience’s attention.  They don’t think about or decide to pay attention to you.  It’s not a conscious decision on their part.  They just do it.  They can’t help it.  You’re that good.

Even if they want to argue with you, they can’t.  You’re simply that good.

My father and my sister were both very successful trial attorneys.  Juries are tough audiences.  My father and sister cut themselves no slack. It was all on them whether they won or lost.  I learned a lot from hearing them relentlessly critique themselves and each other, and seeing what it takes to win. Blaming the jury gets you nowhere when you’re a trial attorney who wants a future.

You don’t want or need an excuse for failure.  You want to seek that path to success that you know is created by you, by your own level of skill.

It’s what you say and how you say it.  It’s never your topic.  It’s your intellect, your creativity, your ability to evoke emotions and your communication skills.

Here’s my question to you:  What standard do you set for yourself?

Mateo’s standards for himself are high, some would say ridiculously high.  But, without those standards, he wouldn’t have achieved what he’s achieved.  They guided him to success.  That’s how he made it.

Your standards for yourself are your decision and yours alone.  You are the final arbiter of what’s “good enough to present to the audience.”

When you develop your skills to the point of being captivating, that’s when you have the really big wins. 

That depends on you.  Not your audience.

It’s not something you’re “born with”.  It’s a road you travel with real intention.

It’s a worthy goal to get that good.

Then you too will be able to say, “Their minds are quiet when I speak because they’re really listening.  I did it.  I’ve crossed that threshold.”

It’s a really good feeling to feel the audience become very silent because they are completely captivated by you.  It’s the real deal.  There is no substitute.

Be the cause!