I get a sense of how desperate audiences are for someone who can give them REAL communication whenever I speak at conferences. It starts during pre-conference meetings with the conference organizers as they prepare me for what to expect.
I was recently asked to speak at a week-long virtual conference. I was speaking on the third day and the organizer wanted to touch base right before. So we talked on Tuesday. He said I would have to” really worry” about this group. “They’re only 2 days into the conference and they’re multitasking through everything. We can monitor engagement and it’s only around 20% at any given time.”
And then he started suggesting all kinds of techniques and gimmicks for me to use to increase engagement. Like calling participants out by name and other dreadful things my third grade teacher used to do.
I sincerely appreciated the heads-up going into my talk, but I’m antipathetic to any techniques or gimmicks. I believe in the power of new truths, in my own powers and in the intelligence of the audience.
I also believe that if the speaker isn’t good enough, the audience should multi-task – just to preserve their own sanity, especially during a week-long conference!
So, I started my presentation. The audience was engaged from the get-go. I was anticipating a challenge and there wasn’t any.
The conference organizer called me the next day, beside himself with enthusiasm, to tell me engagement for the 3 hours of my seminar had been 100%. They’d never seen anything like this. I let him know that I really appreciated his heads-up going in.
Right on the heels of that, I spoke at another week-long conference with a large international audience. This time I was on the fifth day, Friday. By this time, virtual audiences are usually as close to dead as you can get without actually burying them.
This conference organizer sternly let me know that the conference was precision-timed and no speaker was allowed to go even 60 seconds over their allotted time. I had precisely one hour. The clock would start ticking the second he was finished introducing me.
He made this clear in an email, in our 2 pre-conference planning meetings, and then just in case I hadn’t gotten the message, he told me again right before we started.
I had carefully precision-timed my talk to end precisely at the 60-minute mark, not one second longer.
It was going well and then unexpectedly halfway through my talk, the conference organizer was frantically texting my assistant, “The senior exec is loving this! Please tell her to take an extra 15 minutes! No one wants it to end!”
When I got this message, it was so unexpected, I was doing my best to not burst out laughing while wildly scrambling in my mind for, “What the heck am I going to talk about for another 15 minutes?”
And, less than 24 hours later, I was flooded with new requests to speak from that conference.
I can hear people asking, Well, how did you do that?
You should know that I am anti-technique, anti-gimmick.
Here’s what I do.
I have something worthwhile to say. Very.
I care about them. A lot.
I communicate. And I do it very well.
And I maintain a meaningful dialogue throughout. Many people think it’s challenging to do it virtually with a large audience, but I don’t find it so. That two-way interaction throughout is good for me and it’s good for them.
This is what I teach others to do too because I want to live in a world where we ALL are able to communicate with each other. As one of my clients said, “I am signing so many people up for your workshops because I don’t want to sit through any more boring presentations!”
And I don’t want anyone to ever be that boring presenter when I know the great things each one of us is capable of.
My real message to you in all this is this:
The world is being bombarded with people talking. Talking, talking, talking.
The world is starved for someone who can create a REAL connection, REAL communication. They eagerly tune in to you when you give them that. They enthusiastically engage with you. They want more of it. They are starved for it.
That is what they want from you.
You want 100% engagement? Go ahead and give them an abundance of the truly satisfying communication they are longing for. With the power of your ideas. With your powers to communicate them.
Be the cause!