Every speaker struggles with a balance: A talk needs to be brief enough and interesting enough to ensure an audience will hear it, but it also needs to contain all of the information that the audience needs to know.
Use our pointers to gain “neck down” attention as you keep your presentation lively and informative.
Keep it interactive.
Social scientists have demonstrated that an interactive audience is more easily persuaded than a passive one. In many circumstances, the give and take between speaker and audience breaks through the reticence and reserve of listeners, encouraging them to engage with the speaker and play a part in the proceedings.
We see this in certain churches using the call and response tradition of worship. We see it in schools and universities, where an effective teacher, by asking questions, can get monosyllabic students to open up and participate.
And of course the world also witnessed the power of audience interaction in the massive rallies of Nazi Germany when Hitler would cry, “Sieg,” and the soldiers replied, “Heil,” raising their arms in the Nazi salute. I include this negative example because it is a powerful reminder that what makes a speaker a dangerous demagogue is not his technique, but his moral purpose.
Write clear headlines.
Write headlines for your slides that express a point of view. The audience will get the big idea and look at the body of the slide for evidence that supports your point.
For instance, “We Can Dominate the Market” is a better headline than, “Market Share.” It’s better because it implies action, it’s brimming with intellectual and emotional content, and it captures the physicality of neck-down attention much more than the inert phrase “Market Share.”
Keep it short.
Stop talking before they stop listening. The mind cannot absorb what the behind cannot endure.
Let there be you.
The presence of a human being alone on a stage of any kind, whether it’s the floor of a small meeting room or the elevated platform of a vast ballroom, is profound. It immediately creates neck-down attention. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What you are speaks so loudly that [nobody] can hear what you’re saying.”
[ctt tweet=”What you are speaks so loudly that nobody can hear what you’re saying.” coverup=”A85b3″]
Listeners interpret everything a speaker does: they read your face, your inner rhythm, your posture, voice, and stance. In fact, the human mind ascribes moral intention to physical cues having the slightest hint of emotional expression.
The problem is the mind does this in a matter of seconds, and you have to speak longer than that. Plus you may be nervous, not at your scintillating best, so your technical skill at capturing and holding attention could be the difference between success and failure.
Every business presentation will have plenty of moments when the audience will have to work hard and pay attention to grasp the material. I am suggesting that your results, and your reputation, will improve when your audience finds you and your content fascinating.
I urge you to go for the neck-down stuff.