Walk the Week - Leave the Lectern

I once presented a session on outsourcing contracts at an ITechLaw conference in Scandinavia. The panel of speakers were on a raised stage with a lectern in front of an audience of some 300 technology lawyers seated in rows of tables. I must have had the after lunch “graveyard” slot because after a few minutes I could see from the elevated podium that, whatever I said, a significant portion of the audience were working on their laptops, looking at their phones or otherwise not really focusing on the session. By chance I had a roving mike, so after some hesitation I moved away from the lectern, climbed down off the stage and continued my talk, whilst walking straight up one of the aisles to the back of the room. The effect was electric! The audience suddenly woke up and started paying attention. Heads jerked up from whatever reverie they were in, and delegates guiltily closed their laptops and started listening. Aristotle was called the peripatetic philosopher, though it seems the legend that the name came from Aristotle's alleged habit of walking while lecturing may have started with Hermippus of Smyrna. Anyway, from then on I realised how powerful a technique walking amongst your audience can be. It is really hard to ignore a speaker or what they are saying when he or she is, or shortly may be, standing right next to you.

I have come to realise from this and other experience that in addition to great subject matter and knowledge, any speaker or trainer must find ways to engage with and to some extent entertain their audience, or their words of wisdom and great technical content will fall on stony ground. I know this sounds obvious, but how many times have you seen an online or in person speaker put up a PowerPoint slide with some 50 bullet points on it – apologise to the audience because the slide is a bit busy, then turning to the presentation (and away from the audience) proceed to read out all the items on the slide! And you don’t have to jump off the stage. This Harvard Business Review article What to Do When You’re Losing Your Audience During a Presentation suggests moving to a different part of the stage may help. Anyway, coming out from behind the “protection” of the lectern helps and establishes a much more direct contact with the audience. See this short blog Lecterns are for Losers – Public Speaking Tips which suggests “This is not just about lecterns – it is about removing distance and barriers and distractions and getting close to your audience. Talking TO people is old fashioned and ineffective – talking with people is natural and human and real and normal.” It cites a TEDMED coach who says “TED talks are nearly always ‘walk-and-talk’ rather than lectern-based.

And talking about PowerPoint as well as keeping slides simple I was always envious of those fancy and eye-catching slides some presenters seemed to be able to create at will. I assumed they were experts on PowerPoint, but I discovered fairly recently this may not necessarily be the case. Let me reveal what seems to be a bit of a well-kept secret. On the top right of the PowerPoint menu is a button called “Designer”. Click on this and a number of really neat and effective design options appear on the right of the screen for each slide. See this Microsoft Support article Create professional slide layouts with Designer. AI can also help generate content and images for you which (probably) don’t have any copyright issues. I use this sometimes for my blog pictures.

This principle of being impactful works for all manner of training not just conference speaking. For a number of years I organised some 20 professional training events every year for my function mostly online but some person to person, or a mixture of both (which works really well). There are ways to reach out to and engage with your audience whether in the room or on a Teams call, including effective (and simple) slides. For online participants surveys and quizzes sometimes work, but they can be a bit “clunky” and disrupt the flow of the talk. Having a panel of speakers and an adjudicator who asks pertinent questions really helps. The other simple and sometimes overlooked method is to encourage questions and comments on Chat – and then find time to review and respond to these regularly throughout the session and not just at the end when you are running out of time.

AI proposes that “To deliver effective professional training presentations, focus on clear objectives, engaging visuals, concise messaging, and interactive elements, while tailoring the presentation to your audience and incorporating storytelling techniques.”   See this article Designing Learning and Development Presentations for Employees (+ 20 Topic Ideas) whose useful suggestions including the concept of creating a “storyboard” which “can act as a map of your training that will enable you to present the training material in an engaging way. This is where you can arrange the various elements of your training in a visual manner to give your learners a better idea of what they can expect from the training”.

And virtual training has its own unique challenges. Unlike my conference example you cannot see what your audience is doing and whether they are engaged. They may be making coffee or doing other work, having signed up for the training just to say they have done it – or perhaps to have a warm feeling that they have tried, but not actually learnt anything. See this Forbes article Unleashing Engagement: 4 Ways To Reimagine Stale Presentations

which observes “In remote and hybrid environments, virtual meetings and presentations fill our calendars, but few are efficient or productive. According to a 2022 study from meeting analytics startup Read AI, 40% of virtual meeting participants have below-average or poor engagement, and 24% don’t say a single word.” The article advocates: 

·      Less Talking, More Listening - Presenters can stimulate spontaneous conversation and ensure that every attendee feels included by focusing on asking questions and listening for understanding.

·      Foster Channels For Interaction - Building avenues for engagement into your presentation is often the best way to facilitate discussion.

·      Pass The Microphone To The Audience - To truly upgrade the audience’s experience, encourage attendees to lead the discussion, foster the conversation and connect. [See using Chat function above]. 

And by the way all of this applies as much if not more so to technical subjects like English contract law and cases. I have also come to the conclusion that if you have a really critical session which is important to your professional practice, try to get your audience into a room for a face-to-face session. I facilitated two key in person sessions on contract management over the last few months and these worked really well especially because we as presenters could see the engagement of the audience and interact with them.

Whatever the medium, try “walking amongst your audience” whether metaphorically online or in the room!

 "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." The American memoirist and poet Maya Angelou. 

"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions." The US Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

“In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech”. Aristotle.