Happily, it all turned out great. Everyone seemed to have a good time and the client was thrilled with the result. But it wouldn’t have turned out that way without a lot of planning and work.

As a general guideline, I’d normally suggest that 20 or 25 is the maximum number of people you should attempt to train interactively at once. Sessions with more people than that tend to turn into lectures. Bigger audiences make it hard to connect with people, ensure that they’re following along, or keep them from falling asleep. And the longer you ask them to sit there the harder it is to keep their attention

So we knew training a group of 80 was going to take some effort, especially when we learned that we had the final time slot in their three day retreat. People had come in from all over the world and would be looking forward to heading home after sitting in a ballroom forever. What we couldn’t know until right before we started first thing that morning was that everyone had been out drinking until 2:00 the night before.

Whatever your training or presentation topic, having the right material is critical. But so is keeping up the energy level in the room and making sure that the audience is actually paying attention. If they’re not, you might as well just be talking to yourself.

Here are some of the things we did to make it work and that you can use in your own training and presentations:

Having more than one speaker is a huge help when you have a big audience or a long session. It’s easy for a single speaker to lose their energy or enthusiasm and start to drone if they have to deliver a long monologue. Having more than one speaker allows you to present in a conversational way that is much more engaging. It also allows one person to speak while the other hangs back to take a little break, hands out materials, or records ideas from the audience. During exercises having two facilitators lets you cover more of the room to check in with people and make sure that everyone is on track. Don’t just team up with anyone, though. Make sure that you work well together before making any commitments.

Keeping it entertaining allows the audience to forget that they’re being trained. We try to make all of our training fun for the audience, but it’s even more important when you have an audience that’s in danger of getting bored because they’ve been there for a long time. Especially when they were out late the night before. If you can manage to be entertaining while you’re teaching them you can be confident that they’re listening to the material you want them to learn. Be aware of what’s appropriate for each specific audience, though. What’s fun for one group may seem frivolous or even offensive to another.

Covering lots of material keeps training fast-paced and doesn’t allow an audience’s attention to drift. There’s nothing worse than a training session that’s been stretched to fill time because the presenter doesn’t have enough useful material. Schedule your presentations and training programs so you have just enough time to cover your topic and you’re not wasting anyone’s time. You don’t want to completely overwhelm people by throwing too much at them, but giving an audience a lot to think about keeps it interesting. Just make sure that you actually have enough time to cover what’s essential. No matter what, don’t get to the end of your session and find yourself saying “sorry, I don’t have time to go through the last 20 slides I prepared.” They’ll assume that your best material was in there and feel cheated.

Shifting gears often keeps blood flowing to the brain. Never leave your audience just sitting there and listening for an extended period of time and allow them to tune out. For this full day session we did something different every hour, with lots of little interactive pieces, questions and exercises to keep everyone engaged throughout. The first hour was full of exercises to get them involved and get their brains working that morning. The second hour had us looking at video examples and critiquing them. The third was mostly discussion. After lunch we did an extended exercise where everyone had to play an active role, and we used the final hour to wrap everything up with 150 rapid-fire tips for improving presentations.

Giving an audience something to do can be a great way to mix things up. Getting them involved makes them feel like they have a stake in what you’re telling them and makes them much more likely to be persuaded by what you have to say. Whatever you do, don’t just let them sit there and listen. In that situation chances are that they aren’t listening at all.

Just to be fair, here’s what I look like in my underwear.

New Yorker Caption Contest Page

Whatever kind of presentation you find yourself doing, it’s critical that you engage your audience and find a way to relate to them. But that doesn’t mean that you should pander or pretend to be something you’re not. Audiences are very good at detecting insincerity and are as unlikely to be swayed by an inauthentic performance as they are by Jason Sudeikis as Mitt Romney in this Saturday Night Live skit. They may not shout “we don’t believe you,” but they’ll probably be thinking it.

Remember to be yourself, but the best version of yourself possible.

It’s often tempting to blame the audience when they don’t “get it.” Anyone who has ever tried to train the same people over and over again on the same topic will understand the feeling. But, despite Dilbert’s opinion, it’s always your job as the presenter to make sure that your material is appropriately targeted at your audience and that they are able to follow along with you. If they can’t, you’re not working hard enough to communicate clearly. Of course there’s no guarantee that they’ll agree with you, but you need to make sure that they at least understand you.

http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2012/05/13/how-to-give-a-great-keynote/

I’ve mentioned before that storytelling may be the closest thing to a secret weapon when it come to creating a great presentation. Telling your presentation in narrative form gives it a natural structure, makes it more memorable for your audience, and helps you overcome any fear that you might have about not being able to remember your talk.

One example I’ve used is the storytelling techniques that competitors in memory contests employ in order to recall seemingly impossible quantities of information and Joshua Foer’s account in Moonwalking with Einstein of how he used these methods to become a memory champion. Now everything seems to have come full-circle and Foer has a TED talk describing the experience. You should still buy his book, but this is a great introduction.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/en//id/1443

Make sure that you’re keeping an eye on your audience throughout your presentation (and not just pretending to make eye contact) so you can see if they look like they’re following along, if they seem to be in agreement with you, or are turning actively hostile.

Sticking to a script isn’t what’s important–it’s doing what you need to do to succeed. Sometimes you even need to just throw out your plans and do something else. We’ve given plenty of presentations where we abandoned our plans (and our slides) when they didn’t seem to be working or when a discussion took an unexpected turn in a productive direction.

Monitor your audience so you can gauge their reactions and don’t be afraid to improvise if you sense an opportunity.

For centuries, human beings have turned to literature for lessons about life. Homer (of both The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Simpsons). The Bible. Shakespeare’s plays. The Art of War. More than anything else, it may be our literature that makes us human.

At least that’s my excuse for using The Hunger Games to teach public speaking.

There are public speaking events scattered throughout all three Hunger Games novels. We see many rallies, speeches and interviews, and we’re told that Peeta’s real talent isn’t for fighting, but persuading an audience and winning allies. Unfortunately, it’s Katniss who finds herself being turned into a spokesperson for the rebels in Mockingjay, while Peeta is held as a prisoner of the Capital.

Readers of the previous books already know that public speaking has never been Katniss’s strength. She requires a lot of coaching. So the first step in preparing her to film rebel infomercials is, of course, to give her an elaborate makeover. After all, these are novels where Katniss’s outfits are often more detailed than the characters.

But her new look and the slogan written for her to shout fall flat on camera. No one finds Katniss convincing, so her former mentor convenes a meeting to talk about why:

“All right,” Haymitch says…. “Would anyone argue that this is of use to us in winning the war?” No one does. “That saves us time. So, let’s all be quiet for a minute. I want everyone to think of one incident where Katniss Everdeen genuinely moved you. Not where you were jealous of her hairstyle, or her dress went up in flames or she made a halfway decent shot with an arrow. Not where Peeta was making you like her. I want to hear one moment where she made you feel something real.”

When they do come up with examples of times when Katniss has done something touching, brave or kind, Haymitch asks what they all have in common.

“They were all Katniss’s,” says Gale quietly. “No one told her what to do or say.”

The lesson for public speaking is a good one, both in the universe of The Hunger Games and in real life. It certainly works for Katniss. Afterward she goes off to visit a rebel hospital (the occupants of which are almost immediately incinerated in a bombing raid), shoots down some hovercraft with her bow, and wins a huge PR victory.

You may never excel at archery, but remembering to be yourself can be a powerful weapon when you want to speak persuasively. Unless you’re a seasoned performer, playing a role when you speak to an audience is almost always too difficult to do convincingly and can actually turn an audience against you. Much better to let them see the real you.

As a bonus, being yourself should also render makeovers, stylists, flaming dresses and jumpsuits with wings unnecessary. Just pick something nice from your closet.

We are the mediocre presidents.
You won’t find our faces on dollars or on cents!
There’s Taylor, there’s Tyler,
There’s Fillmore and there’s Hayes.
There’s William Henry Harrison,
(Harrison): I died in thirty days!

The Simpsons‘ “Mediocre Presidents” Song

Despite all the complaints about “death by PowerPoint,” I’ve never heard of a murder  definitively pinned on a boring presentation, though I’d probably love that as a Law and Order plot. There is pretty good evidence of a bad presentation killing its presenter, though. A president, even. And he didn’t need slides or any other technology to do himself in.

William Henry Harrison, aka "Old Tippecanoe"

March 4th marks the anniversary of William Henry Harrison’s fatal inaugural address in 1831. Widely regarded as the worst inaugural speech in history, it was also the longest. He spoke outdoors for more than two hours despite the fact that, at 68, he was the oldest president to date (another record he held until Ronald Reagan came along). It was snowing during the ceremony and Harrison wasn’t wearing a hat or coat. Eventually he caught a cold, then pneumonia and died 32 days later (not 30, as The Simpsons tells us), giving him yet another record–shortest time in office of any president.

You have to wonder if there was still an audience when he finished. Let’s hope they at least had the sense to wear coats, or there may have been other casualties. The speech really is boring. You can find it here, but I wouldn’t  recommend it. The first sentence alone is 99 words long and is probably enough for anyone who isn’t looking to harm themselves:

Called from a retirement which I had supposed was to continue for the residue of my life to fill the chief executive office of this great and free nation, I appear before you, fellow-citizens, to take the oaths which the Constitution prescribes as a necessary qualification for the performance of its duties; and in obedience to a custom coeval with our Government and what I believe to be your expectations I proceed to present to you a summary of the principles which will govern me in the discharge of the duties which I shall be called upon to perform.

From there he goes on to talk at length about the Romans.

Don’t make the same mistake as Harrison. Just because people are there to hear you doesn’t mean they want to hear you talk for hours. Remember that everyone’s time is valuable (at least to them) and that they may not be as interested in your topic (Romans, for example) as you are. Be brief, say what you need to, and wrap it up. Your audience will appreciate the discipline.

Now He Speaks for IHOP

Whatever idea you are representing as a public speaker, it’s critical that you behave in a manner consistent with your message. If you’re preaching family values it’s a bad idea to have a second family stashed away somewhere. And if you’re telling your employees you’re imposing an austerity program and you’ll have to cut back on their benefits, it’s a bad idea to arrive at the office in a limo every morning. Saying one thing and doing another can destroy your credibility and make it impossible for you to be an effective advocate.

Which is why it’s so disturbing to see Dr. Seuss’s Lorax, that icon of 70′s environmentalism, being used to sell kids’ meals at IHOP. After all, the Lorax and his fight to save the Truffula trees is often the first conservation message children hear. Now, as part of a tie-in with a Lorax movie, IHOP is offering Green Eggs, Ham (possibly from one of those exploding factory pig farms), and Truffula Chip Pancakes. Having never encountered a Truffula chip before, I have to assume that it’s a byproduct of logging and milling all of those Truffula trees, kind of like the redwood mulch that I use in my garden.

I know that these big movies depend on licensing deals in order to be profitable, but it’s hard to understand how this one came to pass, though I suppose there is only so much money to be made in children’s bedsheets and promoting “energy-efficient” cars. But this seems especially strange since the estate of Dr. Seuss used to be known for being so protective of his legacy. It’s a bit like Al Gore opening a Hummer dealership.

Remember that any time you’re speaking to a group it’s your job to persuade them. As the face or voice of your message, it’s crucial that your actions match your words. If you’re going to speak for the trees, you probably shouldn’t appear to be selling them out. Even if, as my five year-old nephew Felix suspects, Truffula chips are really just donut sprinkles.

Once you’ve lost your credibility, it’s really hard to earn it back.