If you are searching for how to make a presentation interactive, here is one really awesome strategy that uses only a highlighter and that you can do very quickly. It also works as a test of whether people are going to sleep through your presentation or be really actively engaged, and maybe even invite you back a second time.
Give Your Audience a Task While You Present
I’m assuming you’re here because perhaps you’re bought into the idea that one-way presentations are actually kind of boring. If all you do is talk at an audience, you should just record that, send it to them in a video, and say you can watch it on two times speed and get everything I was going to say, right?
You’re either watching a YouTube video or reading a blog right now, which is literally a one-way presentation. So how do I turn this into an interaction? One really easy way is to give a group a task while you’re presenting content.
For (a cheeky) example, I’m going to share at least three really golden nuggets of how to make a presentation interactive. If at any point you hear one that makes you think, “Wow, that one idea made this entire video worth it,” I want you to invite you to subscribe to my mailing list. It’s a cheeky example, but now you have a job while you’re listening: hunting for a golden nugget that’s going to transform every presentation you give from here on out.
By doing that, because you know yourself, your context, and the presentations you have to give much better than I do, I’ve personalized every single presentation. At a very slow starting level, this is now an interaction. This is a conversation between you and me, not me presenting to a thousand people.
The Highlighter Test: How to Stop Presenting and Start Inviting People In
The world and the internet are filled with experts who will make you a better presenter. I am not going to make you a better presenter here. In fact, we’re going to completely sidestep that massive, effortful thing that puts all the weight on you. I’m going to invite you to shift your brain: stop presenting and start inviting people in.
Take any agenda, any gathering that you’ve got. If you have a bunch of slides or a presentation or some flow, I want you to take a highlighter. I call this the Highlighter Test. Go through and highlight all the places where you’re going to invite people to actually participate, engage, or contribute in what you’re presenting to them.
Typically, in most presentations, there’s not very much highlighter. A lot of meetings and gatherings save it all for the very end: “Any questions?” or “Who would like to share?” or “Does anybody have any ideas related to this?” All of those, while they invite interaction, are a death sentence to the vibe and participation of your meeting because you haven’t actually set people up.
Ideally, a healthy agenda invites people to participate and engage in some way in the beginning. Then you bring everybody together with the purpose. Before you get into any deep technical content, you get people relating to each other. In the middle of your content, instead of just slamming them with slides, you’re inviting them to participate in some way. And in the closing, I always want to end with their words, not mine.
A healthy agenda has highlights scattered all throughout. Those highlights are just locations for contribution. If you want to make your presentation more interactive, don’t focus on any one particular element. You have to actually walk a group into it. I’m not going to come in cold and say, “Hi everybody, what is one thing life is teaching you right now?” That is not a good way to promote interaction. It’s too much. Somebody defined trauma for me once as too much, too fast, too soon.
A Failure Story: When Interaction Goes Wrong
Early in my professional speaking career, I brought a sign on stage and we were going to do a big question swap with the We! Connect Cards which is one of the best icebreakers for adults. I was reminding people that when you invite interaction, it’s really important to remind them that they have autonomy and choice in how they answer any question.
I was demonstrating how you could ask, “What is one thing life is teaching you right now?” I could answer with, “This room’s kind of cold, I should have tossed on a long sleeve,” and that would be true. Or I could share something really deep and vulnerable.
Then I turned to the audience and said, “Can we just play with this a little bit? What is one thing life is teaching you?” The CEO of this Fortune 500 company raises his hand and goes, “Not to hire interactive speakers.”
Now, he was completely joking and being sarcastic. And yet the trap you can fall into when you promote interaction is this: not all invitations to engage are equal. Some are terrible, and they create resentment and make people have a very horrible experience. The art is starting with one small step and building interaction.
The Unofficial Start: Interaction Begins Before You Speak
For any of you who have already hit subscribe to the channel, you know I might call this The Contribution Method. Five locations and ingredients where people participate, starting with what my dear friend Mark Collard would call the unofficial start.
The unofficial start is the idea that your presentation actually begins the moment people walk in. People decide whether they’re going to participate or not in the first couple of minutes. If people walk in and you have a PowerPoint slide up for people to consume, what you’re telling them implicitly is, “Sit back, get comfy, relax. You’re not going to be doing much here today. I’ll do all the heavy lifting.”
The Contribution Method flips that completely and says: the moment you walk into the room, I want to set the tone and expectation that your expertise and experience is required here, and it’s expected that you’re going to show up and turn up.
If you’re a financial adviser giving a presentation on finance-related matters, I might have everybody walk into the room and choose a quote that feels like a really healthy philosophy around money. It relates totally to the topic of your presentation. It’s relatively low risk because I haven’t asked people to share in a large group. There’s no public speaking involved. It’s just a quiet, anonymous solo choice, but they are engaged. They’re thinking about it.
That early and often interaction is really important to get to a place where you reach your closing and somebody says, “This was the best presentation I’ve ever been to. I’ve never seen anybody present like you. Are you available in September to come back and work with my group?” That’s how you actually build to that.
Want to try this with your own group? Download a free field guide to The Contribution Method right here.
Go Deeper With the Contribution Method
If you want a mountain of practical examples that you can read, digest, and apply to your own content, there are two ways to get them.
First, I put together an epic free digital field guide loaded with examples and ways to put this method into practice. This should not be free. There’s so much value packed into it. And it is free because I am on a mission to take every presentation, destroy it, and turn it into an interaction. Register your interest for The Contribution Method and the guide will show up for free.
Second, experience is by far the best teacher. Twice a year I open the doors to live experiences where I teach this method: register your interest for the Connectors Summit this December, or The Contribution Method masterclass this spring, where you’ll learn to design sessions people actually want to be in.
Cheers to killing one presentation at a time. Have an awesome day.
