Manage-wise

Connecting with people beyond words

How do you engage an audience? By appealing to its intelligence. All of us have more than one type of intelligence. According to psychologist Howard Gardner, we have at least seven—covering the mind, body and spirit. All too often presentations appeal only to the intellect, ignoring our physical, emotional and spiritual sides.

Good leadership communicators strive to reach both the head and the heart. They want to pitch ideas to the mind, where we figure things out with logic and reason. But they also work to reach the heart, our emotional side where decisions are made. Leaders need to make strong emotional cases—a vision statement; they need their followers to see, touch and feel what the future will be like, once the vision becomes reality.

Leaders can borrow lessons from salespeople. Salespeople are masters at knowing how to close when the customer is excited and emotionally involved. Leaders can capture the same kind of engagement as they seek to sell their message. Effective presenters must connect with audience in at least one and often more of the following ways.

Stimulating the intellect

Cogito, ergo sum wrote Descartes four centuries ago. As a presenter, you want to engage the audience’s attention through the reasoning of your presentation. This is why you want to give your presentation a strong structure, augmented with compelling facts. General George Marshall was not a scintillating orator, but when he briefed Congress on war issues, everyone listened because he knew his stuff.

Appealing to emotions

Touch emotions. Make people feel the power of your presentation by awakening their emotions. You can do this with stories. You can do it with pictures. You can do it with games. CEO Steve Jobs captures attention with his body language and his skillful product demos for Apple Computers.

Facilitate responses

Audiences are accustomed to sitting and listening. If you can reach out and encourage them to speak up, you have broken the invisible barrier separating the presenter from the audience. Here are some simple things you may wish to try:

Invite the audience to stand and stretch. If the audience has been sitting for a while, invite people to stand and stretch. They will appreciate your gesture.

Pose questions to the audience. Possible questions include the following:

How is everyone today? If the response is tepid, pose the question again. You can go back and forth until you hit the right level of enthusiasm.

Why are we here today? This is good one for getting people to speak up. You can have some fun with the audience.

Where are you from? Invite people to stand when you call the name of their city or state. (Note: Find in advance where the majority of the people live so that you can mention those areas first.)

Create and ongoing dialogue with the audience. Find points in your speech where you can ask rhetorical questions. You can even pause for a group response.

Engaging the audience is a presenter’s chief responsibility. As we have shown, there are many ways to stimulate the response of an audience. The challenge for the presenter is finding the right balance between the message and the presentation. Sometimes words alone are not enough. On other occasions, you may need both visuals and interactive games. Whatever the method, the outcome must be the same—engaging the audience’s attention.

Alternative presentation formats

Leaders continually need to ask themselves why they are communicating. On one level, it is to impart the leadership message as it relates to vision, mission, and values. On a deeper level, it is to strengthen the bonds of trust between a leader and his followers. Therefore, the manner in which a leader communicates is less important than the content of the message and its impact.

Facilitated dialogue

One method that is fast gaining in popularity is the facilitated dialogue—inviting a skilled facilitator to conduct a dialogue between the leader and the audience. Turning things over to a facilitator leaves the leader free to concentrate on the message—what does she or he want to say, and why? The facilitator will be briefed in advance and told what points need to be made; it will be up to him or her to bring out these points from the leader and from members of the audience. A facilitated dialogue will still require much preparation—drafting the messages, shaping the presentation ideas, even providing visual support, if desired.

One thing to remember: The leader should have the last word in a facilitated dialogue. This enables the leader to sum up the meeting and tale ownership of the process. The leader may invite others to offer final words, but he or she should be the one to close. This act affirms her or his leadership and responsibility for leading the group.

Excerpt from ‘Great Communication Secrets of Great Leaders’ by John Baldoni. Reproduced with permission © 2003, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited