Kiss With Confidence - How to Engage Your Audience in the Hybrid World
Hands up who remembers the 1983 pop song ‘Kissing with Confidence’ and the classic line “Do you have spinach on your teeth?”
Actually, scrap that – many of you probably weren’t even born in 1983!
I was reminded of that song when I returned from a networking event last week, only to discover that I did in fact have a morsel of spinach on my tooth. It had clearly been there through most of the event, during conversations with numerous people. So why had nobody mentioned it? Why did they find this piece of communication so difficult?
At the same event, I was part of an interesting discussion about effective communication within a marriage or relationship, and the frustration some people feel when their partner “doesn’t listen”. The same complaint is often heard in a corporate context, about an ‘unresponsive’ audience.
This raises a fundamental question – who is responsible for the safe receipt of a message: the speaker or the audience? I believe it’s the speaker. And I believe this has become significantly harder in the hybrid working world where our audiences are often being distracted by multiple communication channels while we’re trying to hold their attention.
The fabulous Steve Peters thinks so too. In his excellent book The Chimp Paradox, he suggests that the key to success is what he calls the ‘square of communication’. Put simply, this means that in order to effectively get your message across you need to ensure that you deliver it: at the right time, in the right place, with the right agenda and in the right way.
So, if you raise important issues with your partner while they’re bathing the baby or watching the football, you might not get the desired result. If you address a lay audience about an exciting scientific advance but use too much technical language, show dense slides and speak for too long in a stream of consciousness, they might switch off.
I believe there are four key tools which can help us effectively get our messages across:
- Variety – of pace, pause, tone, intonation, volume. If we consider that speaking out loud is like a piece of music, which will keep our audience listening — Beethoven’s 5th or lift muzak?
- Structure – managing people’s expectations, clearly setting out the journey we’re taking them on, reminding them of what’s coming, indicating when we’re moving from one topic to another. Essentially, doing out loud what I’m attempting to do in this written piece – using visual structure and punctuation to keep you reading.
- Involvement – make the audience feel invested in the material. Even when you’re ‘presenting’, try to create a conversational style. Talk to them rather than at them. Refer to them, solicit feedback and input – a show of hands, rhetorical questions.
- Make it all about them, not you – tailor the content; give them a reason to listen. Only offer material which is of genuine value or interest to them.
And, please, always, tell someone that they’ve got spinach in their teeth.
By Jayne Constantinis
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