Lesson Three from David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker: 9 Ways to Engage the Audience

A good employee engagement speaker engages

I have been to a lot of conferences and witnessed many presentations on employee engagement. I have spoken on employee engagement on at least 200 occasions. The best presentations engage the attendees with each other and with the topic even in a one hour keynote. We don’t need 100 PowerPoint slides and the speaker rattling off statistics about engagement like an auctioneer voicing bids at an auction. We need to ensure that employee engagement sessions transform the noun of engagement into the verb of engage.

Here are 9 things I do to make sure they speech is engaging.

1. I use just one slide or no slides. This also help me to ensure that I don’t try to cover too much. Many times I tell audience when I show my first slide that this is my first slide and only slide. I have had audiences applaud then they hear it is just one slide. I find that audiences often prefer one slide to no slides because it gives them something to look at. This slide I use most is the Pyramid of Employee Engagement. See this slide at the end of these 9 points.
2. Within every 15 to 20 minute period I encourage the audience to engage in an exercise to bring the concepts or practices to life.
3. I never make my audience engage in an exercise or meet with a partner. I invite them to do this and respect their choice not to engage. Real engagement starts with authentic and compelling invitations.
4. I offer online resources people can use to get more information after the speech/facilitation so that they don’t feel compelled to write everything down.
5. I rely more on stories than statistics and each statistic should have a story behind it.
6. I voice tentative statements so that audiences can determine for themselves if the ideas or practices are viable or valuable. We learn in a richer more expansive way when we are given good tentative information.
7. I honor the experience that many people will learn more by what they say than by what they hear.
8. My VIA signature strength is humor and playfulness so I ensure my speeches have both humor and playfulness built in to the design and delivery of the session.
9. By the end of the speech I know I have been successful if I have a hard time getting the audiences’ attention back from an invited exercise because they are so engaged with what they are doing.

David

David Zinger is an expert  global employee engagement speaker and consultant who brings the engagement  down to earth while striving to enliven the pyramid of employee engagement to help leaders, managers, and organizations increase engagement and results while also building relationships. David has worked on employee engagement from Winnipeg to Warsaw, Saskatoon to South Africa, and Boston to Barcelona. In 2013, David has spoken in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Berlin, New York, Chicago, and Toronto.