Give ‘Em a Break to Keep ‘Em Awake

Tips for keeping your audience engaged during a long presentation or training session.

Think of each presentation you deliver as a commitment to your audience. You have certain content they want to know, or need to hear, or at the very least, are required to listen to. Your obligation is to make sure they can digest the information as effortlessly as possible. Your presentation is likely not the most important meeting of their day. Make it easy for them to grasp your ideas or suggestions.

Everyone has a limited attention span. People can take in only so much information before they need a break either from the sound of your voice, the influx of new ideas, or the uncomfortable chair they’re sitting in. Here are some suggestions for how to incorporate those breaks, starting with the simplest and briefest, to the more complex and significant.

1. Pause more between sentences.

Pauses are essential, not only so you can breathe, but so that the audience can process your idea. Some people think they should plow through their content as quickly as possible as a courtesy to their listeners. In fact, talking too quickly and not pausing undermines your effectiveness. Imagine that your brain has a small “waiting room” at its entrance. When you hear an idea, it sits in that waiting room waiting for a moment of silence so the inner door in that room can open and sort the information into the right room in your brain. If that moment of silence never comes, the waiting room gets packed with more and more information to the point where it’s full and can’t take in any more. Then, your brain shuts down and you stop listening. You need the moment of silence so you can truly grasp the idea. Therefore, the pauses aren’t just a kindness to the audience; they’re an essential part of effective communication.

2. Use rhetorical questions.

If you’re running a meeting, you have the luxury of stopping after sharing a key point and asking the group for their reaction to your ideas. You can’t do that in a large presentation setting; it’s just not practical. You can, however, create the impression that the presentation is more akin to a conversation, and, again, slow the delivery of information and give the audience a break from hearing your innovative ideas. Using rhetorical questions wakes up the audience because it creates the illusion that you are looking for a response and that their participation is needed. Here are some examples:

a. When you have finished sharing the substance of your idea and are about to discuss the benefits of your recommendation, start by asking:

So, why should you care?

What’s in it for you?

How will this help you do your job better?

b. If you want to head off skepticism, start your assessment of challenges to your idea with:

What are some likely pain points with this new process?

Why is this method better?

And if you have a sense of humor, try:

“What could possibly go wrong,” you might ask?

c. If you’re at the point where you are wrapping up and moving on to next steps, ask:

Where do we go from here?

How do we execute on this idea?

When you ask a rhetorical question, you break the flow of the conversation because the quality of your voice changes, the pacing changes, and the mood in the room changes because you’re moving from monologue to dialogue, even though you are then going to answer the question yourself.

3. Ask questions that actually require the audience to respond.

As I lawyer, I know the old adage of never asking a question you don’t know the answer to. However, when you are giving a presentation, asking questions of the audience breaks up the flow and wakes up the room, but you must do it strategically. Ask closed-ended questions that require a “yes” or “no” response and are narrow enough that you know you’ll get the response you need. Raise your own hand as you ask the question, so it’s clear how you expect the audience to respond. Make sure the questions are clear enough that audience members understand implicitly what you are looking for. For instance, if you’re presenting information about a new technology platform your company is introducing, asking, “How many of you have ever been frustrated when the <name of current platform> crashed?”

Don’t ask questions that seem leading or manipulative. “Isn’t <name of current platform> hard to use?” sounds like a set up.

Getting audience members to simply raise their hands in response to a question may seem like a minimal engagement, but in fact it’s a significant disruption for each audience member individually. For that moment, they weren’t able to sit back and take in info or scroll through their emails on their phone. They had to first decide if they were going to raise their hand or not, and then, for some, they had to engage. It gave them a break from the roll they had been playing a moment earlier.

4. If you’re running a more extended training session, break up the content with an opportunity for the audience members to talk to each other in small groups. These breakout sessions come in three forms, each of which is applicable to a different setting.

1. Reflection – If you’re discussing a concept and want people to take a moment and reflect on how that concept has played out in their lives, give them a moment to reflect on a personal experience. Create a safe space for everyone by telling the group they won’t be required to share that experience publicly. After you give them 30 seconds to reflect, ask if anyone is willing to share their story. When you call on someone who has raised their hand, don’t just ask for their story. Start by saying, “What was the setting?” It’s a non-threatening question that allows them to start talking in front of the group by just sharing factual information. Then advance by saying, “What happened?” or whatever next question would be appropriate based on the topic. Finally, now that you are in a dialogue with the person, you can deepen the questioning with, “And how did that make you feel?” or, “And how did you solve that problem?” or, again, whatever question would be appropriate based on the topic. Thank the person who has volunteered and draw a conclusion based on their story and how it ties back to your main point.
2. Sharing – If you have more time, instead of calling on an individual to share their experience in front of the entire room, tell the audience to form groups of three people. Have one person share their story with the other two. (For the sake of efficiency and to avoid having each group waste time discussing who should go first, tell them to go in alphabetical order based on their hometown. It creates a nice opportunity for building connections.) Give clear directions regarding how you want the listeners to respond. In some cases, you may want the listeners to just listen. In other cases, you’ll give them examples of questions they should ask in response to the speaker’s story. Track the time carefully and let the group know when to move on to the second person’s story.
3. Skill-building exercise – If you’re teaching a skill, such as how to deliver feedback to a junior person, introduce the process for the exercise, divide the audience into groups of three, and have each person actually practice the skill or technique you just taught them. Make sure the listeners in each group have very clear elements of feedback to share with the person who practiced the skill. Again, track the time carefully to keep the entire event moving along.

For both in-person and virtual presentations and programs, many people use polls. There is lots of great polling software available. Polls are helpful on occasion, but the person using the poll is interacting with technology. It might be better for them to interact with each other or you. Regardless, if your goal is to break up the talk and wake up the audience, polls work well.

In all of these cases, your goal is to interrupt the flow of the delivery so that you keep the audience’s attention. Alternating between talking at people and engaging with people is the key to an effective and more enjoyable experience for all of you.

Originally published on Forbes.com.