192. Five saviours when you 'lose' your audience
What do you do when you sense your audience is totally bored and disengaged?
This is NOT a sign to rush and get out of there, here are FIVE strategies you can use to bring attention back and keep rapport.
1. TAKE A BREAK
2. MOVEMENT
3. THROW TO A NEW VOICE
4. ASK A QUESTION
5. SURPRISE & DELIGHT
Welcome to episode 192 of That Voice Podcast.
And this one was requested by a client, Yes I do take requests like a late night radio show.
By the way do you remember before the days of streaming. If you didn’t have a song on cassette tape or CD, the only way to hear it was by ringing up and requesting on the radio. And then sometimes I would have my blank tap in the machine ready to hit record for when the song came on.
If you are NOT an eighties baby or older you’re probably wondering what the hell I’m talking about. Your face might be blank, like the faces in the audience of my client – who does a lot of very successful speaking and unfortunately on this occasion, it didn’t go as well as she would’ve liked – She said she opened it with humour and got nothing, everyone looked bored in the audience, I lost my way, and people were disengaged.
And this happens.
We’ve all been there.
I’ve had some doozies in my time.
I once gave a 9am Monday morning university lecture to two people who sat up the back. I was giving it my ALL and finally towards the end, I get a question – yes.. “When’s this going to be over?”
And look before I share the five SAVIOURS when you lose your audience, let’s look at what losing your audience actually means.
So if you’re in person it’s easier, you can read the body language, the phone-checking, the eye contact. In my case it was a clear verbal cue that they did not want to be there. Online is trickier especially if cameras are off… and it’s important to recognise that how you perceive the audience the be isn’t always on the money. Remember you set the energy, and the story you tell yourself is critical. SO if you’re telling yourself they’re bored, they hate it, that will be the feeling you have. Think the BEST of your audience. Write that down. Think the BEST of your audience. Someone’ son the phone – they might be looking you up on Instagram, they leave the room – there might have been a family emergency, no one’s in the chat – they’re probably so stunned by your brilliance they cannot type. Reframing how you see the audience will affect how the audience sees you.
It’s hard to lose the audience if you don’t lose yourself.
So do the Magnetic Voice Formula if you haven’t already. Because this mini-course gives you the foundations for how you generate this energy in yourself and your voice before speaking.
Now today I want to share five quick easy strategies you can use if you sense – beyond your inner voice – that the audience isn’t with you. That you’ve lost rapport.
Number One – Take a pause. Stop talking. Silence is fantastic for gaining back attention because if people are distracted they’ll look back to see what’s going on. So in that pause – take a breath, take a drink. So I’m not talking a short pause, take a nice long pause.
Number Two – Movement. If it’s a longer session you could take a quick break. If it’s short then everyone standing up and stretching works wonders. I’ll often do a simple rag doll, hanging down then rebuilding the spine. I always take a little speaker to my workshops and presentations so you can have a dance break.
Number Three – Throw to a new voice. Now that could be in the form of a video or audio or it could be your co-presenter. A new voice can snap people back into the room. In my slide deck I always have a Wil Anderson comedy skit about the rising inflection, and it doesn’t have a place in the presentation, I go to it when I feel it’s needed.
Number Four – Audience question. And if this is done well all along you’ll keep rapport. These can be along the lines of who here has experienced that and you raise your hand to encourage others to mirror. So they don’t even need to speak. Getting a whole room of people to raise a hand is better than one person verbally answering lots of questions but the rest looking bored.
And finally number five – surprise and delight. Do something unexpected. I ran a session for a big manufacturing company for a team off the back of night shift. It began at 6am.. and was supposed to run until 10am. I could see they weren’t impressed to be there. And so I shortened it to 9am.
I also always have props and chocolates and I try to wear something interesting to look at – like my sparkly shoes.
Now to be really good at temperature checking an audience you need to have experience, so speaking a lot and also mastery in the skill set. I have so much to learn, but I’ve been doing it and teaching it long enough that I can vary my voice, I can swing into story, I can lean into topics I can throw to activities – I never have a detailed run sheet for my workshops because the magic lies in being able to get rapport with the group and adapting to what’s needed.
And if this is where you want to be then join Soul Speakers or Soul Speakers Advanced (which includes one-on-one’s) because this is where you’ll learn the mastery.
Today I’ve shared five quick strategies – saviours for when you lose your audience –
- Take a pause – get moving – throw to a new voice – ask a question and five – surprise and delight do something unexpected.
Unless you feel confident in your voice and skilled up in the craft of speaking.. these strategies may feel forced or even impossible to remember in the moment. Presenters who back themselves and have the right mentors see losing an audience as a golden opportunity to get them back… and my beautiful Client who had the negative experience was able to message me right away and we could work through it, and having that support after a presentation didn’t go well is more valuable than having a coach when presentations only go well, because it was a real learning opportunity.
Ok, links to The Magnetic Voice Formula and Soul Speakers are in the show notes, or jump into my DM’s @thatvoicepodcast or @sallyprosservoice. Talk soon.