A valued client recently asked: “We often talk about engaging our learners and audiences in general. But exactly why is engagement so important?” This wasn’t necessarily an easy question to answer, so I reached out to my network to ask them to put the reasons into words. Here is some of what they said about engagement.
When presenting:
An engaged audience is more likely to remember you.
Engagement increases the impact that you desire to have on your audience.
When people are engaged through activity, they feel "part of it", rather than being talked to.
An engaged audience can add even more impact by how they respond, you just have to inspire them.
When you engage people they absorb information more easily because they are responding with their emotions, and sometimes bodies, as well as their brains.
Engagement is important for you as a presenter because when participants are engaged, you will feel more confident, and that will show in your delivery.
Engagement makes listening to a presentation more fun!
When training or facilitating:
The higher the engagement, the more likely learners will really hear and learn the content and walk away with commitment and action.
Engagement significantly increases the probability that people will use what they learned and change their behavior.
Well-crafted activities help people take the information being presented, think about how it applies to them and plan to put it into action.
Engagement shows us that people are hearing us, is connecting with the message, and are learning something new.
Different engagement strategies appeal to different learning styles, and sometimes multiple learning styles at once.
Another look at why engagement is so vital:
John Hall, Senior Contributor Forbes Magazine says don’t be afraid to interact. He says sessions that feature plenty of participation and interaction are rarely dull. When you give your audience the chance to interact with you (and encourage them to do so), you end up talking with them, not at them. Whether it’s through a show of hands, clapping in response to questions, or more hands-on techniques, interaction makes the audience part of the experience.
In an upcoming blog post we will share some possible pitfalls of engagement, and how often to engage your audiences.
Engagement skills are an important component of what we practice and refine in workshops and individual coaching. Please let us know if you would like to learn more.