The One Simple Thing More Speakers Should Be Doing

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A lot has changed about public speaking in the past 10 years. Speakers have gotten more personal, more authentic, more tech-savvy. But there is one piece of public speaking that has, if anything, gone backwards. And that is audience interaction.

You might think that the need for authenticity and transparency, not to mention honesty and personally revealing material, would push speakers toward audience interaction, but those things haven’t moved that proverbial needle in any way. Instead, as the stakes have gotten higher, speakers have reacted by attempting to exert even more control over the speaking hour — and not indulging in audience interaction apparently falls into that category of control.

It’s a huge missed opportunity.

Bringing in skillful audience interaction always increases audience involvement, and almost always increases ratings on things like retaining what an audience has heard, remembering what a speaker has said, and the likelihood that one of the ideas mentioned in the talk will show up at the water cooler on Monday.

So why do so few speakers create audience interaction moments? I’m not talking about raises of the hand and shout-outs for Wisconsin. What I am talking about is a real, authentic digging into a problem with an engaged and…