Does Entertainment Belong in Business Presentations?
Twenty years ago, that would have seemed like a silly question. For hundreds of years, maybe more, presentations and speeches were all about the presenter.
Think Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King: great orators of their day who were considered great speakers. But, they worked from a scripted text and never took questions from an audience. You went to listen to a speaker in much the same way you went to watch a Broadway play. You were an observer, not a participant.
In business presentations, slides emerged on the scene in the 1960s. This really aided presenters who weren’t quite as good with voice modulation and projection and allowed them to use pictures to interest audiences in their message and overall presentation. PowerPoint quickly followed as a way to bring slides onto a computer image, rather than a carousel. But, not much changed in the way of design and use.
As we’ve shifted from a single media world to a multi-media world, the audience is no longer willing to just observe. For years, we’ve talked about audience involvement and engagement. We’ve coached executives and managers on how to engage a group of people and work for non-verbal responses from audiences. My mantra has always been “the listeners come to participate”.
When we work on content development, we tell presenters to start with how they want an audience to feel, rather than what they want an audience to know. This inevitably leads to pulling listeners in, rather than pushing information out. And, in recent years, several trends have emerged to support that theme. We see shorter presentations, the return of a Q&A session, more panel discussions, remote broadcasts, simulcast enhancements, more use of a full management team…and yes, some element of entertainment.
Does entertainment belong in business presentations? If you define entertainment as the ability to grab the listeners’ attention and hold it for a defined period of time, then YES…some element of entertainment very much belongs in today’s large corporate meetings.
So, how do you capture a large audience? One communications executive says you need: “Bigness-----emotion, music, showmanship. This not only keeps the audience attentive and communicates more effectively; it provides an opportunity for a business leader to connect on an emotional level, not just an intellectual one.”
Another company delivers a “multi-media experience” for all company meetings. “We consider it a part of our overall branding effort…if you build emotion and passion in your employees, it spreads to your customers.”
With larger groups, I think you will find it increasingly harder to hold their attention without it. But, don’t be fooled. The role of the speaker is still the lead one…you just have to work a little harder to establish your presence among the glitz.
