5 Hot Tips To Guarantee Your Talks Are Way More Fun!
Wouldn’t it be cool if people actually ENJOYED your talk or presentation?
I get that this may be the furthest thing from your mind right now.
I personally never used to think about making my talks ‘fun’. As I came from the Cyber Security industry which is a fairly serious industry.
Where seeking buy-in from my stakeholders was enough of a challenge!!
However, I don’t want my talks to simply be *informative* or *influential* now. I want them to be enjoyable too.
So, if you’re at this point too, try some of these tips.
These are relevant whether you just want to make your talk more *enjoyable*, or whether you want to make it *fun*!
1. GUESSING GAME
You can make an update more enjoyable by simply asking people questions.
Can you get them to guess something specific or give their opinion, rather than you simply telling them everything.
People love to get involved rather than being talked at the whole time.
E.g. Instead of sharing a statistic with your audience, ask them to guess what it is first and take multiple guesses until you tell people what it actually is. Or, ask people to vote whether they’re for or against something you’re proposing.
2. FUNNY VISUALS
You can make your talk more enjoyable and fun just by using funny visuals.
Remember you don’t have to actually make people laugh. Just making people smile and smirk is enough!!
E.g. Injecting silly or funny memes or giphs that bring your points to life in a less serious way. Or even videos that illustrate a point in a funny way. If you find it amusing, chances are others will too!
3. A PROP
Using a prop can be a way to make your talk more interesting and fun.
However, it’s got to be a prop that represents the point you’re trying to make.
It can be a rather mundane prop, or it can be an odd prop. I think either work because it’s about novelty.
Most people don’t use props, therefore your audience won’t be expecting a prop either.
E.g. I’ve seen some very cool uses of props in my Powerful Presenter Program. Someone brought their cat into the frame at the end of their presentation, when referencing threat monitoring. Another showed a party pie when talking about missing out on a big piece of investment $.
If you can think of an analogy to use in your presentation, you can generally find a prop to support that analogy.
4. SILLY STORY
If you share a silly or funny story, it will no doubt lighten the mood and have people nodding their heads and smiling along with you.
It doesn’t have to be hilariously funny, it can be one that people simply find relatable.
E.g. If you’ve had an epic fail in an area, share that story! If you did something embarrassing, share that and show that you’re not perfect either.
5. AN EXERCISE
You can also go all in to make it actually fun by doing an exercise that involves your audience.
If you can get people involved and actually doing something and/or if you can create a competition, the audience will love it!
Gamify it, create a challenge, a competition, a fun or silly exercise etc
E.g. I remember two sessions that were run on the Agile Methodology that involved fun games.
In one session we built Lego as a way to simulate the experience of mutli-disciplinary teams, with a retro etc.
Another session had us all up, throwing a ball around each team member as quickly as we could, to showcase the benefits of being able to self-organise and analyse how to get faster with a retro etc.
Both of these exercises were so much fun!
IN SUMMARY
There’s a few takeaways here.
I think we sometimes believe that the corporate world has to be serious. That might absolutely be the case for some settings (e.g. A Governance Committee Meeting or Board Meeting). However, for a whole heap of meetings, workshops and presentations, I think we overdo it.
We don’t grow out of liking games and getting involved. It breaks up our day and makes it so much more enjoyable.
So, don’t get stuck thinking that people don’t want it to be fun. They do!
In my experience, you have to go into it with the INTENTION of making it enjoyable or fun. Because anything can be enjoyable or fun if you know the ways to jazz something up. It just requires you to think about it!
Even the energy with which you present something can make it more enjoyable! ✨
However, the key is to find a way to relate it to the presentation you’re giving. There should be some synergy and purpose to it.
How do you inject fun into a talk / presentation / workshop?
Emily
Emily Edgeley is a Public Speaking Coach for the Technology industry. Since 2017 she’s run over 100 group coaching sessions, coached more than 200 people privately, and formally supported first time and experienced speakers at 10 Conferences, covering 1000+ people across the globe.
She’s on a mission to help anyone in the Tech arena learn how to speak with clarity, impact, and confidence, whether that’s at work or at a Conference. So they can share their ideas competently, elevate their personal brand and start to enjoy ‘public speaking’!
She’s also a regular podcast guest, a writer, a mum of one, a massive dog lover and a fan of cryptic crosswords.
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