The Key to Engagement: Structure

The goal of every speaker is to get their idea, feeling or concept across to their audience. Doing this requires some skill on the part of the speaker in terms of their oratory ability but far more skill in terms of their ability to structure the information best for this particular topic and this particular audience.

Last week, we talked about the Two Audiences. Your Target Audience and your Viral Audience. This week, I want to give you my take on structure, and I am going to try to keep this as concise as possible because I feel I could practically write a book on this.

Like everything I coach people on, there is no definitive right or wrong way to apply what I am about to share with you. It is all relative to the context of your particular situation, so the guiding principle is, as always, “Does this make my talk better, or does this make my talk worse?”

But I reference last week’s issue on the Two Audiences because the structure you use for your talk will depend on whether your audience is more General or Industrial, as discussed last week. I am not going to explain that again, so if you missed it, have a quick read here to catch up.

If you are addressing a General Audience on a more technical or in-depth topic or concept, you will need a more Linear structure. This sort of structure is very straightforward. It is step-by-step and transparent in terms of where you are taking your audience and where you are right now.

If you are addressing a more knowledgeable industry audience on this sort of technical concept, then you will probably still be somewhat linear in your approach, but it won’t need to be quite so step-by-step or so transparent.

However, if your topic is not so technical, if, for example, you want to inspire an audience to take action on something rather than teach them, then the more linear you structure your talk, the less engaging it will be.

The key to this is Accessibility vs. Engagement. A Linear structure is more accessible, and a Non-Linear structure, which I often refer to as a Puzzle structure, is more engaging. And since this is a technical topic we will take this on in a very linear fashion, in which I will first explain Accessibility, then Engagement, then tie your understanding of these things to a structure continuum.

Accessibility

This is the term I use when talking about how easy it is for your audience to understand what you are sharing with them. If you have ever gotten excited and blurted out words to someone and had them look at you quizzically and ask you to repeat yourself, then you have had experience of communicating in an inaccessible way.

But you cannot talk about the Accessibility of your message in the absence of consideration of your audience. If you are talking to a General audience, then you want to avoid industry jargon, as that will make your message less accessible to the audience.

If, however, you are talking to an Industry audience, then the use of some jargon can make your message more accessible because there is far more nuance that makes sense to this audience by using the appropriate terminology.

I have written before about “Speed Bumps”, which we look at in our speakers’ talks for TEDxRuakura so that we can improve the accessibility of their talk.

The more complex the point you are trying to get across, the more important the accessibility aspect. Often, this means that you will need to be quite transparent about what you will be sharing and in what order. This allows your audience to relax a little as they know further explanation is coming.

This sort of transparency is referred to when someone says, “Tell them what you are going to tell them. -Tell them. -Tell them what you just told them.”

This outline of what you will cover enables the audience to create a framework for what you are sharing and allows them to engage more fully with what you are saying if they know an explanation on an adjacent point is coming.

If you have ever suffered through a poorly structured technical lecture, then you will know how easy it can be for the audience to lose engagement when they feel lost. If you don’t know where you are, don’t understand how things fit together, and are just not ‘getting it,’ it is easy to switch off and give up.

At this point, you might assume that the more accessible you make your talk, the more engaged people will be. Wrong! -If only people were that simple…

Engagement

I believe that the key to engagement is to understand that the human mind is a puzzle-solving machine. Our brains love to solve puzzles, whether those puzzles are a mathematical theorem, what selections and set plays the All Blacks will need to win their next game, or whether Stuart is cheating on Mary and what might happen to their relationship if it turns out to be true, or even if it isn’t and she believes it is.

All of these things the brain will see as a puzzle to be solved. Your interests will lean you in certain directions, and mine may lean in other directions. I am not usually interested in solving those relationship or extended family-type puzzles, and this shows up in the way I live my life. It is not to say one is better than another. Just to point out that we are all different.

But our brains are also somewhat lazy. Actually, that is a bit harsh. They are efficient. If they believe a puzzle is not of interest, or they believe that it is too hard to solve, our brains will not invest resources in pursuing the problem.

So, as communicators, we need to hit that sweet spot of presenting an idea so that it is an interesting problem to solve, that can be solved, and is worth solving.

When confronted with a very technical and complex problem, we need to use a linear structure and transparency so that the brain believes that, though complex, it will all be solved by the end of the presentation.

If the problem is not complex and you put too much transparency or make it too linear, then it is no longer worth bothering. Our brains may think that it is too easy or that we already know the answer, so our thoughts go elsewhere.

An example of this might be if we went to see a movie, and at the very beginning, the narrator tells us what to expect in the first, second and third act. Chances are you have lost interest at this point. This is why we all hate ‘spoilers’. This transparency ruins our joy of discovery and solving problems.

Equally, the most linear trajectory of a story will be boring to our brains because we assume we know what will happen next. -Even if there is a surprise in store, our brains, once they feel they have a handle on it, will turn attention to something else.

The Puzzle Theory of Structure

For years, I have been talking about my Puzzle Theory of Structure to speakers and communicators. The most useful example I use to illustrate the use of a Non-Linear structure is virtually any of Quentin Tarantino’s films. In these films, the viewer is thrust into some compelling action that immediately raises lots of questions.

• “What is happening?”

• Who are these people?

• How did they get into this predicament?

• How are they going to get out of this situation?”

You might recognise these as open loops from a couple of issues back. Yes, loops and callbacks are elements of structure for you to use.

The idea is to give pieces of information to your audience and allow them to put it together to come up with conclusions and build understanding. Instead of simply feeding your audience, you selectively withhold information and make them work for it.

As an audience, when we find the solution or gain an epiphany in terms of the story presented to us, we get a dopamine hit, which leads us to want more. This is a delicate dance, though. Each scene must be compelling enough for us to want to solve the problem.

Finding the Balance for Your Audience

The real challenge is getting the balance right so that your presentation is engaging for the audience. This means that if you are putting across a complex concept, you may require a more linear structure to keep the challenge of understanding manageable.

If the concept is more simple, you will want to put a couple of teases, twists or puzzles in for the audience to solve as they go along to keep the engagement alive.

Snippets is a section where I take some interesting text I have come across in the previous week and comment on it.

Just one phrase that hit me this week.

This was said in a video I watched this week. It was about searching for a job and finally getting one after many, many applications. The line was a short, almost throw-away line in the video, but I think it is worth considering for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it is catchy with alliteration, but it has some deeper meaning that can be thought about. -We often think of direction being self-imposed but it is probably more often dictated by external factors such as rejection.

Secondly, how can you create a pithy, thought-provoking statement like this in your presentation and then pose the question in a memorable way?

This is worth the effort because it adds a level of virality to your presentation, as the line can be easily remembered and repeated in the days following, significantly increasing your reach.

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section where I dive into a famous (or not so famous) quote and explore how this can apply to the Compelling Communicator.

This quote from JFK is worth keeping in mind whenever crafting a presentation. It operates on two levels. On one level, this is in the subconscious of most of your audience, so you should play to this and ensure that you present your information as revolutionary in its ability to lead the audience to freedom.

On another level, you may want to do this explicitly. You may state that your audience is trapped by old thinking and will never attain the growth (or relevant aspiration) that desire without at least considering new concepts and perspectives.

This is a powerful mechanism to use in any presentation.

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

I am busy with instructional design work and am creating an online event for Business owners early in the new year.

Recreationally:

My stand-up comedy Debut is on the 1st November, so quite focused on that right now.

What I am reading:

Danny Iny’s The Guide on the Side.

What I am watching:

I started watching the animated series of Harley Quinn, which I am thoroughly enjoying.