Guestblog by Jasper Sonnevelt, VX Company
If keeping someone’s attention in a lecture was business, it would have an 80% failure rate.” – dr. John Medina
Whether you’re a seasoned presenter/trainer or just every now and than presenting something to your colleagues, you will know that one of the hardest things about giving a presentation is keeping your audience’s attention. Although serving them a lot of coffee and random shouting might work it will not necessarily get them to focus on your presentation.
What if I told you that you can tell the same story and even use the same pictures and text but they will be received even better if you draw them yourself? Last year I got the chance to do attend a workshop on visual facilitation. Being a very visual person myself I didn’t need much more of an excuse to spend my afternoon and evening playing with markers and crayons. Equipped with a set of markers and my newly learned techniques I set out to do my next workshop without PowerPoint and completely draw every sheet by hand. Live. Here’s what I learned:
- It gave me incredible freedom in my presentation
- People really like it – I have never had so many people take pictures of my drawings
- Questions and group discussions get very interactive: “Come on over and draw in my picture what you mean…”
- It is actually very easy to make an attractive looking drawing.
Most people (about 80% of us) are very visually oriented. They think in images and find it easier to understand something when they can see it. Our brain doesn’t pay attention to boring things so to keep attention it is imperative to not be boring. Sounds easy right? Now try it with an average (Death By) PowerPoint presentation. Join me and let’s draw something. In this session we’ll explore how to enhance your presentation by using some very simple techniques on the flipchart. We’ll use colors, shadows, simple shapes, figures and metaphors to make presentations, workshops or random doodles interactive and attractive!
You can also expect sessions around innovation, change management, self-organization and many more on: http://rethink2013.be