7 Reasons to Start a Talk with a Show of Hands

This method has so many benefits that I’ve listed 7 of them!

Starting your talk with a show of hands helps you to:

1. raise the audience’s status
2. calm down
3. check your assumptions
4. remind everyone that we’re LIVE
5. appear confident and relaxed
6. look like you wrote the talk for them
7. set the scene for interaction

Let’s take each reason in turn.

I often work with people who want to build their confidence. Whether that’s in a boardroom or at a team meeting. The key to coming across as confident is to play high status. (Technically it’s called “happy high”.)

While understanding status is a whole other post, here’s an easy tip. Watch the most self-assured speakers, and you’ll notice something. They raise the status of their audience. These people are so confident, they can big you up and it doesn’t seem to cost them anything.

In fact, the more they raise other people’s status, the more confident they seem.

When you stand in front of a group of people, you start with a higher status. (Even if you feel nervous.) You’re the one talking, they’re supposed to listen. But you can play with this. Asking them to contribute raises their status. It makes them more important.

It’s as if you’ve promoted them from cinema spectators to extras in the movie itself. They are now part of the action.

When you prepared your talk, you considered what the audience wanted from you. This is great. But things can go wrong on the day, when:

• you start to doubt your assumptions, or
• it turns out you were wrong

Getting input at the start of your talk deals with both of these. It lets you check. If your assumptions were correct, you can relax. If not, you have time to change course.

Some of the best talks happen when a speaker realises that people need something different to what they prepared. So they discard their presentation and talk about whatever excites the audience.

Audiences find it easier to listen to speakers who appear relaxed. (If you seem uncomfortable, people will start to worry about you. Instead of engaging with your ideas.)

Asking the audience for their input makes you look more confident. You’ll come across as someone who:

• can handle feedback
• isn’t afraid to give up control
• wants the best for the audience

This makes you easier to listen to. But it also means that people are more likely to take what you say seriously.

This is my favourite public speaking hack. Try to make it seem as if you wrote the talk specifically for this audience. Even if you didn’t.

Imagine if I walked on stage and shouted, “you people need to learn active listening!” How might that go down?

Now imagine I started a talk by asking a question. “Raise your hand if you’d like tools to understand colleagues better”. And then, if enough hands went up, I told them how my solution could help. Do you see the difference?

An obvious objection: what if they don’t want what I’m offering? That’s a risk I’ve got to take. You can mitigate this risk by doing research. But occasionally you will need to veer off course. Which, by the way, audiences love to watch…

Opening with a show of hands is just the start. You can work in audience interaction throughout. This could include:

• more shows of hands
• pair or group discussions
• exercises or games
• questions and answers

This will make your presentation feel like a conversation. Even if most of the ideas come from you.

This might sound like hard work. In a way, it is. You need to learn how to run a room. And what to do when things don’t go to plan.

On the other hand, it’s much more likely to work! People will engage with your ideas more. And understand them better. You’ll come across as confident and interesting to listen to.