How To Make Your Audience Put Away Their Phones

TED-Style SpeakingCore MessagingProfessional Speaking

Aug 5

"I'm disappointed."

That's understandable. She'd recently stepped on the famous Red Dot, and her talk hit YouTube three weeks ago - but it's not doing very well. In fact, it hasn't even cracked 1,000 views.

"It's not getting the kind of traction that I hoped."

I didn't work with her on this talk, she's not my client. In fact we only met recently, sitting in the audience at an unrelated TED-style conference, each supporting different speakers.

And so when - let's call her Laurie - DMed me asking if I'd be willing to watch, evaluate, and provide feedback on her talk, I was surprised. Most people don't want feedback on the talk they've already done.

"I'm going to do another one. And this topic is important to me, it's what I speak and consult on for a living. I want to know what didn't work, so I can make this topic better and more engaging moving forward."

Fair enough.

I find a break in my schedule, pull open the video, and start watching.

Within thirty seconds I know precisely why the talk wasn't spreading, and probably never will.

The bad news? It's a super common mistake.

The good news? It's a super easy fix.

What is the purpose of a speech's introduction?

No matter what kind of presentation you're giving - a keynote speech, workshop, or TED-style talk - there's one constant: if the audience isn't engaged, the presentation will fail.

Distracted, bored audiences don't learn and they definitely don't take action.

If they don't take action, your ideas will not spread.

And so the most important aspect of any presentation is audience engagement, and THAT is the job of the introduction.

But unfortunately, we tend to think about engagement all wrong.

What does it mean to be engaging?

When I tell a speaker they need to be more engaging, they typically think I mean to add polls, hand-raising questions, videos on slides, stories, or audience interaction.

And sure, those things can be engaging. But they aren't necessarily.

You can definitely remember sitting in the audience when a speaker asked you to raise your hand, and you didn't bother participating.

Or told a story and you tuned out.
Or put on a video and you put on your earbuds.
Or asked for a volunteer, but not a single hand in the room went up.

That's because audience engagement is not a tactic, but a principle. And that principle is: We engage with what's relevant.

Your audience engages with ideas that are meaningful to them, not to you

In high school my friends and I would laugh at the television commercials advertising medications to alleviate back pain, featuring dads holding their backs and wincing, only to be gleefully tossing their kids in the air in their green suburban backyards by the end.

We thought they were cheesy and ridiculous.

Fast forward 25 years and when one of those ads comes by my newsfeed, I immediately take a screenshot while holding my aching back, wishing I could roll around with my toddler.

Those commercials we watched in high school weren't bad commercials - we were just the wrong audience. Neither the pain of an aching back nor the aspirational identity of being a good dad who plays with his kids were relevant to us at 15 years old.

But they're very relevant to me today.

Relevance is in the eye of the beholder

Your job as a speaker is to craft your entire speech in a way that makes it super obvious why and how your message is relevant to the audience.

And you're doing a TED-style talk that's going to be distributed via the Internet, trying to catch busy people scrolling their newsfeed searching for the next cat video?

Your talk needs to be relevant in seconds, not minutes.

How to write your intro so that it's immediately relevant

I'm 30 seconds in to Laurie's talk and I already know why it's not spreading: I have no idea what it's about, why I should care, or how it's going to be useful to me.

And in the age of distraction, 30 seconds is an eternity. Unless I'm your mom or best friend, I'm not going to give it another 2-3 minutes hoping it will eventually become something I'm interested in.

I'm just going to try a different video, which is, I assume, what's happening to almost everyone.

So, what went wrong?

Stories are not saviors

Laurie began with a story. And I know, I KNOW - you've been told hundreds of times that stories are the best way to engage people.

That's true.

But it has to be the RIGHT story. Not just any story will do.

As Kindra Hall writes in her book, Stories That Stick,

"Not all stories are created equal.

Some stories suck.

Actually, a lot of stories suck."

Stories sometimes suck because they're told badly, but most often they suck because the listener doesn't know why they're being told that particular story.

Bad Example

Here's an example of an opening story that, like Laurie's, fails to engage the audience:

"As a child, I loved spending summers at my grandparents' farm. We would wake up early to feed the animals and spend the afternoons playing in the fields. Their farm was located in a small town in Kansas, and it was surrounded by vast, open spaces. I remember the smell of fresh hay and the sound of birds chirping in the morning.

My grandparents had a variety of animals, including cows, chickens, and pigs, which always fascinated me. We had a big vegetable garden where we grew tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn. Sometimes, my grandparents would take me to the local farmers' market, where we would sell our produce and meet other farmers in the community.

These experiences were incredibly formative for me, and I really believe they taught me an important lesson about balance that I want to share with you today."

If you listen to enough TED-style talks and keynote speeches, you hear openings like this all the time.

Why isn't this opening engaging?

This story is about Laurie - the speaker - and not about me, the listener.

Too often, speakers tell stories meaningful to them, expecting the audience to care about characters, locations, and emotions they can't relate to. Whether you tell a story or not, your opening must answer one simple question your audience is asking: 'What's in it for me?'

So, what might that same story look like if it were actually engaging?

Revised Example

"Today, many of us feel pulled in too many directions at the same time, and finding balance can feel impossible. Growing up in Kansas, my life was chaotic. Between school, extracurricular activities, and social pressures, I felt constantly overwhelmed. But one summer, my parents sent me to my grandparents' farm.

Each day, we would wake up early to feed the animals. We'd work hard for an hour, then take a break to play games or read. After lunch, we'd work on the crops and tend to the chores. By mid-afternoon, we’d take a break to enjoy the fields, running and playing in the wind. By the end of each day, I felt both fulfilled by doing meaningful work and at peace with myself.

That summer was the first time I truly understood what balance means, and I realized that it's not just possible but necessary. And that's what I want to share with you today: how to find balance even amidst the chaos of our modern lives."

What's different about this example?

It literally begins with a premise that tells the audience how the story I'm about to tell is relevant to their lives, and continues to thread that premise throughout the details of the story.

Here's how to do it.

Make your opening about one of these things

The premise of your speech should be the opening of your talk, and you can either state it explicitly by just saying the thing (my preferred method), or you can imply it within the context of a story (my lead coach and storytelling specialist Francisco Mahfuz's preferred method).

But what is the premise of your talk? It's one of these four things:

Want: What does your ideal audience want? (note: not, "what do you think they need?" but "what do they know they want?"

Problem: Why is your ideal audience struggling to get what they want? What obstacles or challenges are in their way? How do they feel about this struggle?

Belief: What is or are your ideal audience's pre-existing strongly held assumptions about the world (that may be false, and therefore need to be broken)?

Fear: What is your ideal audience deeply concerned might happen that needs to be assuaged?

In Laurie's example, you can clearly see her original opening lacked a premise. She told me about her experience from her childhood, that was meaningful to her, and that she wants to tell me about balance.

Whereas in the revised example, the same fundamental story is framed around a problem that I actually have: our lives can feel so overwhelming and chaotic that it's hard to find balance.

That's something I - the audience or ideal listener - can relate to. It's relevant because I know what it feels like, and I struggle with that problem too. The revised opening returns to that theme within the story context and transitions into the talk with a promise of what I will gain from listening.

Connect with audiences by shifting from sender-focused to receiver-focused communication

As speakers and communicators in general, we should stop asking, "What do I want to say?" and start asking, "What do they need to hear?"

By framing your message around the wants, problems, beliefs, and fears of your audience, you make your talk immediately relevant and engaging.

Remember, what's relevant is engaging.

This shift in perspective transforms your introduction from a potential disconnect into a powerful connection, setting the stage for a talk that is relevant, engaging, and actionable.