TJ Walker says you can't force attention in online presentations, but boredom is the main reason people check out. Turn cameras on, call on specific people, and bring audience members onscreen. Most important: rehearse, stick to a few key points, and use concrete stories.
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So how do you make sure that every single person is attentive when they are watching you present in an online environment? Well, the simple answer is you can't. There's never going to be a way of getting absolutely every single person to give you attention, because it's like the real world. I've seen some of the greatest speakers in the world where 99.9% of the audience is on the edge of their seats. They want more, they're hanging on every word, and there's one person, maybe even on the front row who is asleep. You could be a great speaker and not connect with everyone. If you want to be more successful, then improve your communication skills. The best way to do that, smash the subscribe button. Right now. Let's step back for a minute and have a little empathy. Other people have different things going on in their life. There could be someone in your home online audience who didn't get any sleep last night. They may have had a crying baby keeping them up all night long. They may have a sick relative who's about to go to the hospital. They may be in a family where someone's about to deliver a baby. All sorts of things going on now, Yes, I think that my speech is the most important thing at any given time. But other people can have important things going on in their life, too. So don't beat yourself up. Don't think it's the end of the world if one person isn't giving you complete attention. But I also don't want to let you off the hook. Most of the time when you're presenting online and people are not attentive, it's not because they delivered a baby last night. It's because you were boring. It's because I was boring. That's why people aren't giving us attention. They're thinking, well, I'll kind of halfway listen, TJ says something interesting and then maybe I'll come back. Meanwhile, let me check my cell phone, my email, my text, the weather for this weekend. They're trying to multitask. Let me give you some techniques to minimize this. You can't guarantee to eliminate it, but you can minimize it. Step number one, when you are in an online meeting, gently, and I do mean gently, some people have health issues or other issues. Ask people in a nice way if they can turn their camera on. I know some of you say, well, we don't do that in our company, or that would be rude. I'm not saying shame people into doing or demanding or saying, I'm going to get you fired if you don't turn your camera on. But if you ask nicely and just say something like, hey, it'd be great to really be able to look people in the eye and see who's here, and I can see if it looks like you have a question, would you mind just turning your camera on so I can see you? In my experience, most people will. That one act will increase the odds that people give you their attention, because it's human nature. If you think that your boss or someone presenting can't see you. It's just so easy to be straightening your desk, checking on your phone, going to another webpage, checking out sports scores. It's human nature. But if you know the camera's on you and they can see you doing all this, you're much less likely to do it. So that's the first really big thing to do. The next thing I want you to do is to call on people, ask questions. Don't just say, does anyone have any questions? Say, jim, does this relate to that project you were working on last week? Priyanka, does that at all solve the problem you had two weeks ago, Ask people highly specific questions and then listen to them. You, of course, want to ask people to type in questions. If you've got a larger group, and it's not just you and three colleagues, but you also want to share the stage. Now, so many technologies these days allow you, with a push of a button, to let anyone from anywhere in the world join the screen with you. If you are doing an online presentation, here's the one thing I can guarantee you. If someone in your audience comes on screen and is talking, you now have 100% of their attention. They are fully engaged because they're thinking, wow, the spotlight's on me, the camera's on me. Everyone's hearing me. So they are profoundly engaged at that moment. The other thing is other people out there maybe think, well, I could go on, or I could say something that gets them engaged. I would urge you from time to time, ask a specific question of someone not to embarrass them or humiliate them or try to put them on the spot, but ask them a genuine question that you think they would know the answer to that would be interesting and relevant to the rest of the audience. Toss it out there. Don't just say, does anyone know the answer to no. Ask one person. Because here's the thing, at that moment, that person is going to get an adrenaline rush. They're going to think, oh, I didn't know they were going to call on me, I better pay attention. And if they can't answer, don't try to make them feel bad. You can just say, well, we're going to let Sally have another minute to reflect on that and then go to another place. But now that person you called on is really going to pay attention to the. Here's the other thing. Everyone else on that online conference call, that online zoom meeting is going to think, wow, they just called someone to answer a question who wasn't expecting it. If they can do it to that person, they can do it to me. I better pay attention. That will really increase the odds that people pay attention because you don't want them thinking, well, this is just like a video on demand and it's just going to come out. Whether I pay attention or not doesn't matter. This guy's just going to go on and on and on and on. No, it needs to seem more like a conversation, a dialogue, not a monologue. Now, the number one thing you can do, and this is going to be hard, you might not like this tip. The number one thing you can do to capture the attention not of everyone, but most people in your online meeting is this. Be interesting. That's right. Actually say stuff that is interesting. The big problem with online meetings is the same problem with real life meetings. If you stand up and you do a boring data dump, everyone's going to tune out. Now if it's a face to face meeting and you're sitting down across three colleagues, they might be looking at you and appearing to be paying attention, but inside they may be thinking, oh good God, TJ's so boring. Can we please finish so we can go to lunch? So it just doesn't matter whether it's online or in person. If you are delivering boring information or delivering interesting information in a boring manner, the number one way to solve that is to rehearse in in advance to make sure you've limited your key points to a handful that you have. Illustrated each point with concrete examples that your audience can relate to, preferably in the form of stories recounting real experiences you've had with clients, customers, colleagues. That is the number one way to not make sure everyone pays attention in every meeting, but to increase the odds that most people really stay connected to you and give you their attention.
