Audience attention is important, right? If your audience isn’t paying attention, your ideas are just bouncing off the back wall. It takes work to both gain and maintain audience attention. But we have a formula that can help. Let’s explore how novelty combined with variety keeps listeners interested.
We Love Novelty
Have you seen this hilarious video? Did you hear about what happened at the meeting this morning? Did you hear about the latest diet craze?
When new information is on the plate, we gobble it up. That’s why things go viral, why we love gossip, and why trends take off. Anything new or different is interesting and entertaining. And there’s something about being caught up the in buzz.
We know we need novelty in our presentations to capture the audience’s attention. That’s why we reference new research, highlight new products, or connect ideas in new and fresh ways. But novelty simply isn’t enough by itself.
Average Attention Span Doesn’t Matter
You’ve probably seen statistics about how the human attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish. Whether or not this widely circulated statistic is verifiable, it doesn’t really help us know how to present better.
Dr Gemma Briggs is a professor and researcher who studies human attention spans. She thinks the idea of an average attention span isn’t a valid concern, because it’s relative. So there’s no point in trying to figure out what it is, or if it’s decreasing or increasing. Dr. Briggs says that attention is “very much task-dependent. How much attention we apply to a task will vary depending on what the task demand is.” And it’s not just about what the task is, it’s also about the person. She goes on to say, “How we apply our attention to different tasks depends very much about what the individual brings to that situation.”
What Does This Mean for Speakers?
It means we need to combine novelty with variety because we are speaking to audience members who differ greatly. What is tough for one person to understand is easy for another person. What is interesting for one person is boring for another.
The great thing about variety is that there are infinite ways to achieve it. You can change up your rate or volume of speech. You can switch from sharing statistics to telling a story. You can show a short video clip or use graphics. You can interview someone to invite another voice into the presentation. You can move into the audience and welcome participation. Whatever you do, just be intentional about creating a presentation with variety.
Novelty Without Variety
In 2011 Jae Rhim Lee gave a TED talk while wearing a mushroom burial suit. People have had mixed reponses to her presentation. Here’s my take. While I applaud her innovation, love her speaking style, and think her ideas are well-researched, interesting, and important, I disagree with her decision to deliver the entire talk in that suit. The suit did what it was supposed to: it grabbed my attention for the first minute. However, it quickly became distracting. Soon, I was paying more attention to the suit than what she was saying.
Don’t get me wrong, she nailed the novelty portion of the attention formula. But because that striking visual didn’t change, it left room for distractions and doubts about the seriousness of her ideas to creep in. If she had coupled her incredible novelty with variety by showing pictures of herself in the suit instead of wearing it, or if she had found a way to remove it after she was done referencing it, or if she had it on display just in the beginning, the remainder of her presentation might not have been overshadowed by the suit.
As with most things in public speaking, it’s a balancing act and it is relative to your own personal speaking style. But whatever personal spin you put on your presentation, both novelty and variety are necessary if you want to get your audience’s attention and keep it.
At Ethos3, presentations are our passion. How can we help make your next presentation great?
