We have a call with a client about an upcoming Brainzooming innovation workshop. One question (which we think MAY have been included by mistake on the list of topics they sent us) is what we do when energy is diminishing during a workshop.
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Seeing the question about how to boost an audience's energy level ahead of time (and knowing they’ll want specifics), prompted this list of thirty things I’ve done during my career of designing and delivering interactive presentations and workshops.
Perhaps the most important way to boost an audience's energy level is number thirty: we make every attempt to design any Brainzooming workshop to re-energize the group throughout the time together. In that way, we plan for doing the best mix of activities in 1 through 29 to keep the energy levels up throughout the workshop!
- Tell funny stories
- Use self-deprecating humor
- Be very silent (uncomfortably silent) until the audience notices and re-engages
- Present while walking throughout the room / audience
- Stand on a chair and present
- Do more activities where everyone must play an active role
- Move to the Shrimp creative thinking exercise
- Ask questions of the audience
- Take a seat at a table and start voicing a person's internal thoughts about the presentation
- Have everyone stand up and stretch
- Have everyone stand up and scream (or jump around)
- Make the audience the stars of the show
- Start doing improv with the audience
- Take a break and let everyone refresh
- Rearrange things at the break so they return to a new room
- Invite someone else to tell a story to the group
- Go to the quiet part of the room and present from there
- Run around the room (or at least down an aisle) to increase your own energy
- Introduce an ice breaker exercise – even in the middle of the presentation (and do funny riffs on peoples' answers)
- Get people to talk and then have fun with them
- Call on the people I met before the presentation
- Call on someone that is making faces
- Call on the person with bright eyes and engage with them
- Create a contest right on the spot and give a pair of orange I am Creative socks to the winner
- Have people change something to freshen up what has already become familiar, comfortable, and routine (even within this temporary group)
- Move people from one table or group to another
- Take everyone outside
- Speed things up
- Use an exercise where everyone can participate simultaneously
- Pre-plan (by watching the experience in my mind) so the audience won't enter a low-energy state
Need a strategy, creativity, innovation or other learning and motivational boost for your audience?
Contact us, and let’s figure out the right topics, format, and activities to design and deliver an interactive presentation or workshop to energize your team during the workshop and beyond! – Mike Brown
