How I’m different – Interactivity

These days people love interactive speakers

This quick video is to share some of the ways that I’m possibly a bit different than the next coach. Perhaps some ways that you might be more attracted to me as a coach, or maybe you might run away in the opposite direction, both are fine. This one… I want to share a little bit about one of the tools that I use regularly when I speak, when I train, and that I help people to use when I coach, and that’s interactivity. Now, I think the old school idea of somebody who’s making a speech is very much about them and they’re pontificating and sharing their ideas. But these days people need something that’s a little bit more engaging because we’re used to social media, we’re used to everything being at our fingertips, and we can switch off our attention pretty fast. And that’s where interactivity comes from.

I teach how interactivity makes your talks more dynamic

In my D-I-V-A, my DIVA or you could call it my avid framework, D-I-V-A. D stands for being dynamic. I stands for being inspiring with stories. V stands of being valuable, which is having a great structure and good information. A stands for being authentic. And the interactivity really falls under the D, the dynamic area, because it’s a really great way of engaging people in your presentation or your talk, whatever it is. And also it’s a fantastic way to get feedback from them in terms of how engaged they are in the presentation, if it’s the right content for them. And it’s also a fantastic way to take the heat off of your shoulders for a bit. So the reason I started out being interactive and making sure there was interactivity every time I spoke, in particular from running a corporate session or doing even a keynote or a virtual session, I started doing that because I didn’t want to have the pressure of the entire presentation landing on my shoulders.

I use interactivity to help you connect with your audience

I wanted to be in partnership with the audience. And so I thought, “Well, if I add some exercises every few minutes or every 10, 15 minutes, then people are getting involved, they’re getting to chat. They’re enjoying the content. They’re actually applying it to themselves in the room, which means that their transformation is more likely to happen. Because if you start with me in the room, then you’ve actually created a bit of momentum and you’re more likely to carry on when you get home or when you get back to the office. So I started doing this really partly as a way to engage individuals, but partly as a way to kind of just have a few little breaks during my talks and presentations. And I found that I was being rebooked and people were giving me really great feedback, feedback reviews, I guess, because of that interactivity.

I will help you get your audience talking about themselves – they’ll love it!

So the thing that I was doing for one reason actually ended up really helping me for other reasons as well. And so I ended up getting, as I say, getting rebooked a lot more. It became a part and parcel of the way that I present and people were always saying, “Oh, well, that was so engaging.” And I’m thinking, “Well, hold on. It’s only because you’ve got to speak to your partner or you worked in groups,” but hey, it worked. So even when I’m doing a keynote speech, I would typically have some interactivity in there because people enjoy it. People like to talk about themselves. People like to get involved. People like to apply things to their situation rather than having to just listen and then wait until they’ve left the room before they can actually act on what they’ve just learned.

I will show you how to stand out as a speaker

And I found that this was something that differentiated me as a speaker, as a trainer, and also as a coach, because a lot of my clients were finding that when they had done speaker training in the past, they weren’t necessarily encouraged to add these elements of engagement and interactivity. And they found that it really helped them to put together more engaging speeches, to have more fun with it. And also to obviously get that sort of constant feedback from their audiences.

I will teach you how to use interactivity to your advantage

So if you think that interactivity might be for you in your presentations, or if you’re perhaps looking for a speaker and you want a really engaging session where people are really involved and they walk out saying, “Wow, that was so engaging. That was amazing,” or they walk out from even a virtual session saying, “Wow, I really got involved. I felt like I really belonged. I got to share my opinion multiple times. That really worked for me,” then perhaps I’m the speaker for you. Likewise, if you’re looking for somebody who’s much more about sort of pontificating on the stage and it’s very much them and asking them me, the speaker, and then the audience over there, then I’m probably not this speaker for you because I like to feel my audience and myself that we’re partners, we’re partners in the success of this presentation, this keynote, this virtual talk. We’re partners together, and we’re in it together, and we’ll both achieve success together. So that’s where I come from. And I hope that helps. That’s it from me for now. Take care. Bye.

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Shola Kaye is an award-winning speaker, author and professional speaker coach with clients around the world. Her work has been mentioned in Forbes, Harper’s Bazaar and on the BBC.
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