Ask for a show of hands

A splendid way to get interested and attention is to ask the audience to raise their hands as an answer to a question. When you ask for a show of hands, it usually gives the audience some warning of what you are going to do. Also, the technique of asking for a show of hands gets a priceless reaction known as “audience participation.” When you use it, your talk is no longer a one-sided affair. The audience is participating in it now. The audience forgets that they are listening to a talk. They smile, they nod to a friend sitting next to them. The ice is broken. The speaker is at ease and so is it the audience.

We can see this type of speech very often. One impressed speaker was Steven Eberlein who was invited to the campus for his speech. He talked about common sense gap as it related to earthquakes challenging all of us to be a part of the preparedness movement.

He also used this technique to ask the audience to raise their hands for participation and asked several questions to know what types of audience members were there for his speech. His story was very interesting and he pointed out a viewpoint that we didn’t think of before. It is also related to physiological human behavior which is related to common sense and culture.

So, It reminds him with this topic.