In this video, we're going to look at learning styles, specifically how you as
a presenter, a public speaker can engage your listeners more effectively through
appealing to the different learning styles. So let's get into the details.
Hello again friends. And welcome back.
If this is the first time you're joining us,
Communication Coach, this channel, is here for people who are probably like you,
rising leaders who want to increase your personal impact so you can lead all the
people around you to higher levels of excellence. Part of leadership is
communication and teaching and standing up and presenting. And when we're doing
this one of the best ways that you can engage your audience is to think in
terms of the different learning styles they probably have. So by appealing to
auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners in your preparation for your
presentation, you're much more likely to engage everybody overall. And so that's
what I'm recommending to use these three learning styles as a way to make sure
you're appealing to a wide range of your listeners. So the first type of learning
style is called auditory. This has all to do with the ears. That's the sense we're
going after and in my experience a lot of public speakers are already pretty
good at this. If you think about it when you're preparing your message you are
crafting out what you're gonna say how you're going to say it. So you've already
worked on your words pretty well. So if you want to take it to the next level
and appeal to our ears in a slightly different way, think about the kinds of
metaphors that you could use things to think about the kind of colorful
language you can use like analogies and alliteration and possibly rhyme. I'm not
a rhymer but I know some people it fits their style. And so these are ways to
take the normal craft and language you've already worked on and pump it up
a little bit more to appeal to your auditory [learners] listeners so that's the first
learning style. Second learning style is visual. And a lot of people are visual
learners and so to appeal to your visual learners you want to appeal obviously to
their eyes. The easiest way to do this is because you're going to be
the whole time you have to use your body to maximum advantage you want a gesture.
You want to move with a purpose on your platform on your stage. You might even go
out a little bit into your audience like on an aisle or something to engage them
visually in this way because their eyes have to follow you around you don't want
to be distracting and just pace for no reason but you want to move with a
purpose. And that's one of the ways you can do it. Another way to do it is
through better visual aids like your powerpoints you want to show images and
something compelling to look at. When I first started making PowerPoints many
years ago teaching I only had text up there and it's very boring and my
students were like, are you kidding me? This is too black and white, tiny font,
these PowerPoints are jammed. And so I had to go that extra step and figure how
can I make my visual aids a little bit more visually appealing because that's
what they're supposed to be in the first place.
Speaking of visual a visual aids, you probably want to use an actual object if
you can instead of just a PowerPoint. For example, if you're talking about
exercising instead of just having an image up there or talking about your
exercising, you want to have an actual object like a prop of some sort. So if
you're talking about lifting weights maybe you bring some weights up there. If
you're talking about doing other kinds of exercises you want to show some kind
of visual object or prop to bring it to life. Way more engaging than simply
saying it or even showing a picture of it. One of the best props, by the way, is
an actual person. So here's another tip for visual learners. You can bring up a
volunteer. So that's one more person for them to look at and if that person is
demonstrating something with you, they're doing a role play or a skit of any kind,
that really brings it to life visually because they're hearing it certainly the
role play but when you see people act it out that's visually appealing then.
They're much more likely to remember it. So there's almost endless visual
approaches that you could use and this is one of the ways you can do by
thinking in terms okay now how can I appeal to my visual learners. And the
last learning style we'll talk about is kinesthetic. I actually just say physical
learners because that's the easiest way to remember it. This is where you want to
engage people physically you ask them to do something with their hands with
their bodies that's going to help them learn. So for example you may have seen
this if you've ever watched a magician and a live audience oftentimes when they
pick volunteers, they don't just pick volunteers. They want to make it seem
random. Maybe it is random. And they ask them to let say toss a ball. They would
say okay I'm going to toss this ball and after a few tosses that whoever it lands
on that person will be the volunteer that comes up to do this demonstration.
And one of the reasons that works is first of all for a magician it looks at
least random but also it engages people doing something physically. There's a
kind of energy that happens when people are looking for the ball and looking to
catch it and tossing it because they're doing something physically and that's
really a great way to involve people, to get them to handle an object like that
like a ball. Another thing you can do is ask people to do a little drawing or a
sketch where they are maybe they're taking notes. Instead just the words, you
can ask them to sketch something out with their hands. That's a little more
engaging physically. I once had a speaker do this right recently where I was
actually in the audience. And he had us draw a certain kind of picture on the
top of this sheet of paper and then another one in a different part. But it was
just like stick figures but he had colored pencils out on all the tables
and we folded our paper in half. there were physical things for us to do and it
was way better than him again just showing us a picture or telling us with
his words. We were engaged physically and that really helped. Another thing you can
do is ask your listeners to do something physical like stand up go talk to
somebody in this part of the room, as long as it helps make the point of your
message, as long as it's not gonna embarrass them or be overly weird, you
want to engage them physically so there might be a reason for them to move their
bodies and you want to make sure that you don't neglect that you've got to
consider that how can I get them to move their bodies in a way that helps them
make the point, helps them learn. So when I do any kind of presentation I always
use these three learning styles as a mental map. How can I take my message and
then pump it up a little by appealing to each of these learning strategies? So I
make sure I have these three approaches throughout every presentation I do and
that's much more likely to engage everybody. And by the way, even if I'm a
visual learner, I will still benefit from the other two learning styles if
the presenter is doing those pretty well. It's not like visual only appeals to
visual leaners. All these styles help all kinds of learners. You just want to make sure
you don't neglect any and you cover all of your bases. So, question of the day.
what kind of learner are you? And what are the strategies that you would
recommend if you were in the audience? How can we better appeal to you as an
auditory, a visual, or kinesthetic learner? I would love to hear your comments in
that section below. And as a reminder, this is Part 2 of a very short video
series on how to engage your audience. Don't forget to check out that other
video and I'll put a link in the description below to the video. So
take care I'll see you in the next video.