10. The Need for Engagement

We say that the best presenters and public speakers are the ones who engage their audiences the most. We praise the best teachers for being able to engage their students. With or without multimedia, engagement is key. Yet if you ask a hundred people for a definition of engagement, you’ll get a hundred different answers. So what is engagement? For me, regardless of the topic, engagement is, at its core, about emotion. The need to appeal to people’s emotions is fundamental, yet often neglected. It’s about the emotions of the speaker and his or her ability to express those emotions in a sincere manner. But mostly, engagement is about tapping the emotions of the audience to get them involved on a personal level with the material, whatever it m....