Posts Tagged ‘Probability’

What if I told you that by using some very simple techniques that you probably already know that can increase your audience’s comprehension and retention significantly (maybe even double it)? Now what if I told you it takes very little additional effort to implement these techniques – would you want to start using them?

If you tell your audience something once, their chances of recalling it tomorrow are somewhat less than 50%. If you tell it to them twice it increases to 70%-75%. A third time will increase the probability of recall up to 80%-95%. By simply repeating yourself you have increased the probability of your audience remembering what you said from %50 to close to %100. With very little effort you have almost doubled the effectiveness of your presentation in terms of recall. That’s a pretty high return on the effort that it takes to repeat yourself.

But how do you go about repeating yourself without boring or “burning out” your audience. The easiest answer is with the structure that you learned in high school English. Use an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. There is a popular phrase that goes… “In the introduction, tell them what you are going to tell them, in the body tell it to them, and in the conclusion tell them what you told them.”

It may feel to you like you are being overly repetitive (and redundant, and saying the same thing over and over again…) but to your audience it most likely won’t. Remember, you already know the concepts that you are sharing with them – but they don’t. This is their first time hearing them, so having them reinforced will seem helpful.

In addition, you can give your audience a further wake up by using your introduction to grab their attention. For example, while letting them know what you are covering you could make a controversial statement, tell a humorous story that relates to your topic, share some surprising statistics, or ask a rhetorical question that gets them thinking. All of these techniques can be used to grab your audience’s attention while and help you keep it while introduce your topic.

In the body – where you tell them what you’re telling them – give the audience the details that they need to analyze and (hopefully) accept your arguments.

Finally, in the conclusion tell them what you told them while giving them a call to action. You didn’t just give a presentation for the entertainment value, you wanted something to happen – let them know what it is that you want from them and remind them why your concepts support that action.

By simply structuring your presentation the way you learned in English class, with an introduction, a body, and a conclusion, you can almost double the retention rate of your audience. Since this technique is so easy to use, ask yourself, “Why wouldn’t you use it in your next presentation?”

Special note about the proceeding article:

I didn’t just give you some rules to follow about structure – I also gave you an example by how the article was written. I opened with a couple of rhetorical questions to grab your attention. I gave you the details in the body and finally concluded by summarizing the concept and giving you a call to action in the form of a rhetorical question.

Hopefully you found this technique to be powerful in writing – however, it is even more effective when used during presentations. Make sure that you use it.