Lean forward, get off the stage, go to talk to people, look them in the eye.
When they talk support them non-verbally and go ahead and ask them questions.
Or it doesn't work for short talks, it doesn't work for highly scripted talks.
It doesn't work at I don't know, Ted probably, but even at Ted,
people sometimes ask questions to the audience, most of them don't.
Now, the drawback is that you have to react, well I guess you can negate,
but you cannot ignore the feedback, you need to do something about it.
Thing number two, which I think is quite interesting.
By asking questions, you fight something called the hindsight bias.
It's this ability of people to go, I knew it all along.
I think Dan Ariely told the story about him just going around and
telling everybody about his experiments.
He runs a behavioral psychology, behavioral economics they call it lab,
and he does all the behavioral experiments.
And people reacting with either disbelief or
saying that well, it was obvious from the get go.
Why did you choose to spend your time on precious text-based,
precious Ford Foundation's money on those stupid experiments.
The result was obvious, and then he started asking questions.
He started revealing the setup of the experiment, and
then asking the audience to predict.
By a show of hands, to predict the results of their experiment,
because those results were suprising to himself.
And he was a research scientist, and
what he found out that the audience had no clue.
It was just a hindsight bias thing, all I knew it all along, no you didn't.
So if I tell you the Battle of Waterloo happened in 1816.
You'll go, yeah, of course it did, so what?
Well, first thing it didn't happen in 1816, it happened in 1815, gotcha.
But secondly, there's a different way of doing the same job, it's longer.
But I think it's more satisfying both for you and for the people in the room.
At first, we'll ask you, if I observed that you are bored,
I dont do this all the time.
I conserve time, but if I see that the audience is
starting to get slightly bored, instead of just telling them.
I would say, what would you say was the most important battle of the 19th century?
And people will go this or that, but
the Battle of Waterloo will make it to the top five answers.
And then ask, okay, how many of you know when did the Battle of Waterloo happen?