Generating a New WWW: The Wild & Wired Webinar – Part I

Ever wonder why webinar presentations can be so uneven?  Some are engaging while others, well…”At least I can get some work done.”  Assuming the technology is “good enough,” how can the content design and delivery increase the likelihood that it’s a “3 ‘M’” webinar experience – meaningful, motivational, and memorable?

Consider some feedback from a recent one-hour "Leading with Passion Power:  Inspiring Others with Courage, Clarity & Creativity" webinar for Sovereign Health Group/Treatment Centers.  HQ’d in San Clemente, participants were coast-to-coast.

Subject:  Great talk! Love your authenticity!
Date:  1/20/2016
From:  hugdoc@gmail.com

Dear Stress Doc,

Just want you to know how much I enjoyed your lecture today.  You made many great points and I will keep you in mind if anyone asks me about someone to have come and speak!

Deborah McMahon
Hugs from The Hug Doctor

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We are continuously receiving mails of appreciation from the audience.  People are excited to watch your presentation on our website.  We also received lots of appreciation messages and questions during the presentation.  However, keeping in mind the time frame, we were not able to ask you all the questions.

Shruti Vashisht
Sovereign Webinar Team

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How do you project “authenticity” when folks can’t look into the windows of your soul?  As a presenter, how do you create “excitement” when you cannot see your audience, you cannot reach out and literally touch someone.  And the way the webcast was structured, the tech support person could only read the Qs in the last ten minutes of the program.  How do you generate an overflow of questions?  Participants clearly wanted to hear and learn more.

And perhaps that last sentence is key:  With audience numbers approaching 100, how do you turn passive, solitary listeners (if you’re fortunate) into engaged and enquiring participants?

Top Ten Webinar Engagement Tips and Techniques (plus a little lagniappe):

1.  Ask a Brief Number of Concise and Powerful Questions.  After reviewing the key program objectives, I announced that the essence of the program can be captured by three questions:

1) Are you courageously developing and passionately projecting your unique energy and experience, strengths and skills?

2) Are you truly “being heard or are you just making noise?”

3) Are you developing collaborative, mutually productive, and innovative partnerships?

It’s hard to be unresponsive when someone’s grabbing at your head- and heartstrings.

2.  Start with an Identifiable, Playful-Edgy Opening.  A light repartee that speaks your audience’s language is an effective and “Emotionally Intelligent” way to quickly get or sustain attention.  As these were employees or affiliates of substance abuse treatment centers, the soon to be delivered punchline was particularly apt.  After announcing that “my goal is to help an audience become more FIT – by making the presentation FUN-Interactive-Thought-provoking – and sharing my Triple ‘A’ Method – “to help folks grapple with anxiety, act out a little aggression, and engage life’s ‘slings and arrows’ with playful yet purposeful absurdity”…I then add:  “FIT, Triple ‘A’….you already know something about me: that I’ve been living in the DC area way too long.  I’m convinced if you’ve been in the DC area for a year or have to deal regularly with government regulations, you should be mandated to a 12-Step AA Group – Acronyms Anonymous!”

In addition, I lay down another challenge while also skewering an all too recognizable target.  Letting folks know that, “this program won’t be all fun and games…I can be tough.  During a resilience workshop, I recall a somewhat pompous State Dept. Manager less asking, more declaring, ‘what do you call if you don’t have any stress!?’  My immediate reply, Denial,” never fails to generate some appreciative laughter.

3.  Do an Abrupt 180.  Now to be truly surprising, to once again grab people’s attention, as well as to keep them in a state of “what’s coming next?” anticipation, throw the group a major curve.  One preferred method: to suddenly close down the opening banter and ask, “What do think of this guy up here, so far, just after five minutes, even without visuals?”  No one expects this maneuver.  As it was a “muted” webinar, I supplied possible answers, including both positives and negatives, such as “you enjoy your work,” “you like to talk about yourself (or, even better, have others talking about you”), and that “I need to be center stage.”  (Once an audience member somewhat derisively predicted I would talk about my deprived childhood. ;-)  I must confess, there are times when I do like being the focus of attention.  Naturally, I remind the group of the old adage:  Vanity thy name is Gorkin!  People appreciate when a leader does not take himself so seriously; can poke fun at him- or herself.

Especially in a webinar, I want people absorbed in the message along with my animated verbal style and tone.  As Marshall McLuhan noted, radio is a “hot” medium; it embraces intensity and meaningful possibility.  I want speaker-audience interaction that stimulates compelling mental images.  I want folks entertaining my supposition that people are already sensing this webcast “energy” and “passion.”

Yes, there is method to my message and media madness…With a series of personal questions, I’m about to plug energy and ideas into their heads and hearts.

4.  Speak to and Engage an Audience’s Head and Heart.  And the spark comes from my paraphrasing key questions off a Power Point Slide:

a) when and where, that is, in what circumstances, do you have your best energy (apart from the bedroom; this is a PG presentation?),

b) what internal or external factors encourage “out of the box” or “head and heart flow?”,

c) what factors impede this flow, that is, shut down your creative juices?, and

d) what’s the connection between purpose, passion, and pain?

I then highlight specific dynamics that impede focus and flow, which drain energy and feed procrastination – such as rigid perfection, not embracing the learning value of error and “failure,” avoidance, when it comes to protecting your “time and space,” an inability to say “No,” not knowing how to start slow or small, 11^th hour arrogance, etc.  I succinctly capture issues and interventions with which all can relate.  (Email stressdoc@aol.com for more information on “Emancipation Procrastination” and other performance enhancing techniques.)

5.  Use Bullet Point Acronyms, Aphorisms and Analogies.  In addition to those “big questions,” some other laser techniques and pointers keep speaker and audience on the same screen:

a. Acronyms:  As alluded to above, I shared some of my PANIC acronym for overcoming “procrastination” – “Perfection, “(Overcoming) Avoidance,” “No & Negotiate,” “Initiation,” and “Compartmentalization.”  Another favorite is “Confronting Your Intimate FOE:  Fear of Exposure!”  The value of acronyms is clear:  they capture key points in a concise and meaningful as well as memorable fashion.  Or they can have a surprising, insightful, and/or humorous impact, such as FOE or, in a stress workshop, the real meaning of the stress signal, TMJ:  Too Many Jerks!

b. Aphorisms:  I like providing pity and poetic passages that touch and challenge people in deep places and spaces.  For example, my burnout prevention mantra – “The Vital Lesson of the Four ‘R’s”:  If no matter what you do or how hard you try, Results, Rewards, Recognition, and Relief are not forthcoming, and you can’t say “No” or won’t let go (because you’ve invested so much time, identity money, and energy-ego – TIME), trouble awaits.  The groundwork is being laid for apathy, callousness, and despair!  (I told you I am the founder of Acronyms Anonymous.)

c. Analogies:  And a final rhythmic, prose-poetic, highly visual, Phoenix-like metaphor on the awesome “nature” of generative grief:  Whether the loss is a key person, a desired position, or a powerful illusion, each deserves the respect of a mourning.  The pit in the stomach, the clenched fists and quivering jaw, the anguished sobs prove catalytic in time.  In mystical fashion, like spring upon winter, the seeds of dissolution bear fruitful renewal.

Closing Summary

Part I has outlined five of the Stress Doc’s Top Ten Webinar Engagement Tips and Techniques for insuring a more “Wild & Wired Webinar” experience.  These are:

1.  Ask a Brief Number of Concise and Powerful Questions

2.  Start with an Identifiable, Playful-Edgy Opening

3.  Do an Abrupt 180

4.  Speak to and Engage an Audience’s Head and Heart

5.  Use Bullet Point Acronyms, Aphorisms and Analogies

Part II will conclude with the final tips and techniques:

6.  Launch into Stories.  Lawyer Bob

7.  Be Out-Rage-ous!.

8.  Be a Role Model.

9.  Project Your Emotions into Almost Every Word.

10.  Provide a Mantra and a Model.

And a little lagniappe:

11.  Use a Posed Question for Last Personal Sharing.

Mark Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ™, a nationally acclaimed speaker, writer, and "Psychohumorist" ™, is a former psychotherapist and Stress & Violence Prevention Consultant for the U.S. Postal Service.  Mark is a Trauma Debriefing and Critical Incident Consultant for variety of organizations, including the national post-earthquake, Nepali Behavioral Health & Wellness Initiative. He has led numerous Pre-Deployment Stress Resilience-Humor-Team Building Retreats for US Army Senior Officers and Sergeants. The Doc is the author of Practice Safe Stress, The Four Faces of Anger, and Resiliency Rap ™.  His latest, soon to be published book, Fierce Longing…Fiery Loss:  Relearning to Let Go, Laugh, and Love.  Mark’s award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" – www.stressdoc.com – was called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR).  Email stressdoc@aol.com for more info.