Speaker - July/August 2007

Audience interaction, particularly onstage participation, helps grab your group’s attention, paint a clear picture, add humor, make a memorable point, and bring variety and depth to your presentation. Onstage participation is powerful because it is completely relevant and personal. The stakes are high, but the opportunity to make a lasting impact is great.

Brad Montgomery, CSP, and Vinny Verelli are two masters of stage participation. Brad is a playful, nurturing, motivational speaker, humorist and corporate comedian and wildly successful with stage interaction. His main goal is to reassure the stage participant that he or she will be fine.

Vinny Verelli plays a New York Italian likened to the “Tony Soprano” of motivational speakers. Although both speakers are completely different, they both take care of their participants. As an audience member you don’t want to fail, look stupid, be unpleasantly surprised or be unjustly ridiculed. Here’s how two pros “safely” engage participants before, during and after the show.

Before…

Brad’s advice is to physically connect with your participant before bringing them to the stage. Build trust and comfort by taking their hand and leading them up to the stage. Whisper to them “It’s going to be okay.” This gesture is both functional so the audience doesn’t hear and allows the participant to feel special because the message wasn’t broadcast to everyone. In addition, a whisper communicates trust.

Vinny bribes, warns and basically gets an agreement from the volunteers before they hit the stage. For one of his activities, the hat game, he says: “I’d like some volunteers. I’d like eight men who aren’t afraid to take chances, who laugh in the face of adversity or anyone who wants a copy of my book . . . Autographed.” When participants accept this challenge, he has more permission to be playful. Because participants are receiving a gift, they are expecting to give something back, their participation. After all, they are volunteering and not being plucked from the audience, which reduces any chance for error.

During…

During the stage activity, Brad directly communicates with the participant to let them know they are “doing perfect,” while also continuing his show with the general audience.

Put yourself in the participant’s shoes: You are on stage, but the presenter is not acknowledging you. Thoughts may pop into your head like, “Am I done? Did he forget I am on stage?”

It can be confusing and stressful. Brad pleads,“Don’t treat your participant like a prop.”

Vinny, on the other hand, tells the audience this is going to relieve a lot of the stress for the audience, but is going to be stress-

ful for the particpants. He simultaneously warns them and raises the excitement and anticipation in the room. He always gives his participants an escape by saying, “If anyone is having second thoughts or is not up to this, there are no hard feelings” and allows them to retreat to their seat.

After…

After the stage interaction, both Brad and Vinny applaud their participants and thank them. Vinny rewards or bribes them with a prize. After the program, Brad seeks out the stage participants to shake their hands and thank them, as well as saying to their friends, “She was great, wasn’t she?” This personal interaction also can head off any issues if a participant was not okay. This gives you a chance to intervene and solve problems before it gets back to the planner. Brad ensures his success before, during and after the encounter by being sincere and keeping the participant informed. Vinny warns, prepares and offers escape routes to his victims.

Keep in mind, you may not want to integrate onstage participation when you have a short amount of time, a small or odd space in which to work, physical restrictions, and/or limited information on your audience. Overall, though, the payoff is big for this high level of interaction. Just make sure to treat your participants respectfully and make them the star, not the butt of the joke.