Make Your Workshop Work With EQ

Three high EQ ideas to help you create an engaging experience that stimulates and satisfies.

Whatever your reasons for conducting a workshop, be it to showcase your skills in the interest of attracting clients, create acceptance for an idea or program, prepare people for coaching, change behaviors, develop skills or all of the above, your chances of getting your ideas across and having them received is increased when you demonstrating emotional intelligence. An emotionally intelligent presenter creates and environment in which:

* Learners are engaged
* Participation is vigorous
* Ideas land in both head and heart
* People are motivated
* The “Aha moment” is experienced

Here’s three ideas to help you get present with EQ:

Less Is More I often talk with coaches and trainers who are planning a speech or a workshop and want ideas to help make it effective. Almost always, their plan is to load up the program with content. They support this approach by telling themselves things like: More information is better because it makes me look more knowledgeable, people really want more information and facts are convincing. In this more is better approach, I have seen them prepare a 30-slide presentation for a 45 minute talk.

Stop. I understand that you want to do a great job, but overloading your program with content and focusing on facts could put you at risk of failing. Usually the reason that we think we need more is that we are anxious about our ability to be perceived as valuable. We are scared that we can’t stand up and facilitate a learning experience without tons of details to prove our worth. It is simply not true.

Your ability to be present is what creates value and that is the first lesson in emotionally intelligent presentation.

It’s Not About You! When you are anxious about performing it is easy to get stuck in making the presentation all about you. Thoughts like: “Do they like me?” and “Am I pleasing them,” become more important than truly serving people and being a master of ceremonies of the learning experience.

Recognize and manage your emotions so that you can be present to the needs of your audience. Don’t fake it. Stop and examine your feelings and put a name to them. If you are, tell yourself “I’m really anxious about doing this.” And then do it anyway.

In some situations it is OK to share your feelings with your audience as a well of becoming more present but it must be done in a way that does not oblige them to take care of you in any way.

Make your training or presentation all about them!

Experience Is Everything You can tell me as many times as you like but until I experience what it is you are presenting, I do not really get it. You can vividly describe the taste of chocolate, but only a taste will create understanding. Experiences engender emotion which creates learning. The late Paul MClean, creator of the Triune brain theory said, as best as I can paraphrase, “Without emotion there is no memory and without memory there is no learning.”

If your presentation has one or two exercises or activities that evoke emotion and you use that emotional experience to stimulate insight you will be successful. For example, don’t just tell me what emotional intelligence is, give me an experience of bad customer service and ASK me what that was like and how it could be better.

As you prepare for your next presentation consider these three ideas and instead of over-preparing and gearing up the content, put your attention on using your emotional intelligence to be present and connected.

Joseph Liberti, President of EQ At Work consults with organizations and coaches leaders and coaches to develop emotional intelligence. Learn the skills of emotionally intelligent presentation in his EQ Certification Course for Coaches and Trainers at http://www.eqatwork.com

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