Energize your audience: stand-up and move!

An audience that is tired will get easily distracted and don’t focus on your presentation anymore. You can include an energizer for your audience. For example as a transition between two different section of your presentation.There are lot’s of activities you can let your audience do to bring back the energy in the room.

For example ask your audience to stand-up for a minute and do the “thumb up & point finger exercise”. You will see that even the most intelligent persons will struggle with this simple exercise as it requires some practice and most people haven’t done this exercise before. It will create movement and laughter in the room and will warm up both sides of the brain…
This is how it works:
1) Tell your audience that they should stand up for the one minute “thumb up & point finger exercise”.
2) Tell them to shake their arms a bit to get ready for the exercise.
3) Explain the exercise:
a. With one hand they should point forward with their indicator finger (“point forward”)
b. With the other hand they should give the “thumb up” signal
4) Next they should switch “point forward” right hand and “thumb up” left hand to “thumb up” right hand “point forward” left hand. Tell them they should continue switching between left and right as fast as possible (always having one hand “thumb up” and the other “point forward”, and no other signals).


Determine if such a fun activity would suit the setting and tone of your presentation. There are plenty of other energizing activities that you can introduce to ensure your audience continues to pay attention and remains focussed. Read the book Public Speaking Excellence for more tips and tricks.