Get People to Absorb Information the Way You Want It!

How do you get peo­ple to absorb infor­ma­tion in a dis­cus­sion?  How do you drive your mes­sage across (that is easy) and reg­is­ter them in their heads (this is hard)?  How do you get them to do what they are sup­posed to do (as intended and planned) after the meet­ing?  The prob­lem is peo­ple have dif­fer­ent agenda, dif­fer­ent ways of think­ing and dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing.  At the end of the meet­ing, they may not digest what you had intended to deliv­ered.  They may have a mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what you intended to say.  All these can be attrib­uted to var­i­ous rea­sons, such as poor pre­sen­ta­tion, poor deliv­ery, poor speech, etc.  One of them is preva­lent in all human pre­sen­ta­tions is not absorb­ing infor­ma­tion fully in the discussion

Again, they may not absorb infor­ma­tion fully for var­i­ous rea­sons such as the unclear pre­sen­ta­tion objec­tives and poor speech that may result in less atten­tion span on what you are say­ing.  Their mind is float­ing some­where else.  They do not find the topic inter­est­ing.  How do we get them pay­ing atten­tion to us and absorb the rel­e­vant information?

1. Present in dia­grams and illus­tra­tions – Refrain from being wordy in your pre­sen­ta­tion slides and speech.  It takes more effort to pay atten­tion through the ears then the eyes.  Sel­dom have we seen peo­ple with their eyes shut and putting full atten­tion through the ears.  Stud­ies have also shown that most peo­ple absorb infor­ma­tion visu­ally instead of the other senses (hear and touch).  With all these rea­sons, there is no doubt that it will be more effec­tive for your pre­sen­ta­tion to be in dia­grams and illus­tra­tions to allow bet­ter absorb­ing of information.
2. Repeat – By repeat­ing the infor­ma­tion that you are deliv­er­ing, you are empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of the infor­ma­tion.  Repeat­ing also allow atten­dees that have missed your ini­tial infor­ma­tion deliv­ered to be absorbed again.  They may not have under­stood it ini­tially too and repeat­ing the infor­ma­tion allows them to re-think, and re-focus the infor­ma­tion you are say­ing.  How­ever, do not abuse repeat meth­ods that may end up counter-productive.  It will in fact becom­ing a form of nag­ging than rep­e­ti­tion of information.
3. Get peo­ple to think – A one-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the pre­sen­ter does not guar­an­tee that your atten­dees are lis­ten­ing to what you are say­ing.  That means, that isn’t any guar­an­tee if they absorb and under­stand the infor­ma­tion fully as well.  Design pre­sen­ta­tions that get peo­ple to think.  Spur their thoughts in the pre­sen­ta­tion.  This is done through relat­ing their life expe­ri­ences.  The pain they are expe­ri­enc­ing.  The ben­e­fits that they can reap by doing what you are say­ing.  When the atten­dees are engage with infor­ma­tion that is in their con­text, they will be gen­er­ally more atten­tive to what you say and absorb infor­ma­tion in the presentation.
4. Get peo­ple to take action based on the infor­ma­tion they had absorbed – To com­plete the entire pre­sen­ta­tion and get peo­ple to absorb infor­ma­tion, you will need them to take action based on the infor­ma­tion they had absorbed.  Not only it gets them to think on the absorbed infor­ma­tion, they become expe­ri­ence by putting what they have learnt into use.

These are some meth­ods you can use to get peo­ple absorb the infor­ma­tion you intended them to receive.  There are also other meth­ods avail­able too.  What works for you may not be for some­body else.  What are your tech­niques in get­ting peo­ple to absorb information?

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