We’ve been talking about Sun Tzu’s foundation principle in The Art of War, which is “The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors.”

He then goes on to name them: Moral Law, Heaven, Earth, The Commander & Method and Discipline. I’ll go into each of these in a future podcast and connect them to the art of public speaking.

But for the next several episodes we are exploring the eight governing laws of platform presence, which are the ability to engage, persuade impact, and compel an audience using passion, purpose, posture, and projection.

These are the ‘non-negotiable, governing laws of platform presence’ which leads to platform mastery in business pitching, presenting and speaking in public.
Today we are going to talk about engagement.
Engagement implies relationship... of some kind. The relationship between a speaker and an audience it is a relationship based on trust, respect, information, and interaction! As anyone who has ever needed to impart information knows, you need to get through to your audience to make an impact on them. Without engagement… you lose the battle for audience attention.

So, let’s join another live session from the Foundations of Platform Mastery Two Day Workshop, which was run in Auckland NZ, in 2016. We will explore this session for the next five episodes.

Note: Listen to the live session for content.
Here’s the action point of today:
From the very beginning, make it about your audience. Start by putting the spotlight on your them. Make them feel important and be aware of the environment that they are in… or have been in for the past couple of hours. What’s the vibe in the audience? Is it just after lunch? End of the day? Are they tired, bored, or snoring?

I always like to say that engagement starts 30 seconds before you open your mouth.

There’s more to come.