Engagement Not Entertainment

Too often in business presentations we equate engagement with entertainment. When we say a presenter was engaging, we usually mean he or she was entertaining: that we enjoyed the presentation.

This, I think, is an artifact of what Neil Postman identified years ago as the media and public's emerging compulsion to "amuse ourselves to death". In modern [especially digital] business culture, this propensity re-emerges as an imperative to create products that "delight" the customer. It is no longer sufficient to meet the needs and satisfy the customer, the customer must be delighted. A similar imperative compels the executive to attempt to delight their audience. To provide not just bread, but circus.

But audience engagement should not automatically be equated with entertainment. Sometimes (not always by design) others may find us entertaining and that may even be appropriate to the occasion. But audience engagement carries with it a more weighty responsibility than to simply be amusing.

I have observed before that Love + Engagement + Energy = Charisma. No one would argue that Winston Churchill lacked charisma. He demonstrated unshakeable love of country and brought boundless energy to office, but when he engaged the House of Commons and by extension the British people with his famous address "...we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills;...", I doubt any of the listeners were amused or characterized the speech as highly entertaining.

Engaging with an audience means knowing and recognizing the audience, listening to (and yes, even loving) the audience, giving the audience what they need to hear, and satisfying them that you understand, in this case, the gravity of the situation and have matters well in hand. That can be quite engaging.