4 Steps to Create REAL Impact at Your Next Event

As a meeting professional, you want to create real impact at your event, but all too often people look back after attending a conference or an annual meeting and, even though they may have had a few nice conversations and taken a few interesting notes, feel like it was all just empty calories?

Cake, or potato chips, are great examples of foods that provide empty calories – and like some conferences or meetings you may have attended, they offer very little that is really useful or nourishing.

But there IS hope…

You CAN ensure that your next company event delivers REAL impact.

Having worked with hundreds of audiences, I know that impact is the MAIN thing that determines the success of any conference speakers or facilitators.

Impact is basically the return on investment that you want your people to enjoy from attending the conference – and the truth about ROI is that impact is not a gamble – it is something that results from four very specific and significant ingredients.

The four steps to ensuring that your next meeting delivers impact are found in the acronym “REAL”

1. Relevance

Whomever you hire – and whatever they present – must be relevant to your people for them to pay it the attention you believe it deserves. 

If you are bringing in a juggler, make sure the performer can connect the dots early in the presentation about how her examples apply to your organization’s challenges.

2. Experience

You must ensure that the event forces your people to interact and experience something so there is an internal connection and engagement rather than being passive receptacles of information.

As a team building event facilitator and speaker, one of the most memorable elements of my message are the short interactive examples that stick in the memory of attendees.

3. Awareness

The third step in ensuring your people enjoy real impact from your next annual event is to transform their experiences into increased awareness – about either themselves or their teammates.

If you want people to ACT differently, you must first get them to believe differently.  Changed perceptions are the catalyst to changed behaviors.

4. Lasting Change

Finally, you must ensure that the presenters you have in front of your team of attendees takes the time to have them identify what ONE or TWO things they will commit to actually changing.

People are like aircraft carriers – they rarely change direction very easily. 

But you can help them to change by making the presentation clearly relevant, involving them with an experiential learning, and increasing their awareness of themselves and others.  Lasting change involves helping them to see that different behavior will produce different results – more success, more profit, more commissions, better performance, etc.

As a speaker and facilitator, the last step in the process is the most difficult – but on stage, in workshops, and in business or teacher team building events, the truth is that people will do what they feel will benefit them. 

Taking the time to have them WRITE DOWN what they will do differently, and then also write down three things that the behavior will help them to improve, will make your audience far more likely to take action and stick with that lasting change in their behavior.

There is no improvement without change – and the REAL impact that your next conference has will be directly in proportion to the number of people you inspire to make positive changes in their daily interactions and decisions.

If you are looking for an energizing motivational teamwork keynote, Sean can deliver a message that is customized to your audience.

You can also follow Sean on twitter or to connect with Sean on LinkedIn for additional information, quotes, and teamwork resources…