About a week before I’m asked to speak, I hope my audiences start thinking. Not about me — about their own experiences, insights, and questions. Many speaking advice books and methods I’ve tried would believe this is a lousy way to build a keynote. That’s because, for the typical speaker, the audience hopes to be entertained or inspired for an hour.
But then, to paraphrase Madonna, what happens when you’re not in the audience and back in your own space? How much of that hour sticks with you in a way that helps you do your work better?
Instead of planning for an hour of edutainment, I spend time researching the places where I’ll be speaking. From the research, I build a unique learning plan composed of prompts that invite audiences into our work together. By the time we’re in the same room, physically or virtually, folks aren’t just passive recipients of information — they’re co-creators of meaning.
I recently worked with the NEA Foundation’s Global Learning Fellows and watched this approach unfold in real time. As the Fellows shared their pre-work reflections through an interactive presentation platform, patterns emerged that would have stayed hidden if I were just in “hype woman” mode or giving a traditional speech. With this interaction, their insights became our collective building blocks…
