Decision making with a group

Go to [web.sendsteps.com](https://web.sendsteps.com/)

Type in the first question with the possible answers and select one/more of the answers correctly

As the leader of a team or company, it’s always a balancing act to determine how much of a decision should be made on your own, versus how much to have your team, company or colleagues weigh in. Some of the easiest ways to ask a group its opinion, is to ask for a show of hands, ask them to write it down or ask them to do an email survey. However, with each of those methods, there can be downsides. Raising a hand might ask for a favorable decision that is liked by the CEO, and can be influenced by [group thinking](//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink) and desirable outcomes. Doing a survey or writing it down anonymously can be better, but it takes time to tally the results.

### How to get started using only a browser

Problem

Sign up for FREE and download the add-in (download page will pop up automatically)

Then press the button in the Sendsteps ribbon in the top-left corner (Add question) and select Quiz (first button on top left corner) on the pop-up and fill in the question and the possible answers

You can fully adjust your presentation; from different fonts, colors, adding your company logo/brand etc.

Click ‘Start session’ (the play button in the Sendsteps ribbon) and then “Start slideshow”

Click install the add-in and wait until it loads the first presentation automatically

How to get started using our Sendsteps PowerPoint add-in (PC only)

Using the Sendsteps voting feature to get a reliable response from your group.

The current COVID-19 situation has an impact on our daily life, and also our working life. For many around the globe, the office is no longer accessible. Instead your home is now your new office. And with that, online meeting tools replace the regular offline meetings, classes and events. With these online meetings, new challenges appear: How to ensure everyone can participate? How to deal with sensitive topics? And how to keep a larger audience engaged? Questions that are already challenging in an offline setting, let alone in an online space. With Sendsteps you can charge your online meeting with several strong engagement ingredients:

Illustration of a woman during an online meeting

Working from home: how to engage others during online meetings?

In the check-in questions relate to their personal (Corona) home-work situation


Let attendees vote anonymously on the answer options of these questions


Formulate a number of multiple choice questions ahead of your online meeting


Reflect on the outcome and leave space to live comments

Without the live presence of your attendees, it is hard to read faces, to hear a tone of voice or to see body language. Therefore, setup a check-in moment before you start with the actual meeting:

How do I know how my online attendees feel?

Brief attendees ahead of the meeting that questions can be send digitally during a presentation


Alternatively let a sidekick process all incoming questions and let him/her forward the questions to the speakers


Let attendees give likes to questions raised and deal with the best rated questions after a presentation


Next to digital questions, also leave space for live questions and comments

### Questions: how to deal with (many) live questions?

Especially with larger online audiences, it can be challenging to let everyone speak up. Easily it can become messy and unclear. Therefore organize your Q&A properly:

Setup a quiz with multiple choice questions about a specific (work) topic


Let attendees participate (with their names known)


Announce the winner and bring out a joyful cheer through the webcam

### Fun: how to foster online team spirit?
With all the heavy Corona news these days, it is also important to keep looking on the brighter side of things. Of course, if the situation allows it. An online quiz can give a lighter tone and can boost team spirit. Have you considered the big Spring Quiz? A light alternative for Friday afternoon drinks!

Formulate a final open question ahead of your meeting


See the wordcloud develop as attendees share their final thoughts


Reflect on it and end the online meeting in a positive tone

### Appreciation: how to round off an online meeting with energy?
Upon the wrap up of your online meeting, you’d like to let your audience leave with a positive mood. Next to giving all attendees the opportunity to share a last thought or comment, you can also use a wordcloud and visualize the group contribution.

Formulate a survey with a few evaluative questions


Let attendees respond anonymously at the end of the meeting


Process the findings and finetune your next online meeting!

Alternatively, but impacting the response rate, you can send the survey after the meeting


### Evaluate: how to improve your next online meeting?
Now that your new-style online meeting has ended, ideally all attendees appreciate the way they have been engaged. But how to measure that in order to improve the next online meeting?

The 5 ingredients for an online meeting will help to improve the sense of engagement among your attendees and with that the quality of your online meetings. Are you ready?


Experiment, innovate and improve your online meeting!

The current COVID-19 situation has an impact on our daily life. And also our working life. For many around the globe, the office is no longer accessible.

How to engage others during online meetings | Sendsteps

Just like you serve specific wine with a type of dish, you also need to carefully select a specific interactive method with your type of meeting. Get clear for yourself: What is the setting in which you like interaction to take place? ‘Games’ don’t contribute to board room sessions, and a fun ‘brainstorm’ isn’t helpful for students who are close to their theory exam.
Define the type of meeting you’re hosting. What are the topics you’d like to cover, what is the profile of the audience and which questions need to be answered?

From here you can choose an interactive method that matches best your presentation.

Interactive presentation ideas

Present the answer options that describes best the continuation of the scenario

Let the class discuss the answer options


Give your audience a think break of a minute.

### Method | User scenario’s

Think of scenarios in relation to your topics. The more real-life, the stronger the audience can relate to them. Either describe the scenario yourself, or find a matching online video. Halfway the scenario, you can stop your story or video. From there involve your audience;

Use an interactive presentation: to teach something

Present a statement on which the audience can vote ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’

Line up both groups and let each attendee reply once, to make sure that all students on both sides can engage the issue.


Let students cast an identified vote; you now know who replied what.

Switch roles based on the outcome; opponents become advocates and vice versa.

### Method | A forced debate
Play with different points of view, get creative with new ideas and let attendees defend the opposite side of the story;

After the debate, you can let the audience vote again and see how opinions have shifted!

No matter how big of a change you will communicate, in a group it always causes dynamics. With a clever interaction method in place, you can steer more than you would have expected.

Use an interactive presentation: to communicate change

Allow anonymous feedback throughout your presentation, but don’t share it yet on the presentation screen.

Go through the replies after your presentation, but still during the session;


Prepare an overall reply to the questions and share it at the end of your session


For all questions that cannot be answered, indicate as concrete as possible how and when you’ll get back to it

### Method | An open floor
Allow employees to send in questions throughout the course of your announcements. Anonymous responses are the best responses; otherwise you’ll end up with socially acceptable replies.

Involve communication professionals in the formulation of your answers. The more complex the matter, the better such an investment is.

Use the input before the event takes place; finetune your story and brief other speakers.


Give the attendees the feeling of being heard from the very first minute.

Setup and send out a pre-event survey. A survey that your audience can fill out anonymous.


### Method | Pre-event questioning
Rather than waiting until ‘the very moment’, it is wise to already get a clue of the sentiment before the actual meeting takes place.



Did you ever think of compiling a wordcloud from the pre-event survey responses, that can be shown upon entering the venue on the day of the event?



For those interactive presentations, where at the end, you really like to have very concrete outcome, the following ideas might help you:

Use an interactive presentation: to discuss an issue

Now that the profile is clear to you and the audience, start your actual interactive presentation.


Test people’s views on your topics with multiple choice questions and relate to the profiles defined earlier. E.g. from the 80% people who agreed, 20% have a management position and 60% have an executive position.

Ask [multiple choice questions](/en/questions/multiple-choice/) about people’s background, professional activities and interests.


### Method | Audience profiling
Who is in my audience? Formulate questions with which you can define a profile of the audience.

The clearer the context, the more sense the audience feedback makes.

Upon the start of your interactive session, ask your attendees to send in themes that they like to discuss later in the program.


Make a shortlist of the outcome and schedule discussion time for the second part of your event program.

### Method | Free schedule
Rather than scheduling your program from A till Z, leaves some space for spontaneous input.



Your audience has now become the architect of their own event. You might even be able to arrange a speaker who can relate to the open space subject. If so, you’ll for sure leave a lasting impression!

Match interaction with your meeting. What are topics you’d like to cover, what is the profile of the audience and which questions need to be answered?

Picture of an event where the audiences answers question via their mobile phone by using Sendsteps

10 tips: Employee events with an inconvenient message

Not because of the venue or the speaker line-up, but because of an inconvenient message that has to be shared: budget cuts, poor performances or even job losses. How can you as an organization prepare a storyline for such a delicate, yet important and strategic, event?


How to deal with an employee event that is less fun? 

### 1. Tell what it does to you
Express your sincere concern. Obvious maybe to yourself, but by putting it out in words, it helps to build rapport with your audience. Also: tell people what they don’t need to be afraid of. This way you take away possible obstacles that prevents your team from further listening.

### 2. Underline the sense of urgency
Explain what will happen if you continue without any intervention. People need to understand the negative scenario of not stepping up.

### 3. Check-in with your audience
Keep a constant connection with your audience. It’s easy to become too rational when you do all the explaining. Ask every now and then: “how are you?” and encourage short interaction moments.



Here are 10 tips for those who have to bring an inconvenient message:

### 4. Get straight to the point
Don’t take too long to make your point. People are tensed and will lose you when your story becomes too extensive. Make your point loud and clear. Support every point with slides that give a compact summary.

 ### 5. Round off personally
As personal and empathetic as you’ve started your presentation, make sure to round it off in a similar way. Use an inspiring poem or text: as long as it works and still is matching your management style.

### 6. Ask for a first reaction 
Use Sendsteps to answer the question “How do you feel now” and let attendees [respond anonymously](/en/blog/anonymous-feedback-helpful-for-these-3-meetings/) by selecting an answer option. The results on the presentation screen might be conclude negative sentiment, but at least it is clear, people feel heard and it’s easier to address than live reaction.

### 7. Space for live comments
Answering live comments might be challenging, but is important to make people feel heard. Allow digital input for those employees who find it difficult to raise questions out loud. When your board compromises more members, then also invite fellow board members on stage to participate in the audience Q&A.

 ### 8. Follow up with unanswered questions
Not all questions can be answered. Tell people in advance. However, also communicate when and how the audience can expect feedback of those questions that can’t be answered now.

### 9. Stay for drinks
For those who like to approach you more informal, it is helpful to stay during the drinks afterwards. Being present [as a leader], is an important sign on itself already. Leave your inner circle of colleagues for what it is and mingle with as many of your team members as possible: from juniors to seniors!

### 10. Practise and prepare
Such an important meeting requires a joint effort. You might be the messenger, but there’s a team to support you: an [event professional](/en/professional-event-services/) to take care of an appropriate setting, a Head of Communications to guard the tone of voice, fellow board members to support and a moderator who takes care of time management, proper introductions and a streamlined Q&A session. Your prep mostly comes down to practise, practise and practise!

How to deal with an employee event that is less fun? How can organizations prepare a storyline for this important and strategic event?

10 Tips: Employee Event with an Inconvenient Message

Spicy discussions. They’re fruitful for every organization. And an event is a great context to facilitate this: by means of a panel discussion or a debate. A good discussion starts with a well formulated statement. Easier said than done. That’s why we’re happy to share 8 tips on formulating powerful statements.

7 Tips for formulating powerful statements.

A statement that is formulated negatively, easily raises confusion. E.g. “Alcohol commercials shouldn’t be prohibited”. Instead formulate “Alcohol commercials should be prohibited”. The last statement is clearer and therefore easier to answer!

## 2. Be controversial.
It’s simple, a statement that everyone agrees with, won’t spark a discussion. Try to be on the edge. How about “In Amsterdam all museums should be freely accessible to everyone”?

1. Formulate positive.

## 3. Stay objective.
Prevent misunderstanding and formulate objectively. Words like “often”, “beautiful” or “difficult” are subjective. “The beautiful city of York should be protected from mass tourism”. What is beautiful for you, might be ugly to somebody else. Therefore and in this case, leave out the word “beautiful”.

## 4. Keep it short and simple [KISS]!
The shorter, more controversial and clearer your statement, the more passionate the discussion with your speakers and audience will be.

## 5. Let somebody check your statements.
Once you’ve formulated your statements, you might want to ask somebody else to read them. The last thing you want during your event is a discussion or misunderstanding amongst your audience about the formulation of your statement.

## 6. Brief panelists in advance.
Now that you’re satisfied with your statements, you can brief your panelists ahead of the actual event: this way they can prepare what to say and how to contribute. However, this might be different per occasion: if you want to keep the panel discussion more spontaneous, then obviously don’t do this.

## 7. Engage your audience.
Panel discussions can easily become static, therefore engage the audience frequently. When introducing a statement among the individual panelists, first let the audience vote ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ through [interactive voting tool Sendsteps](/en/questions/weighted-voting/). Before showing the results, ask a panelist on how he/she thinks the audience will react. Then show the results and either confirm the panel in their reasoning or friendly confront them. For sure you now have an energetic kick-off of your debate or panel discussion!

A good discussion starts with a well formulated statement. Easier said than done. Here are 8 tips on formulating powerful statements.

7 Tips for formulating powerful statements | Sendsteps

With an ongoing digitalization, the need for a workforce that easily adapts to a fast-changing world, becomes more eminent. On one hand many jobs will get lost because of digitalization. On the other hand, some workfields will see a higher demand in jobs. E.g. in IT- and Customer Service related jobs. Plus, a lot of jobs do not even exist today; new jobs will be created that can tackle tomorrow’s challenges.

Manpower Group, the third largest staffing firm in the world, calls it the “skills revolution”. Employees that upskill themselves and employers, out of a visionary leadership, facilitating their employees as such. In recent studies Manpower interviewed 18,000 employers in 43 countries. According to this group, employers state that problem solving skills belong to the top-3 most valued skills of future employees.

Team Building Problem Solving Activities

Problem solving activities for small and large groups


Team games, puzzles and other fun activities


Leadership-related problem solving activities

## We came up with the following team building activities that can contribute to curiosity and innovation within your company:

**Stranded at the workplace.** Maybe not one the likeliest scenarios, but imagine a small group to get stuck in the office. Let the group decide which 10 items in the office are needed to survive for the coming days. And let the items be ranked in order of importance.

**A Lego challenge.** For teams that you like to challenge with activities that involve listening skills, you might want to consider good old Lego building blocks! Divide your group into smaller teams. The facilitator will build a Lego construction, but only individual team captains can see both the building process, as well as the final result. The team captain then has to instruct his team to come up with exactly the same structure without the person touching his team’s construction. It’s all about communication from here.

All of the activities listed have a common element, which is solving a problem. For that, several steps have to be taken. First of all defining and analyzing the problem, followed by determining what to do and deciding how to implement a solution. The final step is to evaluate what went well and what can be improved. Even the most fun activities, can be evaluated in a serious way, leaving a team with great lessons learned. It all starts with leaving your desk and to get out of your comfort zone;

## Problem solving activities for small groups:

Out of your comfort zone, away from your desk!

**Crossing the line.** Clearly one of the more serious exercises for a large group is “Crossing the Line”. In a room, draw or make a line in the middle. Then ask people to cross that line, based on questions whereby attendees have to answer yes or no. The set of questions is carefully formulated at forehand. During the exercise no sound is permitted and there’s respect for everyone in the room.

**Escape Room.** An increasingly popular problem solving activity, is visiting a so-called escape room. These commercial venues are often found in large warehouses, farms or old buildings. The concept is simple: a group has an hour to get out of a room that is locked. The often themed rooms [like a prison, a wild west saloon or a an operating room] are full of hidden clues, codes and keys. With every riddle solved, the group is a step closer to escaping! No worries for those not picking up on the clues; after an hour the room gets unlocked again. From there you might want to analyze how the escape went. Is there anything you can tell from it that for example relates to leadership within your group?

### Problem solving activities for large groups:


**Scavenger Hunt.** The principle of the scavenger hunt is simple but fun. In advance you formulate a list with items that the groups have to collect; without purchasing them! Because none of the items can be bought, it will force the groups to be creative and to bring all problem solving skills to the table. The scavenger hunt items can be located in the office, outside or even in nature. The group that brings back all items, in the fastests time, wins.

**Group Timeline.** Visualize a timeline and on it mark each person’s date of birth. From here let each person think of 3 moments in their life, happy or sad, that made an impact. Examples can be the day you got married, the day you’ve started a business, got your first pet or very different scenarios. Briefly let everyone write down the moments on post-it notes and take a short moment to position the moments on the timeline. Not only will this tell you more about your colleagues, it can also be interesting to now question how this timeline impacts the functioning of a team. Clearly one of the more serious activities to execute with your team – but one that can lead to interesting outcomes!


### Problem solving: activities, games, fun activities (100-150).

**Taking a personality test.** To better understand yourself, your colleagues and even to understand the type of leadership present within your team, a personality test can be of great value. There are dozens of tests out on the web. From fun tests [often for free] to in-depth tests like a color test or the well-known Myers-Brigg Type Indicator [MBTI]. With many of these tests, consultants and trainers come with it. You might want to invite such an expert to your next team meeting. Somebody who facilitates a session about personalities with you. An external professional [an outsider], sometimes has the ability to zoom in better and more objective, than you yourself or one of your colleagues. Out of this session you can even distill what kind of leader is needed for your team and how you can agree to a path of getting there (be it through personal development activities or in a next set of team building activities).

**Challenging Perspective.** Before gathering, ask attendees to register the last 10 minutes of getting to the meeting space or venue. Once you meet, write down your most remarkable, interesting or beautiful observation. No matter how big or how small. Now, make pairs and exchange experiences. Then have a plenary evaluation and randomly pick somebody reflecting out loud on his/her observations from the other person [let’s call him John]. Now let somebody else reflect on John’s appearance today. Another person now tells John one thing to improve on. Finally, a last person reflects on all three previous colleagues: what does their analysis say, not about John, but about the group and their way of looking at people? Is there anything that can be said about problem solving and the way the group approaches this? This can be a fun, yet also confronting game.

### Problem solving leadership activities:

**Company Concentration.** As a child we all played the memory card game. One of the puzzles whereby cards with pictures are flipped. You take turns and per turn you’ll have to memorize where the individual cards are positioned in order to form pairs of the same pictures.

**What’s my name.** A sweet problem solving game is “what’s my name”. Let one or more people come up with names of well-known people: still alive or from the past. Now write the name down on a sticky note, put it on someone’s forehead and let that person walk through the room asking individual team members yes/no-questions. A playful way to interact with new colleagues and learning how to ask the right questions!

**If you could ask one question.** In advance think of roles, challenges or activities someone fictively should execute. For example, plan a wedding, getting the Olympic Games to your country, make the world’s largest apple pie or other scenarios that involve problem solving. From here the attendees should write down only one question of which the answer potentially should be sufficient to let someone do the job. The group can now discuss the individual questions and decide as a team what would be the best question to ask.

**Do-it-yourself challenge.** Give different groups one assignment and 30 minutes. The assignment would be to come up with a team-building activity that is realistic in terms of budget, time and effort and that serves leading current themes of the organization. Not only does this result in your own team generating valuable proposals, it also says something about values, perspectives and desired directions.

With an ongoing digitalization, the need for a workforce that easily adapts to a fast-changing world, becomes more eminent.

Team Building Problem Solving Activities | Sendsteps

Did you ever think of your presentation as a first time date? Imagine – it’s really not that different. Upfront you are busy with what to wear, what to say and especially what not to say. You don’t need an awful lot of dating experience to know that in the end a date always goes different than expected. But nevertheless, we often feel we can never do without a proper mental preparation.
It requires a similar approach to keep an audience engaged during a presentation. And to steal their hearts. When you aim for an interactive and inspiring presentation, then attention to many details is needed. In this article we explain you more on how to keep audience engaged during presentation.

How to keep an audience engaged during a presentation.​

… by facilitating fulll audience participation during presentations?


… through the use of PowerPoint during presentation?

**We do so based on these questions – how to engage your audience:**

**Start personal.** Make the stage and the vibe yours. Share something personal and from there build the bridge to your theme. By doing so, you relate to your personal drive and motivation and you give context to your story. This makes it easier for an audience to engage with your topic and to understand the bigger picture.

**Know your audience.** When in a restaurant with your date – you don’t start talking out of the blue. By knowing the other, it helps to find the right tone, to underline similar shared experiences and to create mutual understanding. Ask a few questions to individual attendees before starting your presentation. Or conduct a short pre-event survey and use the input for your presentation. People often aren’t interested in speeches, but they do like an inspiring conversation instead.

**Treat time as precious.** When given a time slot of 30 minutes – use 25. No matter how interesting your presentation is, spare time is often considered as a little present. But how to use time in other valuable ways? From a more strategic angle you can use time to underline your message; Take a 3-8 seconds pause before telling the really important part. Even the worst smartphone addicts will pay attention now. It might feel awkward in the beginning, but then notice the impact, you’ll get the hang of it!

Every speaker is different, each story carries a different energy and each time an audience changes; that is in size, in experience and in culture. Many ingredients influence the course of your public speaking performance.

### Yet, here are some basics that are universal and yet powerful to be aware of:

How to engage an audience in public speaking

**Games to engage an audience.** The most popular games to play are often quizzes. Through the use of audience response systems [like Sendsteps], you can easily setup a digital quiz. As such you can quickly see the scores are and there’s no unclarity about the winner. Add a timer for each question and a little background music to get the quiz buzz going! As for the quiz itself: relate the [multiple choice questions](/en/questions/multiple-choice/) to trivia to keep it light or make it more interesting and dive into your subject. Add a little product placement [clever when sponsors are involved] and the winner leaves the venue with a nice price from the organization or the sponsor!


**Fun ways to engage an audience.** Next to a quiz, there are other ways to keep people’s attention during presentation and meetings. Here are some ideas and fun ways (to engage):

**Pre-recorded video interview.** Before your event, script an interview and then record it with yourself and imitate someone popular or interview somebody else. When live on stage, show the video and ask the scripted questions and let the person on the video reply. Show your creative side and imagine how hilarious this can turn out!

**Build a Word cloud.** Through the use of an audience response system you can start [building a live word cloud](/en/questions/wordcloud/) with your audience. Ask for everyone’s participation and let attendees send in a one-word reply to a fun question. “What did you want to become when you were 10 years old?”, “Who would you like to spend a coffee with?”.


**Play Live Music.** Surprisingly music is not often an ingredient of a corporate event, or part of a presentation. But why not? It’s a nice neutralizer in the midst of all the content shared. And it opens the mind for any of your ideas shared in your upcoming presentation.

**Creative activities to engage an audience.** Apart from single event ingredients, like a word cloud or a quiz, you can also work with a [sidekick](/en/professional-event-services/). A person who constantly monitors the sentiment within the audience. As attendees cast votes, send in remarks or ask questions [through their smartphone]; the sidekick is the first person to see all of that coming in. On scripted or spontaneous moments, he puts forward the most intriguing contributions. Not only does it help the chairman for orchestrating the audience response better, it also adds a nice dynamic throughout the event program. Attendees feel heard, can respond with honest thoughts and you’ll be sure that based on your audience input that you’ll get to the core. The role of sidekick can be executed by a professional sidekick or by somebody from the own organization. Be aware that this requires good skills in terms of listening and simultaneously scanning large volumes of incoming content, plus presenting skills for bringing the content forward lively and clear.


A game element during a presentation requires that you’re in tune with the vibe of your event. A game can make or break it. The more serious the topic, the less inviting it is to go ‘out-of-the-box’, let alone to get funny. Then again, if you know how to introduce it with confidence and flair, then you might get your crowd on the edge of their chairs!

Games to engage audience during presentation

## How to engage audience in powerpoint presentation

As much as PowerPoint can have a negative connotation, it still is the most used presentation tool worldwide. Some people can lose themselves in the preparations, some feel safer using it and others pull of a great performance. So how to come up with a presentation that will engage your audience and foster participation?

**How to make presentation interactive?** The quickest and best way to use Sendsteps is to add a number of multiple choice questions. Use it as an icebreaker, or test your crowd’s knowledge or make an audience profile based on a number of profiling questions. Or do you dare to let attendees respond openly through their smartphone? Enable the audience to voice their opinion, to raise questions and to share ideas. Either allow all responses directly on the presentation screen, or filter messages through your tablet or smartphone and from there assign a selection to the screen. The mix of open content and polling will result in a lively session! Click here to watch a short tutorial and get yourself going!

**Interactive presentation ideas for college?** How to get a conversation going in larger classes? For interactive college ideas you’ll quickly notice how Sendsteps can help you mobilizing an entire class. Without singling out any of your students – even not the quiet ones. Use the open question “what do you expect from today’s course?”, let students come up with associations on a theme and put it in a live wordcloud, play a quiz based on the discussed content or let one of the students be sidekick on behalf of the class. Dare to experiment and to design your class slightly different. With it you’ll see that there’s more to asking “are there any other questions”!

**Less is more.** Challenge yourself and write as little as possible on your slides. Or simply skip all text and make use of images instead. Spend your time on browsing powerful images, rather than on formulating clever texts. Are you planning on using video? Make sure to test it before and in the venue itself again!

**Ask for feedback.** Although a presentation itself can be rehearsed with somebody giving you feedback, this might be a time consuming project for you or at least the other. Still, if you have the chance – why not! But spreading your PowerPoint around with a few of your colleagues or peers: that’s an easy task with almost always some valuable input!

### Make a presentation interactive

With help of Sendsteps [audience response system](/en/audience-response-system/) you’ll bring your presentation to a new level: an interactive one!

Here are some ideas to play with:

Aiming for an interactive and inspiring presentation? Learn how to keep the audience engaged during a presentation.

How to Keep an Audience Engaged During a Presentation

Infographic about preparation makes introverts the best presenters

Preparation makes introverts the best presenters

Chances are you would be described as an introvert. There is no need to worry. Famous introverts like Audrey Hepburn, Emma Watson, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi and Warren Buffett got used to being in the public eye despite their shyness.

There is a common belief that extroverts are the best presenters. They might have character traits which make easier to be in the spotlight. Otherwise, creating a compelling presentation and delivering a message smoothly is not impossible for introverts either. Introverts’ strengths are taking the time for preparation and focusing deeply on one subject. Being prepared gives you confidence to tackle any presentation-related fear. We collected useful tips to turn any introvert into the best presenter.

Do you feel that you are not confident enough to step onto the stage?

Do you feel that you are not confident enough to step onto the stage? Chances are you would be described as an introvert presenter.

Preparation makes introverts the best presenters | Sendsteps

Manager explaining something to an employee

This interactive map of leadership styles will make you a smarter leader

## Draw attention

Is an effective leader visionary or democratic? Maybe both? We believe that the most successful leaders are able to adapt their leadership styles to business situations and they can switch among leadership styles as needed. Different management style is suited for strategic planning process and crisis management. Powerful leaders can also behave differently in each phase of the business cycle. However, there is only so much any person can change. And character traits are closely associated with leadership styles. They determine for a great deal the typical attitudes of any leader.

Looking at popular quotes easily found on the internet we plotted a couple of famous –  in the news –  leaders. This way an interesting pattern emerged.

## We, myself and I
There is the collaborative leader on one hand of the spectrum. On the other hand you have the visionary captain taking all the decisions by (mostly) him self. That doesn’t mean collaborative leaders can’t be visionary but it tells a lot about how leaders try to reach their goals.

## It just feels right vs first principles
Another pattern that emerged was the way decisions are being made. You can take logical thinking and data gathering to an extreme (Elon Musk’s first principles approach) making you data-driven. Or you can have an instinct strong enough to create Steve Job’s famous “reality distortion field’.

## Loosely fitting life cycle
Two dimensions lead to four quadrants. And they put interesting companies together. In a start-up phase a founder team often works together closely on a shared dream. They feel they are on to something: Intuitive, WE. If things go well they want to grow and start gathering data to see how that works best. But still nimble enough to be able to make decisions that reflect the entire company culture the decisions are made by a larger group. Data-Driven, WE. Then in order to sustain growth and keep the then ROI hungry investors happy there is often a transition period. Money needs to be made, though decisions need to be taken. A power struggle emerges and a Captain arrises. Taking decisions based on data. Then, when a company has made money for years innovators dilemma catches on. This is a situation that requires a captain willing to take a visionairy decision on the future of which she has no data yet. Based on intuition. Intutive, I. Obviously this is just a way of looking at it and by no means science. But I think it does show that it can help to be conscious about your leadership style. Being aware of what kind of leadership you are portraying can give insight in the phase your company is in. We are always open to your feedback so if you think we should change something about this map, or have other remarks please let me know.



We believe that the most successful leaders are able to adapt their leadership styles to business situations and they can switch among leadership styles.

Interactive map of leadership styles | Sendsteps

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