When presenting to an audience, where you can, keep the number of seats to the number of audience members.
Doing so will make the audience feel more like a unified whole, rather than a bunch of scattered individuals. You can then hold everyone’s attention more effectively, and the individuals within this body won’t feel as isolated or prone to distraction.
To manage seating well, get a sense before the audience arrives about how many are attending, and then set the number of chairs accordingly. If you don’t have enough time to prepare the room before your presentation, then ask the organisers to set the room to suit the audience size.
If your audience has arrived and there are too many chairs, don’t be afraid to ask your audience to sit closer together before you begin. You will be surprised how accommodating they will be, and then when they move take away the empty chairs.
And if the seating is fixed, you can still create a more engaging experience by asking the audience members to sit within a certain section. You don’t have to say, “please sit next to someone”. Instead, you could say, “Can I ask everyone to sit in the first 4 rows please”.
The other benefit to shaping the room is you are boosting your credibility with the audience before you even begin speaking because of how deliberate and respectful you are being with their attention.
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