Standing ovations are the hallmark of highly skilled presenters. They occur in proportion to how precisely you reach your audience, whether you hit a true bull’s eye with your delivery and your message. They start long before your final sentence. There’s only one driving element that produces them. Simply put, the depth of your skill in both message and delivery determines the depth of your audience’s response.
After helping many achieve this stellar point both virtually and in-person, here’s how standing ovations unfold as your presentation skills develop. You don’t start with standing ovations. Often you start with indifference or skepticism, and your job is to turn that indifference into interest. As you do this, you’ll see the audience stop multi-tasking and you’ll see a light in their eyes that wasn’t there before.
Then, develop your skills further and watch their minds go completely silent, they’re captivated by what you’re saying, listening, from your first sentence to your last.
As your skills continue to strengthen, even a tough audience starts nodding and reacting positively. Initially you’re getting good energy from individuals. Now the energy of the room shifts slightly as you speak, something has lifted.
Keep improving your skills, and you’ll see this spreads more broadly throughout the audience, the positive reactions get bigger and more noticeable.
Then you’ll notice the audience is fully engaged, leaning in, enjoying it, enjoying you. They’ve lost sense of time and want you to go on. They don’t leave when you’re finished and it’s over, but linger to make it last a little longer.
As you develop the more advanced skills, which very few achieve, giving a presentation undergoes a significant evolution for you. Up to this point it’s science. That science will always be your base. But mastering the science brings you to the point where you now can rise to a level of pure art. Your audience goes beyond listening and is moved by what you’re saying.
As you continue to rise, you’ll see a gradual change as you close your presentations. You’ll face your audience and no longer receive polite, quiet applause that vanishes quickly. Now you are smiling and responding to applause that contains enthusiasm, is much louder and lasts longer. When the audience starts applauding this way, they actually can’t help themselves, it’s spontaneous. They don’t decide to applaud. They suddenly find themselves doing it. They didn’t decide to become enthusiastic, enthusiasm grew as you spoke.
Then, if you continue to walk this path and develop the true art of it, the applause for you rises into a standing ovation. And when you get really good, you start getting spontaneous standing ovations during your talk as well. These start as small ripples of spontaneous applause while you’re speaking and grow into the audience expressing deep personal appreciation. They simply can’t wait until the end to tell you. The audience rises as your skills rise to levels of ability that are too rarely achieved.
There is an art to receiving a standing ovation well. You have to graciously receive it, and enjoy the moment with them.
If you’re virtual, you see it in the exuberant chats and the overwhelming feedback and glowing emails afterward.
I’ve had presenters say, “But you don’t know the group I’m presenting to, they would never applaud.”
If that thought crosses your mind, consider where you are in this progression of skill. In your early stages, applause is usually missing or just polite. You have to master the skills at each step before the next one appears and you fully arrive.
If you are presenting to senior level executives, or if it’s a small group, they probably won’t stand up and applaud. In this case, what you’ll get is different. You’ll see enthusiasm, you’ll get approval for your recommendations, and they’ll go into action supporting you. Their support will be tangible and continue to be enthusiastically sustained after your presentation. This is what you want. You want the green light to go forward, and you want them to throw their weight behind you. When you’re good, that’s what you get.
These reactions don’t happen by accident. You create them. Whether it’s a conference, a sales presentation, presenting a bold, new initiative to senior leadership, or an all-hands, whether you are a seasoned leader or a young, brilliant engineer, your skill in both message and delivery shapes the room long before the applause ever begins. The way you hold attention, the way you guide thought, the way you move from one idea to the next, all of it builds toward that moment. When your skill is there, the audience’s reaction follows.
As your ability grows, the room responds differently. And eventually, you reach the standing ovation. They don’t happen by chance, they happen by art and design.
Yes, standing ovations may be common with motivational speakers and rare as hen’s teeth in corporate presentations. And yes, only the truly dedicated get there. But It’s good to know there’s a real path there for you both virtually and in-person if you are so dedicated.
Be the cause!