{"id":3152,"date":"2015-03-08T22:35:36","date_gmt":"2015-03-08T22:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=3152"},"modified":"2015-03-08T22:35:36","modified_gmt":"2015-03-08T22:35:36","slug":"an-exit-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/an-exit-round\/","title":{"rendered":"An exit round"},"content":{"rendered":"

Presentations are often business affairs. And as such, it’s unusual to get an exit round. What’s an exit round? It’s an actors’ term for a round of applause that happens when the actor leaves the stage – importantly, it’s not because the audience to see the back of him (or her) but rather as an appreciation of an astonishing piece of acting. Typically it might occur in a Shakespeare play after a\u00a0big soliliquy. \u00a0I’ve just done a five hour presentation to PhD students at Imperial College in London and got an exit round.<\/p>\n

Yay\u00a0me!<\/p>\n

Spontaneous applause in a presentation about the difference between parametric and non-parametric inferential statistics! I’m bored even writing it out! God only knows how that happened…<\/p>\n

Well, it’s not just God, actually. I know how it happened. \u00a0In fact I almost orchestrated it. Why? Because the way the course is structured, bookings are predicated on good feedback and the problem I have is that the client simply does not know best in this instance (trust me, I had 24 years in research and these kids are first year PhD students!). That means I need to think about how to perk up the forms a little.<\/p>\n

Moral question alert! \u00a0You need to be able to sleep at night, so think this through before you start to ‘manipulate’ an audience!<\/div><\/div>\n

\"Dave_Allen_1968\"How did I do it? Well on this occasion I used a ‘signoff’. A signoff is simply the antidote to a strapline – an excellent example would be the way Dave Allen finishes his sessions with “And may your God go with you”. \u00a0You need to get your own, of course, and you need to make sure that it’s congruent with the mood of your audience and the circumstances but for what it’s worth, my ‘default’ signoff is<\/p>\n

“Thank you for coming, thank you for staying – and thank you for staying awake!<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

but I’ve used others in different circumstances… even something as simple as just “Safe journey home, everyone<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

What makes a good signoff?<\/h4>\n

The key elements of a good signoff (other than appropriateness – see above) are that<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. it should be absolutely final and leave no room for doubt – there’s no room for uncertainty here. Your audience must be absolutely clear that if they are<\/em> going to applaud this<\/strong> is when you do it<\/li>\n
  2. it should have a pattern – it might be because it rhymes or alliterates, but something that leads to the end with a pattern of some kind means the audience can see the end coming and respond appropriately (because no one likes not know what they’re supposed to do)<\/li>\n
  3. it should be long enough to signal that it is the end but no longer… not a single syllable<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What else have I noticed about signoffs?<\/h4>\n

    I often tell clients that finishing with “Any questions” is a bad idea. It means the presentation peters out rather than finishes properly. Going out with a bang is better than going out with a whimper. If you go to questions my advice is to come back after them with some summary slides, but if you can’t do that for whatever reason, a good signoff can almost (only almost) make up for it.<\/p>\n

    My theatre background shows<\/h4>\n

    The next time you’re watching a stand-up comedian, see how they signal the end of their performance… How do you know when to clap? In fact, look at any theatrical performance and ask yourself what tips the performers are giving you that now is the time to show your appreciation. If you’ve done a good job, people what to say so – but they need to know they’re not going to look foolish when they do that, so it’s important to l orchestrate it, so that everyone is doing it together.<\/p>\n

    Note: it’s possible that the theatre you were in had people in the audience payed to lead the applause. I’ve heard all the rumours but in years and years of touring I’ve never known it happen. That doesn’t mean it never does of course – it might just mean I was too wrapped upon doing my own job at the end of the show! :)<\/div><\/div>\n

    So here’s the important question…`<\/h4>\n

    What’s a good signoff for your presentation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Presentations are often business affairs. And as such, it’s unusual to get an exit round. What’s an exit round? It’s an actors’ term for a round of applause that happens when the actor leaves the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bttradspace-blog-competition","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3152"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3192,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3152\/revisions\/3192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}