Use a Keynote Speaker to Enhance the Impact of your Internal Management Event before it even begins.

The experience of a Speech and your event starts long before it actually happens. Experiences are much more than just the physical occurrence of the event itself. So to enhance the impact of your event, use the Keynote Speaker to help enhance the anticipation phase.

The purpose of this article is to show how you can make the most of your Internal Management Event, even before it starts, by booking a Professional Keynote Speaker to help enhance the anticipation phase of your event.

Anticipation = Experience

How we feel about what is going to happen influences our experience of what actually happens. This is why it is crucial to evoke a sense of positive anticipation in our audience before the event begins.

How we feel about what is going to happen influences what actually happens.

The economists Marion Clawson and Jack L. Knetsch have created a Multi-phasic Model* to explain this phenomenon. In their paper, The Multi-phase Nature of Event & Festival Experiences, they explain that ‘experience goes further if the anticipation and planning lead to a positive decision to participate.’

* The Multi-phasic Model provided by Clawson and Knetsch, two economists from USA and Canada, views experiences as consisting of five phases: 1) anticipation 2) travel to site 3) actual on-site experience 4) travel-back phase 5) recollection phase. They argue that experiences are complex: they not only consist of the actual on-site experience but of the phases before and after it. The key findings of the paper includes that the majority of visitors generally feel the excitement, energy, and emotional values for the event during the anticipation phase and that there is a common pattern of increased joy and satisfaction from the anticipation of an event.

To apply this to your event, a Professional Keynote Speaker can help you with two important factors: 1) the psychology of the anticipation phase, & 2) how to ask the right questions to create positive anticipation.

1) The Psychology of Anticipation

Anticipation is so powerful that the way we anticipate something changes the way we actually perceive it. According to Dan Ariely*, psychologist and behavioural economist, our mind gets us to experience the reality that we anticipate. So we view the world through glasses that are strongly coloured by our preconceived notions.

* Ariely is a three-times New York Times bestselling author and was named one of the 50 most influential living psychologists in the world in 2018. His work focuses on the psychology of decision-making and cognitive illusions. His research on anticipation suggests that the reality we end up experiencing is basically a reflection of the reality we anticipate. In his 2013 TEDx talk he said that we view the world through glasses that are strongly coloured by our preconceived notions.

This highlights the need to use the anticipation phase of your event to set up the right expectations. Because as Ariely says, “When we anticipate something, the world can actually conform to our expectations and be a bit closer to what we expected. Our mind can change the reality we experience.”

When you hire a Professional Keynote Speaker they will help you take this into consideration because they also understand that people remember more information that is consistent with their expectations.
(For more information on how a Keynote Speaker can help increase the learning experience at your event, see our article: Why a Professional Keynote Speaker will make you Laugh.)

2) The Power of Questions

One of the most practical ways of enhancing the anticipation phase is to ask questions; to gather questions from your team and to simulate them with questions from the Keynote Speaker.

Questions influence our future behaviour.

Questions have a strong persuasive effect. Indeed, questions influence our future behaviour. One study* found that just by asking people whether they are going to buy a new car in the next six months increased their purchase rates by 35%.

* The study was conducted in 1993 by social scientists Vicki Morwitz, Eric Johnson and David Schmittlein with more than 40 thousand participants. The study was published in the Journal of Consumer Research titled Does Measuring Intent Change Behaviour? As the title suggests, they investigated the impact of measuring intent on subsequent purchase behaviour. The result of the study was that the effect of simply asking once about one's intention to buy increases the subsequent purchase rate.

Start by gathering questions from your team. Questions about strategy & tactics, aspirations & operations, now & next, etc. Add to these the key questions your leadership team, department, and CEO, are dealing with.

Next discuss these with your Keynote Speaker so they can add to them, challenge them and clarify them. So that together you turn your event into a set of burning questions.

Turn your event into a set of burning questions.

Then get your Keynote Speaker to send this set of questions to everyone before the event. You can, of course, send these yourself. However, if you do so you will miss out on the impact of having an ‘external voice’ after them. (See article: The Top 3 Reasons Why CEO’s Love a Great Keynote Speaker.)

Anticipation equals experience. So start establishing a sense of positive anticipation in your audience in advance. Get them thinking about the topic of your event before it actually begins. Use your Keynote Speaker to kickstart in them the anticipation phase, which will greatly influence the success of your event.

For more insights into how a Professional Keynote Speaker can impact your event download Risk Report on hiring a Keynote Speaker for your corporate event.