Resources

Mastering the Art of Youth Engagement: Elevate Your Public Speaking & Engagement Skills

---

Engaging young people can be tough! Here are some of my essential tips and insights for Practitioners to connect, inspire and Engage young audiences.

There are no easy gigs when you work with young people. It’s not necessarily a case of bring your A-game or go home, but it’s certainly close! Young people are the most discerning group you could ever hope to deliver to. If you’ve ever engaged with them, you’ll know they’re quite happy to tell you exactly what they think.

I love working with young people and have done so for over 15 years. The most rewarding part of my job is the delivery and engagement I have with them. But fall short of expectations, and they’ll certainly let you know if you haven’t hit the mark. Isn’t that a great thing? We tend to lose that blunt honesty as we get older and enter the workplace, which of course is a good thing. However, with the right mindset and reflective practice, these experiences can significantly refine your skills over time.

I’m curious – what’s the most direct and honest feedback you’ve received from a young person? How did it change your approach? I’ve had some real crackers in my time, but all have helped me fine-tune the craft of public speaking, engagement and delivery.

For early practitioners, understanding this as a learning process is crucial. It’s easy to get discouraged when things don’t go as planned. Let’s reframe these moments as opportunities to learn and refine our practice.

Why Am I Writing This?

I was recently asked about the best ways to deliver public speaking and engagement, especially with young people. Early in my career, advice was scarce or not tailored to this audience. Most tips were aimed at company executives, which in my opinion isn’t the best approach for engaging with young people. I’ll cover this in more detail in one of our upcoming Empowering Educators: Lightning Skills Series videos, where I’ll share some real-life examples.

I believe much of the general practice is not always appropriate when engaging with young people. To put it more accurately, general advice is ‘okay’ as ‘general practice,’ but if you really want to go one level deeper and truly engage, you need another layer of information and tools to draw on. It is this very specific and truly important information that I feel is lacking.

My Experience With Engaging Young People

Based on my work, here are a few key areas this learning can apply to:

• Talks to large groups of young people

• Engagement with subgroups and ‘hard to reach’ or ‘disengaged’ young people

• Delivering workshops, programs or lessons

• Delivering capacity building, knowledge transfer, or skills development content

I’ve compiled this content from my experience to share with sector colleagues, partners, and my LinkedIn family – and anyone else who’s interested.

Key Tips for Public Speaking and Engagement

Lead with Engagement

My personal philosophy:

👉 Master Engagement

👉 Master Facilitation

👉 Master Message

Without engagement, your message is likely to get lost. Engaging your students, especially hard-to-reach young people, is crucial as it opens the door to learning.

What I find works for engagement:

– Interactive, activity-based learning

– Technology: self-directed, personalised or gamified content

– Focused and well-planned elements of engagement, within your educational and capacity building content.

I find even the hardest-to-reach young people can engage with this form of learning.

The Hook

Think of casting a fishing net out to your audience to pull them into your talk or workshop. Don’t assume they’ll engage immediately, I’m sorry to have to tell you this but students may not ‘want’ to listen to you straight away.

Ask yourself:

– Why would they engage?

– What’s the benefit to them?

A good hook:

– Engages students straight away

– Helps build rapport quickly

– Puts students at ease

– Provides an engaging way to introduce the topic

My advice is, don’t start with..

Hi, my name is xxxxx

The aims and objectives of this workshop are:

Aims xxxxxx

Objectives xxxxxx

Again, I’m sorry to burst anyone’s bubble here, my aim is to help and add value…

Let’s pre heat and warm the oven up first before we start baking a truly marvellous cake. Let’s get these young people warmed up, firstly with your Hook as above.

Slides

Don’t be owned by your slides. Be prepared enough to continue without them if needed. Imagine you had a power cut – could you still deliver your presentation effectively? If the answer is yes then I’d say you’re ‘not owned’ by your slides.

Prepare thoroughly but maintaining your authenticity is crucial. Don’t be overly slick, I know right, I gave you permission to not be perfect. I can honestly say being too slick and polished can often lose authenticity.

Tone, Pitch & Pace

These are vital for conveying important messages. Slow down before key points, articulate clearly, change your tone, and reiterate the message. This helps keep the audience engaged.

Tips:

👉 Slow down ahead of key messages

👉 Articulate clearly

👉 Change the tone

👉 Reiterate the message

✅ Increased chance of embedding the key message

Body Language

Adapt your body language to your audience. Whether they’re adult professionals or young people, understanding their needs and fears is crucial.

Understand your audience – FEAR example below:

I once did a talk to an audience of professional practitioners about why young people don’t always attend Higher Education events. To illustrate FEAR, I placed envelopes under three chairs, each asking that person to sing their favourite Beyoncé song. The expressions on their face when they read that was priceless!

We need to remember that sometimes young people don’t appear to engage due the environmental uncertainty or worry about speaking up in front of peers aka worry and fear. This can often lead them to become ‘psychologically guarded’.

Engaging Activities

Keep it simple, quick, thought-provoking, and effective. Take your audience away from convention and mix it up to catch them off guard, at times.

Final Tips for Engaging Young People

👉 Pause and embrace silence. It can be powerful and helps prevent speaking too quickly, which can dilute your message.

Engagement is key in any talk, workshop, or training. Be prepared to adapt and always seek to refine your practice.

I hope you enjoyed this blog and took something from it. Until next time, thanks for reading. Unless I get zero readership, I’m sure I’ll write again soon.

Bye for now…

Sean Dirrane, Managing Director | Cosmos Engagement Ltd.

P.S – We now have a video for engaging young people, with a particular focus on working with hard-to-reach young men. You can also find it on our Resource Hub.