Scaling Your Content: Mastering the Shift from One-on-One to One-to-Many
How do you take a piece of content or experience typically shared 1-on-1 and turn it into 1-on-many or 1-on-several thousand? At this size, how do you make a gathering and the content feel personal -- even at scale?
It's possible! Just ask renowned therapist Esther Perel.
Described as an epic 3,000-person group date, Perel’s recent live and in-person gathering offered not only wisdom on the topic of love and relationships but wisdom and a real-life case study on how to personalize a large gathering.
Her choices can be applied to our training, town halls, large conference keynotes, all-company offsites, and more, and help us turn what might traditionally be experienced as lectures now become conversations.
In turn, our gatherings shift from purely informing or entertaining our audience to engaging them long-term.
How to turn a lecture into a conversation
Engaged gatherings are done with you and about you
When you think about the gatherings that most stand out in your mind, they probably fall in the engaged quadrant.
Whether or not you were required to be there as an audience member, the gatherer pulled you in by creating an environment where you felt as if you were an integral part of whatever was happening on stage, on the screen, or behind the podium.
Whether or not the content was created specifically for your crowd at that particular moment, it felt personal. In other words, there was a sense that the gathering was being created with you and efforts were made to make it about you.
Open with a prompt
“What brought you here this evening?”. “What are you hoping to learn”. These small invitations (like the ones seen on the screen as we entered the theater) not only set the tone for the gathering but immediately helped personalize the experience in our own context.
This small choice helped their audience feel seen, pulling them into the experience.
Skilled gatherers don’t simply launch into their message. They become masters at inviting their audience in first.
We want to not only invite our audience to the gathering but also invite their needs and reasons for attending. For example, table prompts placed at in-person gatherings provide a casual and lightweight opportunity for participants to get to know each other and to begin to ponder the day’s content. This gets people talking and putting the content in their own words or frames and fuels the desire to learn more.
Each is a bid into the audience, inviting their perspective, ideas, and contributions.
Unite the room
The beautiful thing about gathering is although we all experience it differently, everyone in the room is sharing something similar. Great craftspeople use this to their advantage to create a strong in-group sensation that binds a group of people together in time.
"How many of you?....", "Who is here..." - Perel asked us to raise our hands, or our phone flashlights to collect data, but more importantly to unite the room to show us what we all have in common.
It is possible to leave a gathering feeling more connected to others in the room, even if you haven’t met them. This is made possible when a gatherer attempts to create a strong in-group. What is unique about this room of people? What do they all have in common?
Perel also united the room during her Q&A. She collected ~10 questions at once and then lumped and themed her answers together instead of answering each question one by one.
It's easy to tune out as an audience member when the question isn't relevant to us. This choice helped us stay present and reminded us what these questions (and underlying needs) all have in common.
Give your audience a role
We don't change because of content. We change because of our connection to the content. That's one reason debriefs and group discussions can be so powerful.
Gatherings that lead towards engagement (versus compliance, informing, or entertaining) hand the gathering BACK to the audience so they develop ownership and more commitment.
Small prompts, discussions, and debriefs are the equivalent of throwing a fishing line out to our audience. They may not connect to the content but we want to allow them to try.
Perel invited us during one especially meaningful section to connect with a small group of people to discuss additional prompts on the screen.
When we give participants a role, we help them feel wanted and needed not only for the success of the gathering but for the change we are seeking. We know that change sticks when people feel pulled to actively participate in the change being offered. This ownership and involvement leads to commitment.
Here are a few examples of how to give your audience a role:
Show your participants something unfinished and solicit their feedback.
Give your audience questions or prompts to pay attention to during the gathering.
Ask people to follow along and check your work or give participants a worksheet to fill out to invite their contributions.
Ask participants to listen to what others are saying to help solidify and aggregate themes.
Ask employees to spend one minute teaching back what they learned or prompt them to share their one takeaway from the gathering.
These small choices demonstrate you need their thinking, empower them, and help them feel seen. Simply put, soliciting their active participation puts your audience in the lead role.
Personalizing a gathering is possible -- even at scale. The biggest effect of all? Reminding us we are not alone.
Lindsey Caplan is a screenwriter turned organizational psychologist who helps HR & business leaders create experiences that boost motivation, engagement, and performance