Course: The Psychology of Audience Engagement

# Psychology of Audience Engagement: Attention to Action

Begin with this: nobody has ever fallen in love with a slide deck. They were in love with the spirit of it, the emotion, the pledge, the moment in common. That is the spine of this curriculum: the psychology of what it takes to engage an audience and get them to change behaviour translated into practical, do it now learning for people who need results this quarter, not next year.

## Course Overview

**Course Title:** Psychology of Audience Engagement: Attention to Action

**Target Audience and Level**
Emerging leaders and HR managers working in Australian Organisations, team leaders, talent development coordinators, frontline people managers, seeking strategies to deliver more compelling internal communications, learning sessions and external presentations.

**Level:** Intermediate (practical, applied; requires a basic level of facilitation experience)

**Optimal Length and Setting**
3 × 2 hour live virtual meetings plus a one week micro implementation sprint and a 60 minute follow up coaching clinic. Attendees are given pre work and a brief post programme workplace application. Total facilitated time: seven hours; candidate's own work between modules: approx 10 to 12 hours.

**Delivery Mode**
Hybrid first: live virtual (Zoom/MSTeams) delivery with options for face to face cohorts based in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. Resources include editable workbooks, short videos and an LMS checkpoint.

**Issue:** Hands on Labs Duration was really practical constraint
**Cost:** $495 inc GST per person, minimum of 8 students to run, maximum cohort size would be 20.

## Key Learning Outcomes (Behavioural and Measurable)

- Target 3 psychological triggers (novelty, relevance, reciprocity) when overhauling a 5 to 10 minute push presentation or new microlearning module to increase measurable engagement by at least 15% as measured in pre/post participant survey scores

- Create a minimum of two interactive prompts (poll, story prompt, micro roleplay) that raise participant contributions by 30% against current baseline as measured by facilitator logs

- Construct a simple audience persona and alignment map designed to make messaging specific to intrinsic motivations across three different audience segments

- Utilise one ethical data collection method (consent first micro surveys) for the purpose of personalising follow up content for attendees

- Demonstrate one live de escalation and re engagement technique for disengaged participants during an example session making at least a score of 3/5 on the facilitator rubrics

## Why This Course

The world is drowning in content. Attention is scarce and social trust frayed. This programme has nothing to do with selling tricks and everything to do with lasting psychological norms, memory, emotion, social proof, and how you can embed them in your daily workplace communication. Applicable, evidence based and Australia wide for busy teams of Aussies. We (as instructors) like this more than just "more content" as a default approach. Counterintuitive opinion: less is often more, you'll disagree and that's okay.

## Basic Structure and Session by Session Breakdown

### Pre Work (60 to 90 minutes, self paced)

- Quick diagnostic survey; current engagement practices, an example piece of content I recently distributed (slide deck, 1 page brief or canned talk), baseline metrics (e.g., attendance, percentage who actively participate during a slide review discussion or activity application practice, completion)

- Micro lesson (15 minutes): The attention economy, myths and realities

- Reflection prompt: "When did your audience last change their mind? What made it stick?"

### Session 1: The Building Blocks of Engagement (2 hours)

**Learning Goal:** Understanding the cognitive and emotional structures of attention; establishing an audience persona.

**Agenda**

- Opening (10 min): Quick hits of good and bad engagement. Contrast

- Mini lecture (20 minutes): Cognitive load, novelty, attention windows and memory consolidation. Quick stat: 76% of Customers expect organisations to understand their needs (State of the Connected Customer, Salesforce, 2023), and that begins with your audience

- Activity (25 mins): Audience persona workshop, develop three personas for your workplace content such as the time poor manager, the data first analyst or the frontline operator. Utilise templates

- Break (20 min): Relevance mapping, map motivations (intrinsic to extrinsic) to content hooks. Facilitator goes around; coaching on the fly

- Case lab (25 min): Take the pre work sample and identify three cognitive bottlenecks. Decide what to target first

- Reflection and micro commitment (10 min): Each student gets one change they will commit to make for the next session

**Learning Artefacts and Deliverables**
- Persona canvas
- Relevance mapping sheet
- 3 point micro change plan

### Session 2: Emotional Resonance, Story Craft and Social Proof (2 hours)

**Learning Intent:** Convert the theory to narrative and social mechanics to motivate action.

**Agenda**

- Warm up (5 min): A two minute story share, facilitator shares a two minute audience focused story

- Brief theory (15 min): Emotional resonance, why use stories over facts for remembering, metaphor, contrast and stakes

- Story lab (35 min): Participant team converts a learning point into a 90 second narrative using the STAR model:
- Situation
- Tension
- Action
- Result
- Peer feedback rounds

- Social proof and social dynamics (20 min): How group cues change behaviour, designing co created moments (think live polls, co signatures, shared commitments)

- Interactive design sprint (35 min): Build a 5 to 8 minute micro session that uses a story, one interactive element and has a clear next step. Peer critique with scoring rubrics: emotional resonance (0 to 5), cognitive clarity (0 to 5), actionable next step (0 to 5)

- Homework briefing (10 min): Execute the micro session with a small group or practice to at least 3 people; gather two minute feedback and simple metrics used for reflection on attendance or active responses

**Learning Artefacts**
- 90 second story template
- Social cue design checklist
- Peer scoring rubric

### Session 3: Personalisation, Participation and Ethical Engagement (2 hours)

**Learning Intent:** Use data respectfully to personalise, create participatory formats and learn the difference between persuasion and manipulation.

**Agenda**

- Check in and data review (20 min): Tight reports on homework experiments; the group what moved them

- Quick theory (10 min): Intrinsic vs extrinsic: when to use which, why extrinsic tactics fade

- Personalisation practicum (30 min): Design a one slide personalisation plan with consent based microsurveys and segment specific language. Roleplay consent conversations

- Participation mechanics (25 min): On ramp techniques to turn passive listeners into contributors, low barrier entry points (emoji reactions, one word answers, pair share), microcommitments and peer accountability loops

- Ethics clinic (20 min): Delineate persuasion from manipulation. Practical fact patterns, where do you tell people to stop? Group policy draft: 3 principles for ethical engagement in internal comms

- Rehearsal (10 min): Rapid fire through revised micro sessions with the ethical checklist in mind

- Closure (5 min): Commitments and next steps

**Learning Artefacts**
- Consent first micro survey template
- Participation toolkit (5 quick mechanics)
- Ethical engagement policy snippet (3 principles)

### Micro Implementation Sprint (1 week)

Participants run their revised micro session or communication and collect:

- **Quantitative:** attendance; active contributions; completion/uptake metric
- **Qualitative:** 3 short feedback quotes from recipients
- **Self reflection:** facilitator notes; time on task

### Post Workshop Clinic (60 mins)

Group coaching to debrief on metrics, share wins and losses, personal 90 day learning plan.

## Assessment and Measurement

**Pre/Post Surveys**
- Engagement Confidence Scale (on a 1 to 7 scale, self assessed)
- Behavioural intention (the intention to adopt 3 new practices)
- Baseline engagement metrics compared with post implementation metrics

**Roleplay Scoring**
- Facilitator form across 5 domains: attention hook, relevance linkage, emotional resonance, participation mechanic, ethical clarity. Each domain 0 to 5

**Manager Observation**
- Optional: Managers complete a brief observational checklist during the workplace run, 6 items, behaviour change and observed engagement

## Success Criteria (Suggested KPIs)

- **Participatory effectiveness:** 15% more engaged participative behaviour (e.g., number of chat interventions or poll votes)

- **Relevance value:** 20% increase in relevance values (post survey)

- **Practice conversion:** 40% of the participants will use at least one new VA method during their next team meeting

- **Net promoter like metric**