Public Speaking Tips for Setting up a Room

I learnt very early, particularly when working with school children, that how you set up the room could have a huge impact on the presentation's success.  With most adults, if the room is not ideally set up, they may mention it at the end or on the way home to their partner, but during the presentation, they will put up with limited visual access or poor lighting and make the best of the situation.  The challenge with children was always to keep them engaged; anything that encouraged them to disengage would manifest quickly.  I worked with a charity delivering One Day Public Speaking programmes to fifteen-year-olds.  In essence, the training day followed the same format each time, so after a few years I was very comfortable with the content, but I would always have days that seemed a lot more hard work than others.  The attitude of the students and the atmosphere in the school would contribute considerably to the success of the day, but after a while I began to notice that how the teaching space was arranged also played a huge part.
Typically we would dismantle the classroom, put all desks to the back and set up a semi-circle of chairs for the students to sit.

Two occasions particularly stay with me.
On one occasion the school did not have a normal classroom free and had to offer me a Chemistry lab: fixed benches with gas taps and high stools around each bench.  The school was not particularly challenging, but this session was because firstly I had several students who most of the time were only half facing me;  it was easy for them to converse with each other in their set ‘circles’ and thereby disrupt the session - and of course, sitting on a stool all day is uncomfortable.

The other occasion was the one occasion when a fistfight broke out during the lesson.
The school was very proud of its new lecture theatre.  Like a university lecture theatre or a medical school, the audience was banked up steeply with each row having its shelf and light in front of the seats for the students to take notes.  It created a barrier between the students and the speaker.  So when each individual came forward to speak, they had this raked wall of faces in front of them, peering through the space between the lights and the raised shelf for the note-taking.  Not only was it a little intimidating, the set-up seemed to offer extra cover for the students in the audience to snipe and make derogatory comments while the speaker was talking.
Like drivers who feel safe to hurl any abuse from the protection of their car, clearly, some students felt safe enough behind their barrier to make comments that they might not have made if sitting directly opposite their speaker.
One speaker did not respond well to the ‘banter’ and the rest of the afternoon was spent in a school disciplinary procedure.

10 tips for setting out a room

1. What is your purpose?

My purpose with teenagers was to set up a supportive, open environment where each speaker felt as comfortable as possible (not always easy – this is Public Speaking).  Therefore the suggested layout that I inherited was ideal: a semi-circle of chairs, where the audience was also a bit exposed and where there was no dramatic difference between where one was speaking and the others were listening - hence the lecture room set up was disastrous, as it gave the audience cover to hide and snipe and left the speaker feeling vulnerable and unprotected.
Training school students is an extreme example, as most of the students were only there because they had to be.   Under most circumstances, the speaker chooses to be present!

2. Lecture

In training over the years, I have also discovered that how a room is set up influences how the audience will engage.  For a lecture you might not want too much engagement; maybe a few questions at the end.  Therefore the traditional lecture set-up already sends a message before the presentation starts:
- rows of chairs (– that is the audience) and the message is clear – sit down quietly, respect the speaker and prepare to listen
- a raised stage, a lectern, a table with a laptop and maybe even a glass of water (- that is for the speaker) and the message here is that this is an esteemed expert who is going to ‘share’.

3. Panel

The audience layout may remain similar to above, but now we probably have a long table on the stage or raised up on a daïs.  There will be chairs behind the table and depending on the quality of the function room, a series of comfortable office chairs behind the table.
The message here is that the experts in the context of the function are ‘superior’ to us.
Remember Alan Sugar in ‘The Apprentice’ will sit on a grander chair than his two deputies and all of them sit on better chairs than the contestants.  The chairs have become a symbol of status.
Therefore if the panel wants to show the audience that they are ‘just like them’ and although they have been invited to share their opinion they do not want to come across as entitled or of higher status, one might consider setting up the same type of chair as the audience has.  Typically local politicians would choose a set-up that shows that they are ‘the same’ as their audience – particularly if they are expecting resistance.

4. Expert Interview

First of all one needs to consider the type of atmosphere one is trying to create and then decide on the room layout based on that.  Sometimes you may want to have a couple of arm-chairs on stage because the interview is intended to be very informal (like two people in a living room).  So whereas the panel of experts is being set up as either special knowledgeable guests on comfortable seating, or more likely elected officers, just like us on similar seating to the audience, a panel sitting on a sofa or in armchairs is visually sending out a message of informality and therefore probably, less intense scrutiny

5. The aisle

I have never been a great exponent of feng shui, but I remember being told that if the toilet faces the front door and both doors are open, all the positive energy that enters the house goes ‘straight down the pan’.  Whether that is true or not, there is still a similar experience when a room has been set up with an aisle down the middle.  It is often the most logical set-up: aisle down the middle, seats to the left and right, which is good for audience access.  The cartoon below shows the room set-up from a Simpsons town hall meeting.
This is fine as long as the speaker is not standing in the middle of the stage.  If the speaker is standing slightly to one side with a large screen centre-stage, this could work.  The problem comes when the speaker is the centre point and all the energy from the speaker goes straight down the aisle and out the back door!
This is why in many theatres there are either two central aisles or none at all, to avoid the energy from the speaker centre-stage being lost.
If you intend to be the main attraction, standing in the middle of the stage area, I would consider arranging the room with two – or if the room is smaller – no aisles. That way you will have a bank of audience in front of you.

6. Audio Visual

And from feng shui, we move seamlessly to Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
I believe that on most occasions the speaker should be the centre of attention.
Typically offices and halls are set up with a screen in the middle of the back wall, which means that the speaker needs to stand to one side and talk to their slides.
Visually we now see the slides as ‘the presentation’ and the speaker becomes the ‘sub-ordinate’ changing the slides.
Therefore I would recommend – where possible and practical – that the speaker stand in the middle and the slides are to one side.
Now visually we know that the speaker is the presenter and the slides are the support.
The NLP becomes relevant when one considers how one moves one’s eyes is supposed to reveal whether one is remembering or imagining a sight, a sound or a feeling.
Typically we are taught that when one is recalling an image, the thinker’s eyes tend to go up and to the left
(or to the right, if viewed from the observers' point of view).
Therefore it might make sense to place the screen up and to the left of the audience because their eyes are now directed to where they store their visual memories.

Some further practicalities for the speaker to consider on the night

7. Acoustics

A room can feel and sound very different when it is empty.  Therefore if we go in early to practise we need to be aware that the acoustics will dampen when the room is full.  In larger rooms, you will probably have a sound system.  It is worth trying it out.  Think through where you might need to move during the presentation and so if you have a handheld microphone, will that limit you?
(And of course – the old favourite! If you have a lapel mic, make sure that it is off or dampened when you go to the toilet)
I remember running a training in the Middle East.  I had a lapel mic and during a break, I was outside the room when the head of training came to me and asked:
‘Who is good amongst our students?  Who will be a good speaker?’
Being a genuine believer that ‘anyone can’, I told him they were all doing well and over time, taking on board a few suggestions they would all be very good.
‘No but who is the best?’ he continued.
Luckily at that moment, the sound engineer came running out of the room waving his hands frantically.
I still had my mic on and everything I was saying was being transmitted in the training hall.
Fortunately, I had not yet said anything to regret!

8. Position

The use of AV and the set-up of the programme will go a long way to deciding where you will be standing or sitting.  The only principle to bear in mind is that whenever you start to speak make sure that you are physically positioned so that if there was an imaginary line shooting straight out from between your feet it would bisect the middle of the audience.  This means that if you are looking straight ahead, your eye-line would be on the centre of the audience (which might not necessarily be the centre of the room) and if you need to move your head to make eye contact with the edges of the audience, you would need to move your head the same amount to each side.

9. Lighting

If you are using notes, make sure that the lighting on the podium is sufficient for you to read comfortably.
Unless you particularly do not want to see your audience, try to remove any lights that are shining directly into your face.  Is it a lecture?  Then you might want the room darkened to highlight the slides.
Are you communicating a live message?  Then you might want the lights strong enough that you can see your audience and respond to them.

10. Entrance

Again this will depend on the nature of the presentation.  You may already be on stage next to the host, but that can sometimes look a little stiff and uncomfortable.  You may be waiting in the wings (assuming there are any) and come on after the introduction.  You may not have an introduction so you will need to walk up positively and be ready to start immediately after you get to your position.  You may be sitting in the front row for the introduction, in which case you need to calculate how long it will take to get from your seat to your position so that you can pick up on the momentum gained from the host’s introduction.
If you are the big ‘I am’, you can wait at the back of the hall and walk powerfully up through the middle of the audience once you have been announced.
And of course, if you are the President of Russia you can wait outside until the announcer with a mixture of awe, reverence and elation asks the audience to welcome:
‘Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’
And the golden doors at the back of the hall open and you walk up through the middle of the adoring crowd as you prepare to share your insights and wisdom.
In Mr Putin's case, the room has not been set up for a discussion or to share as equals, it is all designed to radiate power!