Skills for Effective Engagement

Image of a light installation at Lancaster Priory as part of the 'Light up Lancaster' exhibition.
Communicate your research
Effective presentations
Writing for impact
Organising an engagement event
Facilitation skills
Influencing and negotiation skills
Entrepreneurial Skills

Communicating your research

If you are an academic or researcher, engagement involves communicating your research, often to non-experts in your field. There is no one way to do this. Some academics have a natural ability to communicate and connect, others may find it more of a challenge. You will need to work out a style that works for you.

Bright Club is a unique opportunity to communicate research through a short comedy set in a public venue. As well as providing good entertainment, it builds up confidence for the performers and allows the experience to be applied to teaching, research and engagement activities. For more information contact Dee Hennesey.

The University has asked Jamie Gallagher, an engagement consultant, to share his advice. He does this in the three short videos below, these have relevance for however you are communicating- be that writing, giving a talk/presentation etc.

Please note: these videos are only available to Lancaster University staff/students.

  • Creating a research narrative

    This video describes the four stages to creating a research narrative. Firstly, define the problem, issue, gap or lack. Then, describe what other researchers are doing in this area and your individual and unique part. Then finally future-gaze - what will be the situation if everything goes to plan?

  • Making a lasting impression

    Once you have created your research narrative then it is time to add ‘flavour’ for interest. This could be an analogy, a video, an individual account etc. Watch the video to find out more.

  • Call to action

    The importance of having a call for action when you are communicating is explained. Ask people to do something such as asking a question, connecting via social media, chat over lunch etc.

Effective presentations

Jamie Gallagher shares his advice on issues that concern many of us when giving presentations – namely handling nerves and dealing with questions. He also has suggestions on creating impact with slides.

Please note: these videos are only available to Lancaster University staff

  • Handling nerves

    If this is an issue take comfort in the fact that you are not alone! Approaches to handling nerves are often individualistic. Here, Jamie Gallagher has provided some tips and guidance.

  • Impactful and accessible slides

    Here are some useful tips that can serve as a check list when creating slides.

  • Answering questions

    Questions at the end of a presentation can be daunting and can increase your anxiety. This video has some strategies for dealing with questions.

Writing for impact

You may be writing a policy briefing paper, an article for the Conversation or a training resource for young people.

As well as considering your audience, think about the purpose of your writing. You may be writing to share information on a particular topic, aiming to influence behaviour or attitudes, or it may be a call for action such as for patient involvement in research.

Whatever your purpose, make sure to write a good narrative that catches the attention of your audience and makes them aware of the significance of your findings.

Focus on what your audience wants to hear, not what you want to tell them!

Visit The Conversation webpage to hear about Lancaster's fantastic track record, the benefits of writing for this academic blogging platform and to access training resources and support from the Press Office.

Here are some general principles about a writing style for a non-expert audience, adapted from Cancer Research UK:

Write in plain English

Assume that your audience has little or no prior knowledge of the topic area. You need to provide context, background information and explain any technical terms.

Keep it simple

Provide context and explain any technical terms. Avoid complicated words - if there is a simpler word that conveys the same meaning use that. Only use acronyms when they cannot be avoided – and explain them.

Keep it short

Aim for sentences to be 20 words or fewer but be sure to have some variety. Keep your paragraphs short, try sticking to three sentences per paragraph. One idea per sentence – and one theme per paragraph.

Edit out repetitions, long-winded expressions and meaningless words (‘basically’ is a repeat offender).

Make it inclusive

Use inclusive language that communicates to all your target audience. Use personal pronouns (we, our, you, your) instead of words that distance the reader.

Back it up

Whenever you make a claim back this up with facts.

Active voice

Keep sentences active rather than passive. So: 'A report was published by the Government today' would change to 'The Government published a report today'

Avoid turning verbs into nouns

For example, use 'preventing cancer' (preventing = a verb) instead of 'cancer prevention' ( prevention = noun).

Use lists where appropriate

A list of bullet points can help to give instructions or to spread out complex information

Use analogies and images

Use images, diagrams, quotes and examples to bring concepts to life. Choose wisely, use sparingly and avoid mixing them.

Further support

There are some excellent resources on LinkedIn Learning to support you. All Lancaster University staff have free access to these resources. Here are some suggestions:

Organising an engagement event

Engagement often involves organising an event. There is a lot of expertise in organising events across the University that you can tap into to make sure your event is a success.

A good start is to complete the event planning template available within the Events toolkit - this will take you through all the initial considerations. In the toolkit, there is comprehensive information for organising an event – including planning, budgeting, guest management, logistics, marketing and evaluation. Please note: this is only accessible to Lancaster University staff.

Further support available to Lancaster University staff:

  • The cross-University Events Network. This hosts termly drop-in sessions as well as an MS Teams site, where discussions can be held, and advice sought.
  • Workshops on Organising Successful Events are organised by the organisational development (OD) team and delivered by the University's central Events Team. Follow the link for more information and to register; these workshops are suitable for academic and professional service members of staff.
  • Designing Impactful and Creative Engagement Events Dee Hennessy is the Creative Engagement Manager and she can support the planning of your engagement activity, adding creativity to make sure your activity really does engage. Email: d.hennessy@lancaster.ac.uk
  • Work in Progress on Alexandra Square, Lancaster campus, is a versatile events space exclusively available for engagement activities (in-person and hybrid), where the focus is on creativity and interaction. To book this space: Work in Progress space bookings webpages.
  • Library event spaces - the library has a number of event spaces that can be used for activities in line with their vision to connect, innovate and include. Visit the Library what's on the pages for details and to the proposal form to start a booking.
  • Organising an Engagement Event, Jamie Gallagher, an engagement consultant, has prepared this video for academics and researchers new to event planning.
  • LU staff can visit the Events section of the intranet.
  • The University's Central Events Team can be contacted for any queries on event planning. Email: events@lancaster.ac.uk.

Facilitation skills

Facilitation skills can be very valuable when hosting an event. They can:

  • Help a group navigate complex issues and achieve a workable solution.
  • Make your events inclusive – facilitation skills can help all those attending to make a contribution, recognising that everyone has an equal part to play.

The university has a professional creative facilitator based on campus for three days each week. Dee Hennessy works with academics and professional services staff using the iterative stages of creative facilitation to explore group facilitation approaches and to support the bespoke design and delivery of sessions, workshops, conferences and events. Dee can be contacted by email: d.hennessy@lancaster.ac.uk.

The Facilitation Skills Handbook has been written by an external consultant, based on the material they use in the delivery of facilitation skills workshops - an optional component of the Bonington Leadership Development Programme. The handbook has lots of information to help you apply facilitation skills within your event.

Additionally, there are some university staff that have been trained in facilitation. You might wish to do a call out within your own department/faculty and ask for volunteers. Sometimes it may feel more comfortable to use a totally external facilitator. If that is the case, the OD team may be able to advise on trusted external facilitators and provide estimated costs.

Influencing and negotiation skills

These skills can be particularly important when carrying out business/organisational engagement activity. Praxis Auril, the professional association for knowledge exchange practitioners, have the skills of influencing and negotiation within their core competencies framework.

Negotiation is the act of coming to a mutual agreement.

Influencing skills can be defined as ‘creating a mutually beneficial environment where others are motivated to support you in your goals.' Influencing skills are needed during the act of negotiation.

There are three stages to influencing and negotiation:

What are their values and goals?

Ask questions and be curious to find out and understand the motivations of your stakeholder.

What can you provide to the stakeholder that will be of value to them?

The most common currency that the University can offer is the knowledge and expertise of an academic/researcher. If involved in business engagement this may result in a Knowledge Transfer Partnership or research consultancy. It may lead to co-designed or participatory research.

The definitions of influencing and negotiation stress mutuality. You need to retain an open mind and be adaptive to your stakeholder. Relationships can take a long time to build up, initially you may start working together on a small initiative allowing you to build up trust.

There are some excellent resources on LinkedIn Learning to help you develop the skills of influencing and negotiation. All Lancaster University staff have free access to these resources.

Here are some suggestions:

  • Communicating for Influence – the course instructor is Alan Hall. He will help you identify your key stakeholders and how to analyse your network for opportunities and bottlenecks. He takes you through how to influence when you do not have authority.
  • Negotiation Foundations - the course instructor is Lisa Gates. She will help you to develop a negotiation mindset- shifting from a ‘battle to be won’ to a ‘problem solving conversation.’
  • The 10 essentials of Influence and Persuasion - the course instructor is Steve Martin, behavioural scientist and best-selling author. In 10 short videos he provides his essentials for improving your ability to influence and persuade others.
  • Practical Influencing Techniques – the course instructor is Chris Croft. He has a 6-stage process to follow for any situation when influencing is required, presented in a series of short video clips.

To develop your influencing and negotiation skills Mentoring could be useful to you.

Entrepreneurial Skills

Creating partnerships with business and communities requires people to recognise where and how it is possible to create sustainable value, to co-create innovative solutions that work for all stakeholders, to harness the resources required to realise these solutions, and to take purposeful action to deploy them, even if this means taking risks; making confident decisions despite uncertainty and ambiguity, and being prepared to fail forward when things don’t go entirely to plan.

To do any of this requires us to have and develop Entrepreneurial Mindsets. These can be defined using the EntreComp Framework, which articulates what it means to be entrepreneurial across 15 distinct but interdependent areas of competence – skills, behaviours, know-how – which we all already draw on and practise to some extent. To support Lancaster staff, Work in Progress has created ECHO, a self-assessment tool that can help us to know ourselves better, in terms of what we can each bring to the table to complement the capabilities of those with whom we need to collaborate, and where we might focus our personal development to grow more holistically.

To find out more about EntreComp and ECHO, visit Work in Progress.

Contact us

Suggestions for new content? Anything to update?

Email the stakeholder relations team