The Executive Speaking Blog came up with an interesting post recently: Can you tell whether people are really listening to the boss? Sounds like a good game: Keep the score for audience reaction to the boss’ presentations!
We often get asked the broader question: How can you assess audience’s reaction? There are the obvious responses of people falling asleep, looking angry, or walking out. But what about the more subtle responses? Usually if people are fidgeting or looking down most of the time, they are bored.
It can be hard to tell. In smaller centres in NZ, often audiences don’t interact much, but will stay on to discuss things afterwards. In bigger cities, they may interact so much that you think you have made a whole lot of NBFF; then as soon as you finish, they leave!
Individuals within an audience may have unusual reactions. Recently a client told me about a presenter who just used slides, each containing a great deal of information. The presentation involved the audience reading them. Sounded tedious to me, but my informant said the presentation was fascinating, because of the interesting slide content.
It is very difficult for a presenter to accurately read audience reaction. You might think the whole thing was a disaster because you missed an important point, yet the audience may have liked it. At other times some of the audience may have looked grumpy and yet come up afterwards to say they thought it was great.
Some tips:
- Ask someone before your presentation to give you feedback afterwards on the level of audience engagement.
- Know your material very well, so you can stay mentally free enough to focus on audience reaction.
- If what you are doing is boring your audience, change it!