Is Anybody Listening

Is anybody listening? Just because you're talking, just because you're showing a PowerPoint slide, just because you're pontificating doesn't mean anyone's listening. And if no one's listening, no communication occurs. You might as well be talking to yourself in an empty room. Might be therapy for you, but it's not communication. I define communication as ideas that you have have gone from your brain. Someone else has heard it, experienced it, listened to it, viewed it, they understand your idea and they're able to remember it long enough that they could somehow take an action on it. That's how I define communication. So you have to be aware of your audience, whether they're listening to you. Now if you're talking to one family member and their head is buried in their cell phone and they have earbuds on, you could probably figure out they're not listening to you. So you've got to either change something, stop talking, impose some discipline, or wait for a better time. But if you're giving a business presentation to 500 people and half the people in the audience are on their cell phones, that's just as big a problem. If your audience isn't listening to you, then no communication is happening. So you've got to really be responsive to them. And similarly, if your audience has a question for you, you need to close your mouth and listen to them. It has to be a two way street. Of course there are exceptions. If you're speaking to 2,000 people and you have a very strict 20 minute time limit, you can't stop your presentation for every single question. But if it is a smaller venue, if it's 50 people, if you don't have a strict 20 minute time limit, or certainly if you're in a conversation with a colleague, an associate or a family member, and there's no strict time limit, the second you see someone wants to ask you a question, close your mouth, listen to them. Because what you now know with absolute certainty is what that person's hearing is a hundred percent interesting to them because they're talking about their concern. It's all of a sudden more interesting to them because it's now a dialogue instead of a monologue. And anything you say next, even if they don't agree with it, is going to be intensely interesting to them because you're addressing their concern. So the listening has to go both ways. There are many aspects of dealing with this with larger groups. You have to be concerned with eye contact. If you are staring at a speech or your PowerPoint slides and you're not actually looking at audience members, they're going to ignore you. It's basic human relations. I mean, if you've ever been to a restaurant with a friend or a family member and they're just. Their head is buried in a cell phone, there's a TV above them and there's a game on you want to see, you're going to watch the game, you're going to ignore them too. It's basic human nature. So whether you're talking to one person, family member, or a large group of a thousand people in a business situation, you've got to actually make sure that your audience is listening to you, and you've got to listen to them when they want to talk to you.