TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

So how do you read an audience when you're giving a speech.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

So a question I frequently get is, TJ how do you read the audience? How do you really connect with them? How do you know they're getting it, paying attention? This is a fairly simple problem to solve once you've mastered one basic issue. Now, the problem is most people aren't willing to master the basic issue. Once you solve that problem, everything else flows from it. Here's the issue you have to face. You have to know what you want to say, not memorize it, but you need to know what you want to say. You need to have an outline on a sheet of paper and be really comfortable with your messages and the stories you're giving so that you're not having to think of this stuff the first time, or God forbid, read bullet points off a slide for the first time in front of people. You have to have a comfort with your material so you can actually look at people. Now, the problem most people have, so it doesn't require John Edwards psychic abilities. If you believe in psychics, you don't have to be the dog whisperer and develop some whole special language or mind reading abilities to read your audience. You simply have to first and foremost be totally comfortable with what you're going to say. Again, not memorization. That way you're comfortable enough to look at your audience. And I'll give you a special technique on how to do that even more effectively in a moment.

Body language.

So one thing that will hugely, hugely have a positive impact on your ability to read an audience and connect with them is, is to be able to walk around the room when you're giving a speech. I'll frequently start a speech or presentation in the back of the room or the side of the room. Now, I do this for several reasons. Number one, it's a little bit out of the ordinary because people are expecting me in front of the room behind the lectern. It's more interesting. Number two, I can actually see what people in the back row and what on the side roads are doing. So if they are sitting there and reading their cell phone, checking out the email, I can see it. And that allows me to read the audience and to figure out what I'm saying. Isn't that interesting? That's valuable information. If I am standing in front of the room the whole time, I'm not going to be able to see what they're doing. So A part of it is just a simple function of walking and talking. Now folks, my two year old walks and talks and everyone loves to think their kid is the most brilliant kid in the whole world. Nothing particularly special about her ability to walk and talk. And yet somehow we tell ourselves that it's too hard to give a speech and walk and talk at the same time. Well, it's not. It's just talking. And when you are walking around the room, you can actually look at people. The next big function is, and again, it stems from a starting point of you actually being comfortable in your material, not having to think about it. You got to look people in the eyes, individual people in the eyes. What happens a lot of times is we're nervous. So we look out at this sea of people and we're conscious of looking at a room full of people the whole time and we just see an undifferentiated mass of people. People. Well, that kind of scares us, that tenses us up, that makes us nervous. We certainly don't notice if maybe 20% of them are looking at their watches. Or these days, when you're looking at your watch, you may be sending emails and other messages too, if you have a smart watch. So that's a real problem for you as a speaker. You're not noticing them. So you have to really look people in the eye. Now, those of you who've heard our podcast on eye contact know that I'm a big believer that you should look people in the eye, individuals, for a full thought, just a couple sentences, could be 4, 5, 6, 7 seconds. It's not a minute, it's not 30 seconds. It's not something as precise as 3.2 seconds. It's just one thought, a couple of sentences. But if you're truly looking at one person, you can then get a read on them. If they look interested and engaged, that's telling you they're on to something. If they look quizzical and confused, that's telling you maybe you were confusing. Maybe you need to go back and give another example of the point you just made. You don't get that sort of feedback if you're looking at the whole audience the whole time. Because all you see is a mass people. And that is a big problem. More tips in just a moment.

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So I'd love to hear from you. Absolutely love your feedback in any way possible. So back to the topic at hand, how to read the audience. Sometimes you're looking at an audience member and you can just tell they are doing something like this. For those of you listening, I am rubbing my hands on my arms, shivering. If you are the speaker and your audience is cold, then do what I do. Take 10 seconds, walk over, find the thermostat in the room and make it warmer. If it's not readily available, ask someone to find, if you're in a hotel or a conference, the conference manager to make it warmer. Now if Everyone is hot. Then it's up to you to try to do the opposite. Bring the air conditioner up, find the hotel manager, make it cold. You are in charge of your audience. If they are physically uncomfortable, guess what? They are not listening to you. Big problem. Not just for them, but for you. Now, if you have been speaking for 20 minutes, but you could tell there were four speakers before you, and these people have not been able to stand up in two hours, but you don't have time for a bathroom break, what you could do is say, hey, I've been sitting down for the last two hours like the rest of you. Before we start, let's just take 20 seconds. Don't go anywhere because I'm starting in 20 seconds. Let's all just stand up and stretch for one minute and sit down. People will appreciate that it's not necessarily applicable in every single venue, but you do need to be aware of what your audience is experiencing at any moment. Now, if you are speaking at a day long form, let's say you're speaking at a workshop or a seminar and you're running a little late. You were planning on breaking for lunch after this next segment, but now it's 12:45. Your stomach is rumbling, your hearing stomach's rumbling, but you're not there yet. You need to call an audible and say, okay, folks, we're running a little behind. Here's what I would suggest. I know I'm hungry and I think some of you are too. Let's break now for lunch, but let's come back while we're eating. I will continue. I'm not going to ask you to not eat, but if we could keep eating while I'm going to the next section, we can eat now and save time. Believe me, your audience will appreciate that, especially the hungry people with regular stomach clocks. Because I know if I'm hungry. You could have the most interesting, fascinating, useful speech in the world about how I will become rich and famous and successful for nothing. I wouldn't pay attention to you because I would be paying attention to my stomach. So that is one key technique is just, you got to look at them. You've got to look and see what are they doing with their body language. Are they too cold? Are they too hot? Are they hungry? Are they fidgeting? Because they've been sitting in one place too often. The other thing you've got to do if you're going to read your audience is you have to give them space. The problem most nervous speakers have and most boring speakers have and that covers a pretty high percentage of speakers, is they think of their speech as an opportunity to just push the conveyor belt on. And here's a fact, here's a fact, here's another fact, another fact. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And I better not stop, I better not pause, because that would waste time and I've got a lot of data to convey. If that's your attitude, it's basically impossible for you to read your audience. You're not giving them time to react. So great speakers at some levels are like great comedians. You hear the talk of great comedies about timing. A comedian will make a joke, pause, let people laugh. He won't step, she won't step on the laughter. When you're a speaker, a business speaker or speaker in government, the nonprofit world, it's not about getting laughs. But you do need to pause to give people a chance to think about it, to nod their heads, to maybe give you the thumbs up signal if you're in a culture where that's a good thing, to give you that look of recognition. Ah, that makes sense. Pausing is critically important for many, many reasons. It will make you come across more comfortable, more confident, more relaxed. It'll be easier for you when you're talking. Your voice won't go dry. You'll just come across as so much more conversational, therefore easier to listen to. But most important, you're giving your audience time react to you. Now, they're not necessarily reacting by raising their hand and talking to you or giving you questions, but they are reacting with their facial expressions. Either confusion, a nod of that's interesting or that makes sense, all of it important. You can't do that if you're fixated on just getting through the PowerPoint slides, and I'm not anti PowerPoint. But your focus has to be on, on your audience. The biggest differentiator between speakers who really read their audience versus those that don't is people who read their audience are focused on their audience. If you come in confident about your ideas, you know the ideas you want to convey, you know your messages, you know the stories, the examples, pictures, images. If you're using PowerPoint, you're comfortable with that and you're now focused on helping your audience. You'll be able to read your audience if you focus on, this is my speech, I want to go through my speech. These are my slides. I've got my 23 slides and I don't want anyone to slow me down. You're not going to read your audience because you're not focused on your audience, you're focused on your little speech. Well, let me tell you, nobody cares about your, your speech. People care about themselves. So when you show them, by pausing by body language, by recognizing that you care about them, they'll know that you're reading them and they will appreciate it. And finally, if you see somebody where there's a look of confusion or they're like they want to raise their hand and ask them a question, let them. Now, if you have a very strict 20 minute time limit and you're at a national conference and there's 2,000 people in the room, I understand that's not applicable. But most of the time for most people in business and government, in most meetings when they're speaking, the time limitation is not that strict. So I would heartily recommend that you let people ask questions as soon as they come. Don't force them to wait till the end. Because if someone's confused and you call on them to ask the question, it's pretty simple to read what's on their mind. Now all you have to do is listen. They are confused about something, they want clarification on something, and they're willing to ask you about it. That's great. That's fantastic. It creates variety in your presentation, proves to that person and everyone else you actually care about your audience. So by all means, take questions when they come. And that's the ultimate way of showing you're reading your audience. First of all, you're even seeing that they exist. And second of all, you want to give them an opportunity to clear up any misunderstanding. Hope this has been helpful. As always, may all of your speeches and presentations in life be a huge success. I'm TJ Walker.

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