Reading Your Audience Like A Book

5 Pages 1308 Words

Reading Your Audiences Like a Book
Did you ever have one of those presentation experiences where you hit everything just right? You were really in the zone, firing up your audience while disseminating all of your valuable content. How did you know it was working? The answer is fairly obvious—the audience was giving you clues to their appreciation. Their applause, body language, and other signals told you that your presentation was a winner. Now how about those days when you’re off? Did the presentation just go downhill from the start, ending in a polite smile from the person who hired you that masked the dissatisfaction she may have been too kind to tell you about, with you just chalking it up to experience? Perhaps you made the save, recognizing that you were losing the listeners along the way and adjusted to turn this experience into a winner as well. If so, consider yourself fortunate and skilled in the art of reading your audience. One dual training session that I gave involved a bit of a character act on the part of my partner and I, sort of a good cop/bad cop thing. My co-presenter was playing an overbearing boss bent on whipping employees into shape during this fictitious company training session. I was the informational guy, the kinder, gentler, not-as-fun speaker, and I had the good fortune to watch the audience response during my counterparts opening tirade. He was doing a fine job and most of the people were in fun, but one dude wasn’t buying. His arms were crossed, his face wore a disgusted look, and he was shaking his head side to side. During the break I approached him and asked him what was wrong. He explained that he has had his fill of tyrannical superiors and had some baggage from them, so this act was not funny to him. In fact, in one more minute he was about to walk out. My co-instructor and I worked our way through the situation using a bit of professional tact and turned this potential disa...