Public Speaking Secret number one! You need to love blank faces in the audience!

I’ve been banging on about this for years. It still seems to be a public speaking secret. Audiences have blank faces a lot of the time. The photo above is an audience listening - the description by the photographer is of a "rapt audience".  It's really hard to see that!

Audiences listen differently . They don't nod very often, they don't smile very often. So when we are speakers we get confused because we are SO used to having a normal conversation where we get lots of approval signals (smiles, nods, little vocal sounds, facial signs and body matching).

We don't get this when we speak publicly and it feels like we are failing if we are not used to it. When you step in front of an audience you will step into the land of non-approval (or so it seems)

When you sit in the audience, you change from a conversational listener to a passive listener. Yes, of course you are listening to the speaker until you start thinking of your holidays in two weeks time, or how are you going to get the car fixed. As an audience member you listen passively, not actively. Sometime you may even enjoy having some down time for yourself away from the emails so you can think about a problem at work even when someone is presenting. Next time you are in the audience, notice how little you do with your face!

So audiences have blank faces. Its normal!

By Blank I mean bored looking, frowny looking, angry looking, yawning, looking up at the ceiling and the floor and even eyes closed.

I want you to see them as just how audiences listen. It’s just an audience face.

In fact I really want you to love blank faces. And if you see them as not threatening or judging but just standard audience faces you will not get put off by them. And then you can concentrate on all the other things you have to do as a speaker.

What can you do to change how your brain thinks?

You can learn about this when you are in an audience. If you get this, its usually really helpful for your understanding of being a public speaker.

1. Notice how much you drift off and think about other things besides the content. eg. Netflix, your weekend away in a couple of weeks, where did you write down that plumber’s name, the amount of stuff you have in your in box etc. Often clients of mine talk about spending over 60% of presentation time thinking about other things other than the speech. Think about what that means for the speaker. Most of the time they are not thinking about you!

 2. Notice how nasty you are to the speaker when they are speaking? You are probably like most people and not giving that much notice to the speaker. You are probably not nasty at all. You might have thoughts about “this is a bit boring” or” I have heard this before”. But its not the deeply critical stuff that we imagine that the audience is thinking when you are a speaker.

3. Look around and notice how little other member of the audience are doing when they listen. Do they look bored? Can you tell what they are thinking when you are in the audience? Probably not!