What I Look for in a Speaker When I’m in the Audience

If you’re in business and do any amount of networking, you’ll see some sort of presentation or speaker on a regular basis. It could be a luncheon meeting where the local Mayor is giving a brief presentation, or someone from the Salvation Army updating the group on an ongoing project.

Speakers come in all shapes and sizes and levels of competence and awareness.

I say awareness, because as a speaker I think being aware of a variety of things will carry you a long way in your presentation, however long or brief it is.

Speaker awareness is one of the main things I tend to evaluate, along with delivery, pacing, content, paying attention to the audience and – of course – did they finish within their announced time?

Let’s start with ‘speaker awareness.’ To me, as a member of the audience, it means that the speaker appears to have an understanding of his audience (the makeup of the group he’s speaking to), the size of the room and what areas he may need to pay special attention to, the comfort they have with their material and – as the speech goes on – the understanding of the material and the overall reception of the audience to the material (check our podcast on ‘Listening to Your Audience’ for more on this: http://budurl.com/baya).

If the speaker is unaware of a number of those issues, he or she becomes more of a ‘talking head’ who may appear to be speaking on television to an unseen group, instead of to an actual live audience right in front of them. That approach puts an emotional distance between the speaker and the audience.

Having awareness as a speaker also brings into the picture other things I mentioned: length of the speech, pacing, knowing the content inside and out; it all adds up, and answers the question: did the speaker understand his audience and what their expectations are?

Of course I instinctively judge a presenter’s delivery: how was their intro (did they get our attention or did they spend a minute thanking the hosts and put us all to sleep or send us to our Blackberries?), did the content of their speech seem well-organized and cohesive or was it haphazard and rambling?

Content is probably the hardest thing to judge – but as an audience member I like it when I hear a presentation that leaves me with a good feeling. And that may mean I feel good because I was just made aware of an important topic that I was woefully uninformed on, or it makes me feel good because I felt inspired by the stories and the call to action by the presenter. Either way, how you make your audience feel is important and should always be a part of your planning and organizing.

At the end – when everybody’s watching the clock – is the speaker conscious of the audience’s expectations on when the meeting is scheduled to be released? Did she stop five minutes ahead of time so that everyone felt like they were just given an extra five minutes of their day to do with as they please? Or did she run over by six or eight minutes and make everyone uncomfortable and fidgeting – and even watch as a few of her audience trickled out before the presentation had completely wrapped up?

What do you look for when you’re sitting in the audience? If you’re a speaker, you probably check for things that non-speakers would not notice.

Would love to see what things stick out in your mind the next time you’re watching a speaker at a service club breakfast or luncheon meeting.

photo credit: Marshall Astor – Food Pornographer