Listening Skills for Presenters: 7 Questions

Watch out - now I'm rambling.

1. Good presenters are good listeners. Do you agree?
2. People in the audience do not always talk back. However, they provide visual cues. There are nods and smiles. Or claps. Or yawns. Can you think of any more visual cues?
3. Sometimes the presenter calls a show of hands, asks an open question or initiates a discussion. At other times, someone in the audience asks a question or makes a comment. In either case, interaction gets going. Does interaction always help a presentation along?
4. You need to know your audience. Will the key takeaways from your presentation differ from one group to the next?
5. You need to adapt to the audience, and they receive you well. Can you think of some techniques for adaptation you have used in the past?
6. Sometimes you conduct a presentation online, and audience is remote. How do you listen to your audience in such cases?
7. Sometimes you simply email a presentation to a group of people, or upload it to a web site. How do you listen to your audience in such cases?

I close this piece with these lines from poet Dylan Thomas: Someone’s boring me. I think it’s me.