When we talk about fear of public speaking, some of my adult students tell me they’re afraid of the audience. I ask them what horrible behavior they’ve seen an audience exhibit toward a speaker.
“Sleep. Have side conversations while the speaker is talking. Fool with their phones. Leave.”
Soon enough the class is ruefully smiling to themselves because, really, these are not the types of behavior that should instill fear.
The ideal audience member for me is a person who sits up front, returns my eye contact, laughs at my jokes, participates when I request an audience response, nods his/her head in agreement when I strike a common chord, and applauds when I’m done. I encourage my students to BE that good audience member at any presentation they attend.
My strategy for coping with audience members who do not fall into that ideal category is to make up an excuse for them.
A man who closes his eyes—why he has a new baby at home and so is sleep-deprived. Or perhaps it’s a woman who prefers to process information auditorily, so she actually listens better with her eyes closed.
The talkers? They are so excited about something they’ve just learned from me that they need to share it with others.
I imagine that the people fooling with their phones, tablets, or laptops are taking notes electronically instead of with pen and paper.
And the people who leave? Inside my head I simply acknowledge they were smart enough to recognize that my message wasn’t for them. Or else their spouse just texted them that a pipe had burst at home.
You get the picture. I provide myself a reason for the less than ideal behavior, and then I’m able to just let it go. Whew. Let it go.
Because if I hold tightly onto the disturbing behavior, I could start to awfulize and let anxiety and negativity snowball to ridiculous proportions, as in the following self-talk: Hey, that guy in row 3 just closed his eyes. He must think I’m boring. Does everyone think I’m boring? I must be the most boring speaker in the history of the world. Everyone in this room hates me. Is that group in the back lighting torches to run me out of this room?
Typically, an audience is positively expectant about hearing a speaker. An audience has come to the speaker wanting to hear solutions to problems, hoping to be entertained, wanting to learn something, needing to find motivation to start or stop something, looking for a better way to do something, searching for hope and encouragement.
Of course, there can be times an audience may not be “for” a speaker, but the presenter would likely know that ahead of time. For instance, speaking on controversial or political issues can produce an audience that is a mixture of people on your side as well as against you. Presenting bad news, such as announcing that the company is closing half of its divisions in a cost-cutting measure, will be a tough sell. And if an audience is there for mandatory reasons (attending forced retraining due to a failure, for example), they may take special handling for a speaker to win them over.
Most speakers do not face those tough situations on a regular basis unless they choose to.
So if fear of an audience has been holding you back from public speaking, now you know that in reality, the audience is waiting to cheer you on. They want you to be the great speaker that YOU want to be. How’s that for motivation?!
To my readers: The last time you listened to a speaker, what did you gain as an audience member? (FYI – there are many fabulous presentation at https://www.ted.com/)
