3 Ways to Use Your Listening Skills to Become a Better Speaker
Stephen Covey (“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”) once said, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”
It’s ironic, but using your listening skills actually makes you a better speaker. One of the best ways to improve your public speaking ability is by listening to those who have the knowledge you need.
Below are three ways you can use your listening skills to become a better speaker.
Listen to Your Audience Before Your Presentation
How can you hope to achieve the goal of your presentation without having the foggiest idea of what your audience knows and feels about your topic?
There are three ways to determine what your audience knows and feels about your topic. (1) The best way is to talk to your audience’s members before your presentation. (2) The second-best way is to talk to others who know what members of your audience know and feel about your topic. (3) The third-best way is to read what audience members have said about your topic including their writings and videos.
When you talk to members of the audience or those who know members of the audience use active listening skills. By active listening skills, I mean to ask clarifying questions. As Stephen Covey says, “Seek to understand, then to be understood”
If you cannot ask questions of audience members or those who know audience members, seek out what audience members have written on your topic including videos.
Use the added knowledge you learn to more completely prepare your presentation. Use discovered objections to your topic to develop counter-arguments to these objections.
Active listening skills are vitally important to determine what your audience is thinking on your topic. It also has application in gaining knowledge during practice presentation evaluations before the presentation.
Listen to and Implement Pre-Presentation Evaluation Suggestions
It is of great importance to practice your delivery in front of trusted colleagues and friends before the actual presentation. Their written feedback is extremely valuable because you have documentation of the great parts of your presentation and areas where you can improve.
Verbal feedback is particularly useful. With verbal feedback you get the advantage of additional communication through the evaluator’s body language and tone of voice.
When listening to your colleagues and friends evaluate your presentation, tune out any other thoughts except what the evaluator is saying. Use your active listening skills (asking questions about what your evaluator is saying) to further understand the intent of the evaluator.
Your active listening skills also have application during the question and answer session of your presentation.
Listen to Audience Questions and Answer Them More Confidently
How many of you have listened to a speaker answer an audience question and in the back of your mind a little voice is saying, “He/she did not really answer the question.”
There are a number of reasons why this may happen during your presentations. Some, reasons are (1) You may be nervous and answer a different question, (2) You may have misinterpreted the question, and (3) You do not know the answer to the question, but feel you must answer it intelligently or you will lose credibility with the audience.
Here are a few ways to solve this:
First, repeat the question for the audience. Very often others in the audience cannot hear the question. Repeating the question “tunes” the audience in to the question. An added benefit is it gives you time to think of a cogent answer.
Second, as in the previous section, use your active listening (asking questions about the audience member’s question) to further understand the questioner’s intent.
Third, when you think you have finished answering the question, always ask the questioner, “Have I fully answered your question.” If you have, great. If you haven’t, and there is time, ask the questioner what part of the question you have left unanswered and then answer that part. If there is not time to re-answer the question, politely ask the questioner to see you after the presentation.
So, to become a better speaker
• Listen to what your audience before the presentation
• Listen to and implement pre-presentation evaluation suggestions
• Listen to audience questions and answer them more confidently
Remember, we learn much more when we listen than when we talk. Hone your listening skills and you will greatly improve your speaking ability.
“Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.” –Bernard Baruch