Six Habits of a Good Audience Member

To be a good audience member and set yourself apart from the other attendees, you should improve good listening habits and guarantee your respect in your relevant community.

In a two-way relationship, a good speaker is responsible to speak well, and a good listener is responsible to hear well. There is a saying which goes “the audience fires up the speaker.” This proves the importance of not just hearing what someone is saying, but being an active listener and understand what they are trying to say.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), a prolific English critic and author of verse, essays, novels, and short stories, says “there’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing.”

Listening or Hearing?

Listening and hearing are fundamentally different. Hearing is one of the five senses and is simply the process of sound waves coming through your ears. Listening incorporates the senses of sight, sound, and touch to send information to the brain and then process that information. Hearing is a passive, involuntary action and unconscious process, while listening requires an active decision to focus on and process the information brought into the brain.

Active listening is a fundamental negotiation skill that many business people are missing as they are only “listening” for the opportunity to ask their next question.

A Good Listener

You may have a lot of experience presenting or attending a presentation at a conference or an event that is typically a consultative forum where participants give their opinion on the subject.

If you look around the room where a presentation is ongoing, you may find some participants who are busy talking to each other or working on their phones checking email or chatting with friends!

Being a good audience member is a characteristic that guarantees your respect in your relevant community. Good listeners are engaged and respectful of the presenter while trying to make a genuine connection, smiling, listening, nodding their heads and make the most of their time spent attending the presentation.

How to Be an Active Listener?

When we think of habits great leaders have, we often consider them as characteristics the leader possesses to give effective speeches to motivate action, but in addition to having great speaking habits, great leaders also possess great listening habits.

Here are some habits that good audience members have in their daily lives:

1. Be on-time and ready

Show up to the presentation refreshed and be the best representative of yourself that you can be. When you want to participate in an event, you are committed to the presenter to be on-time and ready to participate. As Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

2. Turn the distractions off

The most important habit that makes you a good audience member is to focus on the speaker and turn the distractions off. If you are constantly looking at your phone or working on your laptop, not only distract yourself, but the associated noise also distracts others; their time is just as valuable as your own.

You need to forget all your personal problems during the presentation. Don’t think about the unfinished tasks you have. Don’t even think about the content of the last book you’ve read. Avoid doing such things that make you neglect what the speaker says. If you find it difficult to focus on a speaker, try repeating the words in your mind. This will strengthen their message and help you focus.

3. Show your engagement by non-verbal cues

You, as an active listener, should keep this in mind that eye contact and head nodding are necessary tools in every two-way relationship to show the speaker that you are engaged and interested in what they are saying.

Your body language can also tell the speakers whether you are interested in or bored with their speech. For example, your sitting position can show how much you are interested in the other person’s presentation! If you close your arms and lean backward, you transfer the message that you don’t like the topic, the speaker, and/or the other audience members.

When actively listening, lean slightly forward, make eye contact, and give the occasional nod to show you’re interested. Avoid using your body as a physical barrier by crossing your arms or covering your face with your hands.

Encourage the speaker to continue with small verbal comments like “yes”, “well…”, “OK…”, “so…” and “uh-huh”.

4. Take notes

To know how to take notes will help you improve your listening skills and become a good listener. Taking notes not only helps you listen carefully to the presentation, but also helps you concentrate, improves your ability to recall information, and enables you to better connect with the information you are listening to.

5. Ask good questions

Part of active listening is to ask good questions at the appropriate time. It helps you get as much information as possible. Providing a reaction based on thinking about the speaker’s presentation is the best way to prove that you are interested in what he/she says. Paul Sacco, a prominent American psychologist, believes that “people who are good audience members give worth to the person speaking, and this shows that what he/she says is important.”

6. Make the connection

When you attend an event and listen to a presentation, in addition to learning new things, you gain the ability to network with other professionals in your own field of study. In case you have observed all the above-mentioned rules, you are in a better position to go to the speaker at the end of the session and make a personal introduction.

By practicing the above habits, you give the presenter a sense of having an attractive presentation. When that feeling is created in your speaker, you will unconsciously become attractive to that person, as well. This way you can reach an effective and successful connection and relationship with the speaker.