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It’s crucial for speakers and audience members to understand the listening process. How you listen as a speaker—while both preparing and delivering a speech—can have a powerful impact on the quality of your presentation and your ability to connect with your audience. How you listen as an audience member can strongly affect your ability to absorb the information the speaker is imparting to you. Equally important, improving your listening skills as both a speaker and an audience member will help you interpret and use more of what you hear from others in a wide variety of situations—not just in your public speaking course.

For example, you’ll be better able to evaluate and make decisions about a political candidate who is delivering a public address. You’ll be better positioned to interpret and respond to a neighbor who stands up at a town meeting and argues for an increase in the special-education budget. And if you’re the one standing up at a town meeting to advocate a change in the budget, you’ll be more likely to sense confusion or disagreement among your neighbors and adapt your delivery as needed to win their attention and support.

To understand the listening process, we’ll start with the specific differences between listening and hearing.