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 effect 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, consider the usefulness of listening within the field of civic engagement. Suppose that later in life you marry and start a family—but just as your child is approaching the age of five, you are informed by your pediatrician that your daughter has been diagnosed with autism. There are a range of things that can be done for her, but in the meantime, you are disheartened to learn that your local school district does not have special programs or instruction for children with autism spectrum disorders. You are not alone in coping with and dealing with this problem, and thus you decide that you should organize with other parents of children with special needs. Good listening will help you identify which school board members are likely to be sympathetic to your demands for more services when you make a presentation at the school board meeting. It also will help you be more likely to sense any confusion or disagreement among your audience members and adapt your delivery as needed to win their attention and support.

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