Connecting with Your Audience

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It is through vocal and visual delivery that speakers are able to interact with their audiences—that’s what makes public speaking different from just writing a good presentation. When you compose an essay, you write it and it goes off to the reader; it’s a linear model of communication (as discussed in chapter 1). But speaking before an audience is more than just providing information through words; it’s an interaction between speaker and audience.

Indeed, gifted speakers—like the late Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton—are always aware of this and become known for their ability to deliver even the most formal speeches in a style that feels conversational, personal, and connected. That’s because they are able to use their words, voices, and gestures to convey the way they feel about a subject. They also speak directly to their audiences in a way that seems unrehearsed and sincere. Let’s now take a look at the way our words converge with our vocal and visual delivery to establish such a connection with the audience. We’ll also consider the ways we can adapt our delivery to suit the audience’s needs and expectations.

Expressing Emotion. If you do not feel passion for what you are talking about, you can be sure that your audience will not feel it either. One of your responsibilities is to ensure that throughout your speech, the audience feels the same emotions that you do for your subject matter. Many Americans, for example, felt an intimate connection to New York mayor Rudy Giuliani when he addressed the media in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the city on September 11, 2001. Although he remained authoritative and in control, he was also able to express his grief in a way that rang true to everyone watching or listening. When an audience feels that a speaker is simply acting, they may question the sincerity of the message.

Adapting to Your Audience. One common mistake speakers make is to speak to—or even at—the audience, rather than to speak with the audience. As discussed earlier, in Western cultures this generally means making and maintaining eye contact. But it also means listening to audience reactions, paying attention to listeners’ body movements, and continually gauging their responses to what you say and do so that you can make adjustments to your speech as you go along. For example, if you observe audience members frowning or squinting, it may be a sign of misunderstanding. You can take this as a cue to slow down or emphasize key points more explicitly. Alternatively, if you notice your audience members responding with smiles, focused eye contact, or even laughter, you probably want to maintain the style of speaking that produced such a positive reaction.

Creating Immediacy with Your Audience. As you learned in chapter 5, immediacy is a feeling of closeness, involvement, and warmth between people as communicated by nonverbal behavior (Mehrabian, 1971; Prager, 2000). We often think of immediacy as being an important facet of close interpersonal relationships. This is certainly true—but it is also an important component of building trust in the relationship between the speaker and the audience.

Speakers enhance their immediacy with their audience by following many of the guidelines we have already set forward in this chapter: establishing and maintaining eye contact with audience members, smiling, moving toward the audience, using inclusive gestures and posture, speaking in a relaxed or conversational tone or style, and using humor. However, as is the case with interpersonal relationships, immediacy is a two-way street. Audiences help foster this feeling of closeness and trust by listening actively, responding with eye contact, nodding, and offering nonverbal indications of agreement, surprise, confusion, and so on.