I remember when I was 10 years old in primary school, I would attend the school assembly every month along with 300 hundred students in the auditorium. Before the assembly began, the room would be full of noise and disorder. Eventually, a teacher would stand at the front of the room, and try to control us.
Slowly the room would fall silent, but there was a lot of shifting around and fidgeting during the whole assembly. As soon as there was a break in the proceedings all the kids would start whispering, then mumbling, then talking. Soon the room would be full of loud chatter again and a teacher would yell at us to “quiet down”.
Recently, I was presenting at an event, and I realized that in subtle ways I was trying to control my audience.
– I would tell jokes that I’d expect them to laugh at
– I’d emphasize a key point and tell them ‘this is important’
– I’d get upset, frustrated or offended if the audience wasn’t completely engaged
In a sense, I was doing the same thing that school teachers would do to young kids. I was trying to get my audience to behave as I wanted.
Adults are much more socialized than kids and can feign interest. But on the inside, they are mentally fidgeting and can’t wait to escape.
By trying to control the audience, speakers are actually triggering them to behave like kids in an assembly.
As an amateur speaker, we are preoccupied with the way we come across. We are fighting our fear and trying to be coherent. But eventually, we become more experienced speakers and often we start to want to control the audience reactions.
This is an extremely subtle difference between a good speaker and a great speaker. A good speaker expects certain behaviors from their audience. They become disoriented or frustrated if they don’t get the expected reactions.
A great speaker flows with the audience. It doesn’t matter what reaction they get, what matters is that they are in sync with the audience.
As experienced speakers we want our audiences to think or feel a certain way. We want them to laugh at our jokes, to understand our message. We want them to stay in rapt attention the whole time.
But guess what? The more we want control of the audience, the less they do it.
What I am learning is that by letting go of control, the audience wants to come to you. They want to stay in sync with you, and they have a lot more fun.
Each time I go on stage now, I tell myself ‘let go’. The preparation is done, the material is high quality. I now must let the audience come to me if they choose to.
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