Reading the Room To Deliver Your Best Presentation

Virtually all business executives face critical moments when they must deliver a persuasive speech or presentation. To motivate, however, you must engage your listeners. And to engage your listeners, you must pay attention to them – and we mean really pay attention.

One of the best ways to know whether you are successfully engaging with your audience is to carefully watch their body language and reactions – learn to read the room.

The ability to read the room during a presentation is a powerful skill all leaders should develop. We have all had the misfortune of being held captive by speakers who are so focused on their materials that they don’t seem to notice signs of disengagement within their audiences.

Some of these signs are overt: fidgeting, checking a phone (yet again) for text messages or email, or staring out into space. Sometimes, an attendee will blatantly walk out of a meeting, or a prospect will simply cut a sales meeting short. Other signs are less obvious, though.

Are some of your audience members slumping in their chairs due to exhaustion resulting from jetlag, or are they suffering from boredom? Is doodling on a page likewise a signal of boredom, or is it helping the doodler focus?

Watch Reactions Carefully

Joe Navarro, one of the world’s foremost authorities on reading nonverbal communications, describes in his book, What Every BODY is Saying, the nonverbal cues that we all exhibit. Body language and other nonverbal behaviors are strong indicators that, when watched carefully, can reveal a listener’s true thoughts and feelings.

One of the most fascinating things about the body language we exhibit in reaction to someone or something is that many of the reactions happen subconsciously, and have been found to be consistent across country and cultural lines. Watch Navarro speak about the intricacies of communication and how speakers can identify nonverbal cues to better read the room.

Let the Audience Guide Your Speech or Presentation

By learning to read a room more effectively, you can adapt your presentation, even on the spot, to meet your audience’s needs. Body language that mirrors yours, eye contact that stays transfixed on you, and facial expressions that show interest signal that you may want to dig deeper into the topic and answer additional questions that the audience may have.

If you are sensing crickets in the room, and the eye contact is less inviting, it may be wise to cut a portion of your speech short so you can move on to the next topic, or even change directions entirely if necessary.

Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is one of the most famous ever delivered – and it was close to becoming merely a historical footnote. What most people never learned about that speech in 1963 is that the use of the words “I have a dream” was spontaneous. King’s advisors had counseled him against using the now-famous phrase because he had used it many times before, and they were concerned that it was too cliché.

However, as King delivered his originally-planned script, he could sense from his audience’s low-key responses that his message was not resonating. One advisor seated near him even called out that he should speak about the “dream.” In a split-second decision, he abandoned his originally planned script and seamlessly transitioned into the passionately delivered speech we know today.

Know When to Stop

Even the most engaging message can fall flat if it drones on for too long.  Going too long when pitching to investors or potential buyers can cause you to lose a sale entirely. It’s a painful lesson you can avoid with careful analysis of the people in the room; they will let you know when it’s time to wrap it up. The reality is that your audience is communicating with you every step of the way, even when they don’t say a word.

Preparation for a presentation is necessary, but it is still important to remain flexible. If you step up to the mic with a rigid idea of your message and fail to adapt to the valuable information your listeners are providing you via their body language, you risk a bored audience or even a lost sale.

Let your audience guide you to a successful outcome that resonates with your intended audience.

Originally published on LinkedIn.