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Get ready to lasso in audiences with your listening skills. (Source)
You've spent the last seven units learning how to become a great public speaker (go, you). You've read about rhetoric, covered crafting a great speech, visualized your visual aids, and prepared to stand and deliver.
But giving a speech or a lecture isn't like screaming into the void. It takes two to tango—it involves both an orator and an audience. Learning how to walk a mile in your listeners' shoes (or, perhaps, sit an hour in their seats) is an important step to becoming an outstanding orator.
After all, you can't tell if you're really being listened to if you're not a Champion Listener yourself. You've probably been told to "listen" many times throughout your life—by your parents, by your teachers—but what does this actually mean? Is it just sitting and hearing a lecture, is it rigorously taking notes, is it humming along to a song, or is it (gasp) something entirely different?
We'll answer the questions you never knew you had about listening. By understanding the science, philosophy, strategies, and types (oh, yes, there are even different kinds) of listening, you can truly speak to your audiences.
We know, that sounds a little holistic, or maybe even like something Yoda would say. (Listen you must, you padawan.)
But it's true that you can only solve public speaking by understanding both sides of this equation. In the following unit, we'll help you do the math on every facet of listening: the three ingredients, the three barriers, four strategies for enhancement, and ten rubric categories, to name a few. With our techniques, you'll be able to spot telltale signs of boredom, recognize which type of listening you need to evoke, and explore the science of scoring speeches.
Once you've mastered Listening 101, we'll bump you up to Advanced Listening with our ten-point rubric. Using this tool, you can determine exactly how any speaker is performing just by listening. It'll be as if you have a hot new superpower—one that benefits you personally, professionally, and when you're up at the podium.
Get ready to listen (and start picking out your superhero cape).
Summary
Summary
Hearing and listening aren't the same. Hearing's passive and involuntary, whereas listening is active (and comes in a variety of delicious flavors, including thoughtful, intellectual, aesthetic, and emotional).
To be an excellent listener, you need to truly observe the speech, take on the right perspective, and remain open to the twists and turns of orations.
Pre-judging a speech, thinking too far ahead, or having too much of an emotional reaction can hinder your ability to listen well.
You can become Grand Champion Listener by making key preparations, defending yourself against distraction ahead of time and in the moment, taking notes when appropriate, and showing the speaker respect (Aretha Franklin-style).
Speech surveys are an incredible tool to tell how well a speaker is doing, but most of them are pretty flawed. In-person interactions tend to be filled with superficial fluff, most listeners won't fill out written surveys, feedback can be frustratingly contradictory, audiences don't know what they're looking for, and you probably won't know how you did compared to other speakers at the same event.
You can get better speech survey feedback by telling the audience exactly how you plan to use their responses, asking them incisive questions to get past politeness, and using our handy dandy rubric.
Your best critic may be yourself. In his Confessions of a Public Speaker, Scott Berkun dares you to videotape yourself performing, watch it back, and score yourself on your speech.
Having a speech rubric is basically like having a cheat sheet for oration. If you know what you need to do to excel, you can easily earn an A+ in public speaking.
Our rubric covers the ten crucial categories a speaker needs to hit, from organization to conclusion. With an ordinal feedback structure, audience members score speeches from 1 (poor) to 5 (outstanding), so you can gauge your performance like an Olympic gymnast.
Applying the rubric to evaluate others' speeches can help you become an even more victorious listener and an even greater orator by understanding your own and others' strengths and weaknesses. You can test this out by scoring the speeches of both Eleanor Roosevelt and Clueless' Cher.
Objectives
Objectives
identify the difference between hearing and listening, as well as ineffective and effective listening.
explore strategies to improve your listening abilities.
recognize and avoid the pitfalls of unproductive speech feedback.
identify ways to get more useful feedback from your audience members, such as utilizing speech surveys and other means.
identify the ten categories of our rubric to understand and learn from the successes and failures of your own and others' speeches.
recognize how to use a public speaking rubric to judge the quality of a speech.
compare and contrast rubrics for two different speeches.
consider how to apply a public speaking rubric to any and all public speaking performances, including your own.
Study Questions
Study Questions
What is the difference between listening and hearing?
Why should an audience know what type of listening to use?
Give three examples of how Observation, Outlook, and Openness can improve your listening.
Why is it important to understand the obstacles to effective listening?
Pick one of the four strategies to enhance listening and explain how you will implement it.
What is the problem with politeness, according to Scott Berkun?
Why are most audience members unlikely to take a speech survey?
What is a speech rubric?
What are the benefits and disadvantages of anecdotal feedback?
How could you use your total speaking score and each of your category scores to improve your oration skills?
How can you improve your own public speaking abilities by scoring others' speeches with our rubric?
How would you compare Eleanor Roosevelt's speech with Cher's? What can you learn from both?
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