How to Gauge Listener Understanding
Whether we are communicating in an office meeting room, in the lab with fellow researchers, in our homes with loved ones, or in front of a giant crowd, the words entering our listeners ears are more important than the words coming out of our mouths. We can speak confidently in a structured manner, but the our communication is only as good as the message received by the listener(s). This then drives the question: How can we make sure our message is being interpreted as we intended?
As a former public speaking instructor, I guided my students to present, use hand gestures, and engage their audiences. The words, structure, and gesture are important, but we cannot overlook audience engagement. In order to determine if our communication is effective, we need to engage our audiences and gauge their understanding. Regardless if our audience size is one or one million, gauging listener understanding involves reading non-verbal cues, requesting rephrases, and waiting for responses.
Read Non-Verbal Cues
Have you spoken to a group where some audience members were paying more attention to their cell phones? Or have you ever seen a listener's eyebrow shoot up while you were speaking with them? Both of these pieces of information, should give us, the speaker, a sense on the listener's initial reaction or interpretation of our words. Eye contact will let us know if the listener is attentive. Changes in facial expression and body positioning will provide a listener's initial reactions to our words.
When we are speaking, the first non-verbal cue we need to read into is eye contact. In essence, are our listeners paying attention? If our target audience is not listening, we should not be talking. If our goal is to be heard and we continue to talk while no one is listening, we should not expect their attention to suddenly come back. Instead, we need to utilize pauses, long uncomfortable pauses if necessary, to bring back their attention. Once we notice they are making eye contact again, we can resume. So whether we are having dinner with someone on their phone or addressing a larger audience, if we do not have their attention, we should not resume talking until we have their attention. In extreme cases, if our audience does not want to listen to us, we will need to employ more active engagement tactics, which will be discussed in the next two sections. If our words are important, our goal should not be to say them, but rather, to make sure they are heard.
After we have confirmed that we have our audiences' attention, we need to pay attention to their facial expressions. If we notice there are changes in our listeners' facial expressions, typically this means the person has an opinion. If we are unsure of their opinion, we need to ask "[Name], what are your thoughts on this?" If the facial tell was more obvious (e.g., 'a confused/surprised look' via tilted head with raised eyebrow, 'an upset look' via pout and purposely looking elsewhere), we can be more focused with our question. For example, when seeing a confused face, we can ask "[Name], can I help clarify any points?" Taking a moment to ensure everyone is understanding the words coming out of your mouth is a worthy investment so that we can be sure the ideas coming from us are the same ones being received by the listener. Conversely, when we start seeing signs of positive affirmation (e.g., head nods), we should keep going.
Body positioning can be used in unison with eye contact and facial expressions to detect listener reception. The first tell is shoulder and hip directions. If we are speaking to someone who has their shoulders and hips facing away from us, we should know the individual is not interested in the words coming out of our mouths. Another typical tell is crossed arms, which points towards either a low temperature environment or a discontent individual. When we see these negative tells, we need to stop talking and get the listener to comment. When people talk, their level of engagement rises - by definition. Once listener engagement rises, our communicated ideas will be able to sink more deeply.
These are common non verbal cues, but certainly not exhaustive. Anytime we are speaking, we need to read these data points so that we can adapt our delivery to maximize listener understanding.
Request Rephrase
Reading non-verbals will provide an initial level of understanding to our listeners' reactions to our words. Requesting our listeners to rephrase our ideas will help us validate whether our listeners understand our ideas. If the listeners' rephrase is aligned with our message, great. If the rephrase is not aligned with our message, either our message was not explained clearly enough or the listener was not paying attention. When rephrasing is misaligned and the point we are trying to convey is important, we should clarify the point until the listener(s) can rephrase our message accurately or correctly build on top of our message.
I have noticed that many speakers will continue speaking without confirming understanding. As we are conveying ideas, our read on non-verbals should tell us whether the listeners are grasping our concepts. If we are going over a complex subject or our listener appears to be lost, we need to stop and request a rephrase before proceeding. Here is a sample script to do so politely: "I know that last topic could be unclear, so I just want to make sure we are on the same page. Can you help explain your understanding of the last topic."
Wait for Response
After sensing directional non-verbal cues, we paused, we asked questions, or requested a rephrasing. These pauses and questions should give us additional feedback from our audience, thereby increasing listener engagement. But... what happens when they don't engage with us? What happens if they do not pay attention or reply? We wait.
When some speakers fail to get engagement after pausing or asking a question, they get bothered by silence. They feel the need to fill the empty space and continue talking when the listener(s) do not pay attention or respond. I urge you to sit in this awkward silence until either 1) you have complete attention, 2) the listeners have replied, or 3) seven seconds have passed. As context, four seconds is accepted as an awkward silence according to many publications. So sitting in this awkwardness for three more seconds will make the audience feel the pressure as well. If we continue moving forward onto the next point without listener engagement, we will send the following message, "the previous idea was not important."
Important ideas deserve attention and we need to sit through uncomfortable silences for them at times. If we achieved our goal of obtaining attention or a reply, great. If we gave our audience seven seconds to respond to our question and were met with no acknowledgement, we can begin speaking again, but should not move onto the next point. Our commentary at this stage needs to revolve around lowering the barrier for the listener to reply. Once we get the first reply, subsequent replies will follow with limited effort. Dr. Robert Cialdini, psychology expert, calls this "consistency". Telemarketer calls are a prime example of this principle. Once we respond to "how are you doing today [Name]?", we feel socially obliged to answer their follow up questions. We need to take this principle and apply it to drive engagement with our listeners. That is, if our initial question did not get a reply, we need to lower the bar and decrease the ambiguity.
Typically, speakers start by asking open ended question to try to get less biased feedback. We can decrease ambiguity by switching our question types from open-ended to multiple choice or true/false. Multiple choice or true/false questions are much easier to answer. Then after we receive a response to our easy multiple choice question, we follow up with, "can you elaborate." Due to the consistency principle, this individual will feel socially obliged to continue speaking and should also give us the response we were looking for in the original open-ended question.
Closing Remarks
Reading non-verbals will give us initial feedback on our listeners' reaction to our statements. Requesting a rephrase will verify listener understanding. Waiting for a response to questions, rephrases, or pauses will increase listener engagement. Collectively, these three actions will help us gauge listener understanding. So the next time you are explaining a complex topic, I challenge you to read non-verbals, request rephrases, and wait for responses.
The words coming out of our mouths are only as good as the words going into the ears and brains of our listeners.
