Seth Godin has a great post today in which he discusses what a “great audience” is and receives from the speaker!
A great audience does…
- make eye contact
- pay attention
- mirror energy back to the speaker (assuming of course that the speaker is projecting some energy of his/her own)
- interact with the material (e.g. asks questions; engages in mental dialogue)
A great audience gets…
- more attention from the speaker
- extra effort from the speaker
- more “Walk-away” value from the message
As a speaker I TOTALLY “get this!”
When I’m speaking it doesn’t take long to identify the “Drainers” and the “Fillers.”
The “Drainers”…
- Look like they ate lemon poo for breakfast (i.e. they look SOUR, ROTTEN, and UNHAPPY)
- Spend more time looking at the wall and the bulletin than they do at the speaker
- Interact more with the person sitting beside them than they do with the speaker
- Sleep… for God’s sake go to bed early before coming to church!
(the best I’ve ever had here is a snorer on the front row… oh yeah, he got a LOT out of that sermon!)
The “Fillers”…
- Engage with the content as demonstrated through facial and body language (e.g. laughter; tears; thoughtfulness; etc.)
- Make eye contact with the speaker
When I’m speaking I identify the “Drainers” and the “Fillers” and guess who I look at more…
So, the moral of the story is, if you eat lemon poo for breakfast before coming to church you may not get as much out of the message!
Read all of Seth’s article here.
Filed under: Just a thought, church
