How to Gain and to Keep an Audience's Attention

How to Gain and to Keep an Audience's Attention

I have had a lot of experience as a public speaker – first as a trial attorney and now as a pastor who preaches regularly.  In my time as a public speaker, I have experienced rapt attention, cold indifference and even deep slumber from audiences I have spoken to in the past.  There have been numerous instances when, as a deputy district attorney giving my closing argument, jurors have fallen asleep on me.  It is exceedingly difficult to focus on the task at hand when a person is sleeping right in front of you, not five feet from where you are standing.  It’s hard not to take that personally.  I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to stop my closing argument, poke the juror awake and say, “Never mind that I’m looking right at you.  Never mind that I am so close to you in fact that I can literally take one step forward and touch your drooling face.  Never mind that your slumber is deeply distressing and unbelievably rude and disrespectful, but do you realize that this poor defendant’s life is in your hands?  How can you possibly be sleeping right now?” 

But, as much as I want to shift the blame onto the sleeping juror or the slumbering parishioner, the truth is that I share the preponderance of the blame for their conspicuous indifference.  Public speaking is a performance.  As much as we would like to think that the subject matter of our public remarks is of paramount importance – that our contributions to the public discourse are so elevated in significance that the actual mechanical delivery of our prepared remarks fades into irrelevance – the reality is that the packaging is just as important as the message meant to be delivered.  You cannot get someone to consume your core message if they find its wrapping unpalatable.  Make the delivery coherent and compelling and the message goes down a whole lot easier.

In the realm of public speaking as in life, I have made a lot of mistakes.  I have also had some successes.  I have experimented with a number of different techniques based on the science of listener attention.  And in the final analysis, I have found the following five tips to be the most useful and effective in gaining and keeping the audience’s attention. 

Give a Clear Roadmap and Stick to It

There is nothing worse than a speaker who rambles.  The moment a person starts to meander is the moment they lose their audience’s attention.  Have you ever tried to listen to a 3-year-old tell a story?  It’s brutal.  They are all over the place.  Their only saving grace is the fact that they are generally adorable and their audience typically has some sort of preexisting, loving relationship with them that has built up enough goodwill such that the audience feels they owe it to them to make the effort at least to piece together events so thoughtlessly and haphazardly thrown together.  Public speakers are generally not afforded such goodwill.  They are typically not adorable and, generally speaking, there is almost no preexisting relationship to draw from – a store of equity forbearance that has been long established in the fullness of time. 

Consequently, speakers have a very small margin for error.  Speakers need to tell their audience up front where they are going and doggedly stick to the plan.  Moreover, speakers must also periodically during the speech remind their audience where they are going and where they are now in the journey.  Expecting that your audience is invested enough to parse your words and generate their own roadmap and their own outline for your prepared remarks is a fantasy.  Asking your audience to piece together a random set of remarks is simply a bridge too far.  Very few in your audience will care enough to do that aside from perhaps your spouse or your mother. 

Taking in public remarks should not be hard.   And the moment we make it unnecessarily difficult is the moment we lose our audience.  I have experienced times when a public speaker has meandered and rambled in the middle of their prepared remarks.  I too have made this same mistake.  And the moment it happens, the moment I introduce the slightest friction into what should be a seamless experience is the moment when I not only lose my audience, but foment palpable frustration.  Nobody wants to listen to someone wandering off topic.  It is endlessly exasperating because when you’re listening to someone blather the immediate thought that comes to mind is “This is such a waste of time.”  This quickly then turns to “Why is this guy wasting my time?”  Indifference morphs into annoyance and anger very quickly and all this can be easily avoided if we prepare our remarks well.  Know where you’re going and do not keep that information to yourself.  Tell your audience where you’re going and then go there.

Vary Your Tone, Cadence, and Volume

The moment I feel I am losing my audience, I immediately make a change to my delivery.  I pause.  I slow down or speed up.  I speak more softly or more loudly.  I change the tone and the register of my voice.  I change the emotional tenor of my presentation.  Anything to subvert my audience’s expectations. 

What kills audience attention perhaps more quickly and effectively than anything else is monotony.  Humans are built to detect patterns and once patterns are detected the human brain tends to shut off.  Equilibrium creates complacency.  And a complacent audience is generally an audience that is no longer paying attention. 

There is a scene at the end of Back to the Future where Marty McFly plays “Johny B. Goode.”  Right before he is set to start, he turns to the band and says, “All right guys.  Listen, this is a blues riff in B.  Watch me for the changes and try and keep up okay?”  Your audience as a public speaker is not comprised of the students on the dance floor.  Your audience is the band.  Your job is to keep them off balance, never give them a sense of stability for very long and, if you have done your job effectively, they will watch you for the changes in an effort to keep up.  The moment your band knows the song is the moment they start to go through the motions and that is the death knell for any public speaker. 

However, a caveat here is in order.  Never make changes haphazardly or too often.  Changes with great rapidity for the sake of making changes does not work.  Perpetual instability that is disorganized and indiscriminate creates the image of a hysterical speaker – one who is off kilter and chaotic.  Changes in tone, cadence and volume must be implemented judiciously at strategic moments spread out over lengthy intervals of time.  This will create just enough instability to engage your audience for much longer.

Ask Thought Provoking Questions and Then Answer Them

This might be my favorite way to regain the attention of an audience that has grown weary.  In the middle of my sermon, I will pause and say, “question” and then ask a provocative question about the text.  It never fails.  The moment I just say the word “question” I am immediately transported to the American Serengeti looking out over the plains as dozens of prairie dogs lift their heads out of their prairie dog burrows.  Heads that were previously buried in Bibles or drooping from fatigue all of a sudden come to attention with all eyes on me. 

Human beings are naturally inquisitive.  We are naturally bent towards curiosity.  This is built into our DNA.  Erwin W. Straus, a German-American neurologist and a pioneer of anthropological medicine and psychiatry once wrote, “The act of questioning cannot be taught. Nor does it require a teacher. The first question arises early in the life of every healthy child, from the very roots of its existence. We are able to ask single questions because we are questioning beings at our very core.”

Not only do we love to ask questions, but we love to answer them.  There is a sense of altruism, perhaps even pride, in knowing an answer and rendering aid in terms of a solution.  And even in scenarios where speeches are unidirectional – where dialogue is nonexistent – speakers can still harness their audience’s natural curiosity and intrinsic desire to problem solve or to proudly demonstrate their knowledge base to cultivate engagement and regain or maintain attention.   

Obviously, once you spark their attention by posing a question, you must keep it by asking an interesting and thought-provoking one.  There is nothing worse than asking a question that is irrelevant, uninteresting, or so easy to answer that it immediately becomes undervalued and deemed unworthy of your audience’s attention.  Spark intellectual curiosity with a profound and interesting question and then maintain the attention of your audience by satisfying their curiosity in posing an answer to the question you posed.  Your audience may not agree with your conclusion, but they are expecting an answer nonetheless, so it is incumbent upon you to provide one.

Tell a Story

There are moments during my sermon preparation where I know the audience is going to falter on Sunday morning when the homily is actually delivered.  Every speaker fights their own natural tendencies the way a golfer fights their slice.  When I make a mistake in a sermon it is typically because I veer off into areas that are too technical, too academic, or too theological to keep most lay parishioners engaged.  I know this tendency.  I fight it.  But, I fail most of the time.  My corrective comes in telling stories at strategic points in my sermon – points where I know I have gone off the deep end and where I know I’m going to lose my audience.  I strategically place stories at these key points in my prepared remarks to regain and maintain my audience’s attention.

Human beings love to tell stories and they love to hear them.  This inherent quality is evident in all of us.  Never more so than when we were children.  Children love to hear stories.  They cannot get enough of them.  “Once upon a time” generates a Pavlovian response.  I have seen a classroom full of rambunctious children go dead silent because a skilled storyteller began to weave a tale. 

This really is no different for adults.  We have gotten better perhaps with age in disguising our love of stories.  We may not pine for them so openly at bedtime, but the love of a good story never leaves us.  Sometimes I can just say the word “story” and the room will go quiet in rapt attention.  Tell stories.  Make sure they are good ones and you will have no trouble maintaining your audience’s attention.

Telegraph Your Conclusion

This is an old preacher trick, but it works every time.  Telegraph your conclusion.  “We end with this,” “in conclusion,” “let me close by saying this.”  Any permutation of the preceding remarks works and it works surprisingly and exceedingly well.  Something about us makes us want to know how things end.  We can slog through the worst movie, endure the worst book, or consume the worst meal with an eye towards dessert all in an effort to see if the ending redeems the effort.  Sometimes it does.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  Regardless, we are wired to finish. 

And if nothing else, even if there was no redemptive value in any of our remarks, by telegraphing our conclusion we are at the very least giving our audience hope that an end is forthcoming.  This smallest sliver of hope can create enough of an opening to regain the attention of an audience we may have forfeited 25 minutes ago. 

Tell your audience you are about to finish and then make it the best finish you can and hopefully you will leave your audience wanting more.  And even if you don’t, at least they were paying attention at the end.