The best way to encourage people to listen to what you have to say is to make it as concise and interesting as possible and loaded with benefits to them. But that still might not draw everybody in. You might still have fake listeners.
These are the great pretenders who respond with cliche comments like: "That's interesting!' "Is that right?" " How about that!" often accompanied by the appropriate facial expression such a smile, a raised eye brow, or a shake of their heads in disbelief. They might appear to be listening intently but their minds are miles away.
But you can detect such fake listeners by watching for poor eye contact shuffling feet or fidgety hands or a disinterested slump.
Watch for these or perhaps an unrelated response that has nothing to do with what you are talking about.
You can snap such ones out of this game by asking pointed questions says Ken J. Murphy in his book Effective Listening asking such things as: "Oh, do you find that interesting? What about it in particular interests you?"
That type of question would obviously work only with an audience of one or two persons but other questions such as: "Does anyone have any thoughts about this this?" or other questions to see if people understand what you are saying would work with an audience of any size.
Many speakers leave any question periods to the end of the presentation when they turn the floor over to the audience but if you feel you might have an audience infiltrated by more than a few idea surfers -- getting carried away with whatever flashes into their minds instead of listening you to making your presentation more interactive with intermittent questions will help you to keep them more attentive to your ideas while you are speaking.
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