When Audiences Give False Feedback

I have written recently about the lengths to which a presenter should go to obtain specific, timely, usable feedback. The most critical source of that feedback is, of course, the audience. Yet what if the audience isn't cooperating?

I'm beginning to think that business audiences and presenters are in collusion. Theoretically there should be checks and balances between these two entities, much like there are between buyer and seller or the executive branch and the legislative branch.

Audiences should be the watchdog for the presenter, alertly evaluating whether or not they're getting value and their needs are being met. And ready to provide constructive feedback if that's not happening. But too, too frequently I see audiences providing at least adequate, if not highly positive, feedback to crummy presenters.

SHOULDN'T WE RAISE THE BAR?

If we keep telling presenters they're OK, how will we ever encourage them to stop reading PowerPoint slides, to rehearse their presentation before delivering it, to incorporate examples and stories to help us understand better, to stop saying "you know" every 5 seconds, to use simple words instead of jargon, to....? Those 3s, 4s and 5s (out of 5) on the feedback questionnaire allow the presenter to dwell in a self-congratulatory bubble, neither cognizant of nor caring about his presentation inadequacies. After all, the scores were pretty good, weren't they?

WHY ARE AUDIENCES RELUCTANT TO BE HONEST?

I think it's either fear or apathy. Fear of not being a nice guy, of delivering feedback and a low score that the recipient won't like or that will hurt her feelings. Or...perhaps worse...too apathetic to take the time and energy to provide thoughtful, constructive comments. Hmmm...who's the loser here??

This begs for someone to develop a list of audience responsibilities. Stay tuned.

Comments

[Kathy Reiffenstein]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your comment. You make some great points.

It seems a bit of a trade-off, doesn't it, between taking the chance that feedback will be delivered poorly (and I think you're quite right that lots of people just don't know or care how to provide feedback constructively) and continuing to 'reward' bad presentations.

I'm formulating a list of "Audience Responsibilities" for my next post. Maybe one of them is to learn how to provide feedback that is appropriately constructive!

Kathy

[finiteattentionspan.wordpress.com]

Hi Kathy

I really do agree, though I suppose it would be asking the audience to break the implicit social contract that "everyone is nice". Social, implicit constraints are powerful!

If I thought people would provide constructive honest feedback then I might be more in favour; sometimes people don't really think too hard about how they phrase their feedback (anonymity perhaps doesn't help this any); what to the giver-of-feedback can seem perfectly fair and honest might be perceived by the presenter as absolutely devastating!

But I do like the idea that we call BS on the whole "being nice" thing, because all it does is tacitly condone poor presentation skills and reinforce the idea that someone else's presentation is somewhere you go to have the pants bored off you.

Thought-provoking, ta!

- Chris