Why undeserved applause is harmful and why we need audiences to be honest

Read more thoughts on the art of communicating week-daily at https://michaelgerharz.com/blog

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Have you ever sat in a totally boring presentation, but

ended up clapping your hands anyway?

Clearly the applause wasn't well-deserved but you clapped anyway.

But why did you do it?

Out of peer pressure?

Or was it pure relief that finally it's over?

Was it politeness?

Here's the thing.

It may be polite, but the problem with undeserved applause is that the

speaker doesn't get a chance to grow.

She doesn't get to feel the consequences of a bad performance.

She gave her speech, everyone clapped, everything's fine.

But what if her real goal wasn't to get a good round of applause,

but to change her audience's minds?

She won't be able to verify that it worked.

At least not easily.

Was the customer's decision for or against the project based on the presentation?

Was it her speech that led to more employees adopting the new work

culture or was it something else?

When direct feedback is missing, it's just hard to tell.

For leaders, this is an even bigger problem.

I mean, who wants to be the person to tell the leader how

bad her presentation was, right?

But on the other hand, how easy is it to praise her for her great presentation?

If it's a bat one, we’d rather politely remain silent.

But it's really not a helpful attitude.

As a leader, you should encourage your team to provide honest feedback.

As a group, you should agree to give honest feedback.

As an audience member, by all means, be polite, but also help

the speaker grow, especially if that's what she's looking for.

And that's the crucial point here.

As a speaker, you should be the driving force behind this.

If you are looking to make change happen, then find out who honestly

tells you whether your talk is actually great and seek out their feedback.

Encourage your audience to be honest.

And then grow from there, adapt and deliver a talk that changes the world.