Speaker Perception
Speaker Perception
Perceptions of the speaker can be another barrier to effective listening. Plutarch (AD 46–120), the Greek biographer and essayist, who wrote the first full essay on listening (Essays, 1992) said: “Learn how to listen and you will prosper even from those who talk badly.” We all know teachers or business speakers who have many space fillers and pauses in their speech—“umh,” “you know,” “let me say this…” Or the speaker is not a great speaker, they are slow and measured, certainly not a motivational speaker. We can, as sometimes happens, label the speaker as uninteresting, not a good speaker, boring, or we can look beyond the perceptions we may have of the speaker.
Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, was said to have the ability to be a strong motivational speaker, to speak like a “camptown preacher.” He didn’t use this ability because he felt that it detracted from the listener’s ability to rationally evaluate the speaker, and for him it was the message, the information and logical argument, that was most important, not the speaker or the speaker’s delivery (this principle derives originally from Aristotle’s Rhetoric). Of course, a speaker should strive to be interesting, but it is more important for the listener to be able to set aside perceptions of the speaker and listen for the message. Many times a dull speaker has interesting things to say, maybe wisdom to impart, if only we would listen.
On the other hand, we should not be taken in or entranced by a speaker’s appearance, the spin of a message, or the manipulation of a communication event. A carefully crafted speaking image, created through sophisticated polling and marketing has been around, though in a somewhat less sophisticated form, since Senator Richard Nixon’s September 23, 1952 Checkers Speech (http://www.watergate.info/nixon/checkers-speech.shtml) where he defended himself against charges of taking campaign funds in return for influence in his campaign for Vice President. In this televised speech Nixon carefully played on and manipulated the sentiments and fears (of communism) of his audience to maintain his political image. Some would point to earlier radio fireside chats by President Franklin Roosevelt, however, they played more on the emotion of voice and the imagination of the listener, rather than the visual theatre of Nixon’s TV presentation with his dog Checkers, a gift, and references to his wife’s republican cloth (as opposed to fur) coat. A listener, then needs to be able to set aside, or evaluate separately, the spin and imagistic aspects of a speaking situation and concentrate on the construction of the message (the second component of the definition of listening), a central point in the development of any speech.
A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something. Wilson Mizner (1876–1933)
