How to learn to read an audience's body language

Reading the body language of the audience is one of the only skills in the field of rhetoric that can be learned only by watching it. It is not necessary to make a speech, but it is enough to look at the audience while someone else is speaking to understand the audience's body language.

In 1996, when I was just released from the army and before I started to engage in rhetoric and its teaching, I accompanied my father, Dr. Eliezer Yariv, as a driver on a two-day lecture tour he conducted in the south. My father is a big believer in receiving feedback, and he asked me to report to him in detail how his lecture was. For this purpose, I kept a record of his lecture in which I divided the page into 4 columns. In the first and widest column I summarized what he said. In the second column, I scribbled my own comments and suggestions on his words. In the third column I wrote down at each stage what percentage of the audience was alert and involved (between 95% during the storyThe swallow and the broom' and up to 45% just before he said 'and in conclusion'). In the last column I wrote down the time that had passed since the beginning of the lecture. At the end of each lecture, I could tell him exactly what the best and worst parts were, as well as what actions he should take at each stage when attention drops.

After each lecture we would go to the next lecture and on the way I would go over the feedback with him and analyze the good and bad parts. After a few lectures, I could predict in advance - just by looking at his way of speaking - what the audience's level of attention would be. The more we did this, his lectures improved in that, on the one hand, there were more good parts in them, and on the other hand, the glitches disappeared almost completely.

In order to learn to read the audience's body language, it is not necessarily necessary to do all the actions I did (although it is the most effective way), and you can simply listen and take notes. The important thing is to be alert to how the rest of the audience - not you - reacts to the speech all the time, and to record the comments in an orderly manner and in a centralized place so that a pool of knowledge on the subject is gradually created. It can be said that the site you are reading is to a large extent the same concentration of knowledge that I have accumulated over 11 years of practicing rhetoric and teaching it.