Why Audiences Stop Listening Even If You're Interesting

Jan 7

As keynote speakers we need to grab our audience's attention. That's the job of the introduction.

But what do we do once we have their attention? Then we need to earn their engagement, enough to carry an entire 45 minute speech - or longer!

And yet so many speakers flounder here. Just sit at the back of the room and watch people take their phones back out, start checking email or scrolling Tik-Tok, just 3 minutes into a speech.

Why do people tune out even when they find the topic interesting?

My stupid soundbar

When we moved from Connecticut to Virginia Beach, my wife and I decided for the first time to put a TV in the master bedroom. I was tired of living the meme where the dad watches football on his phone while his 4-year-old monopolizes the big screen for Spidey and His Amazing Friends.

When I found our old soundbar from a decade ago, I excitedly plugged it in, feeling pretty clever for saving money. It seemed perfect—until the first time we turned it on.

There's just one problem: it screeches.

Every third or fourth time you turn on the TV, the soundbar lets out a screech so loud and unexpected it’s like winding up a jack-in-the-box. You never know when it’ll strike, but each time it happens, I think, ‘Gotta get a new soundbar.’

That was 6 months ago, and I'm still scared to turn on the TV.

Why haven't I purchased a new soundbar? I can afford it. I can order it on Amazon and have it delivered by the time I look up from my phone.

So, what's stopping me?

The Apathy Asterisk

Welp, it's just never quite annoying enough to make it to the top of my priority list.

I call this The Apathy Asterisk: When someone has a problem but isn't willing to invest the time, energy, or resources to solve it.

Humans are strange. We're very adaptable, but that has two sides: We’re both resilient in the face of change, and resistant to change at all costs.

So, how do we as speakers get our audience to commit to addressing a known problem that, for some reason, they haven't yet?

The stakes must outweigh the sacrifice

During the introduction and through the early stage of your keynote, the audience is weighing two things.

On one side, they’ve got the stakes: the likely short-term negative consequences for not solving their problem. And on the other side they’ve got sacrifices: the required investment of time, energy, or money to overcome the problem.

This is what I call the Sacrifice-Stakes Scale.

The Sacrifice-Stakes Scale

If the sacrifice required to overcome their problem outweighs what’s at stake, they will accept their fate and ignore your presentation.

For example, in my keynote speeches on human connection I address the problem of treating interactions like transactions.

What's at stake in the short-term? Some superficial relationships, maybe a touch of loneliness, the sense that you don't really have anyone you can count on. To overcome this problem of transactional relationship, however, a sacrifice must be made: the risk of looking foolish in front of a stranger.

There are only two ways to address this: either reduce the sacrifice or increase the stakes.

Both of these techniques can work, but which one you choose depends on which part of the speech you're in. If you're in the main body, you can reduce the sacrifice.

But unfortunately, that's not where my speakers lose their audience. They lose the audience during the introduction, when it’s too early to reduce the sacrifice.

If it's only a few minutes into the presentation, the audience doesn’t trust you yet, and whatever they think they need to sacrifice is based on either experience or a deep-seated belief. We can’t touch it yet, not until they’ve got some faith in us.

And so the only thing we can do in the introduction is make the stakes feel heavy and present enough to sew a seed of doubt. We want them to think, “Maybe it’s finally time to consider solving this problem.”

So, how do you make the stakes work for you?

Lean into loss-aversion

People do not resist change. They resist loss.

Daniel Kahneman famously popularized the theory of loss aversion in one of the most cited papers in the history of psychology, and it has been confirmed and replicated extensively.

In simple terms, we prefer small guaranteed outcomes over large risky outcomes. I know exactly what's going to happen if I continue to treat people transactionally. But I have no idea what might happen if I try to make meaningful connections with others.

This is the tension your audience feels. Even if they recognize the stakes, they’re weighing two potential losses: the loss of their current comfort—however imperfect it may be—and the uncertain loss of what happens if they take a risk.

As speakers, we need to make the stakes so vivid and immediate that the fear of loss outweighs the discomfort of action. Highlight what they’re losing today—not someday in the future—by continuing to ignore the problem.

To combat that during the introduction to my speech, I raise the stakes by drawing the audience's attention to the loneliness epidemic:

"Two out of every three Americans reports feeling lonely on a regular basis. That means if you do, one of the people sitting next to you probably does, too. And if you don't, there's a good chance both of the people sitting next to you do. We are lonely, but we are not alone."

The present-ness of that framing brings a sense of urgency to the problem. It makes it more real, something worth solving. Now, the sacrifice of potentially looking foolish is still heavy, but I don't need to deal with that yet. I just need them to go along for the journey so that I can reduce the sacrifice later in the speech.

Which loss is worse?

Is it the loss of their imagined future if they solve their problem? Or the loss of whatever they have to give up in order to solve it?

Draw a line down a piece of paper. On one side write "Stakes" and on the other write "Sacrifices."

On the Stakes side, write down as many short-term negative consequences of continuing to have this problem as you can think of. On the Sacrifices side, write down all the things someone would have to give up in the short-term in order to solve or address this problem.

Then get really honest with yourself: Are the sacrifices worse than what's at stake?

For example, imagine a financial expert telling an audience to make a budget.

Stakes:

Being surprised by bills
Scrambling to make payments on time once a month
Taking on more credit card debt

Sacrifices:

Spending mindless hours tracking down months worth of receipts and expenses
Revealing to yourself or your significant other what you spend money on, and how much
Feeling stupid for not knowing how to create a budget
Feeling like a failure when you don't stick to it

Remember, this is all about perception.

Those stakes may seem big to you, but to someone in financial strain, they're pretty normal. If that was enough to motivate them to start a budget, they'd have done it already. They're smart, they don't need you to save them.

If the sacrifices feel worse, you need to increase the stakes. Zoom in, get specific, focus on the present and the immediate future.

What's really going to happen if they don't solve this problem? Not in 10 years, not even in a month - but today, tomorrow, this week?

The present has a way of making even small inconveniences feel like a huge deal.

Want engagement? Define the stakes

So, what about my screechy soundbar? Six months later, it’s still there, keeping me in its bizarre grip of apathy. And that’s the thing—if I can’t overcome this tiny inconvenience, how much harder is it for your audience to tackle the big, thorny issues in their lives?

Your job as a speaker is to tip the scale. Show them what’s at stake if they don’t act today—not someday, but now. The question isn’t whether they’ll change. It’s whether you’ll make them care enough to start.

Now, grab a pen. What’s at stake for your audience? What’s holding them back? And how will you make your message impossible to ignore?

Your audience won’t act unless they see the stakes clearly. When you define them in vivid, immediate terms, you’ll tip the scale in your favor.