Gaining Insight Into An Audience

You gain considerable insight into an audience by getting the answers to some basic questions about the people that compose it:

What do they want out of life?

It isn't enough to know what the people in your audience need. You also must know how they perceive their needs.

Some people are known as motivational speakers. That's a misnomer. A speaker can't motivate an audience. The audience is already motivated. It is motivated to do what it wants to do, and not what you or I want it to do.

People are like water in a faucet. The water is motivated to flow out of the faucet, but it doesn't have the opportunity until you open the tap. Many people are just as strongly motivated, and they're waiting for the opportunity to follow their motivations. The speaker who shows them that opportunity is instrumental in releasing a gush of energy.

Some people, too, are like mountain streams, which flow swiftly but follow their own channels. A good speaker shows them how to channel their motivations toward the results the speaker desires.

What do they fear?

Knowledge of what people fear can be a powerful tool in channeling motivations. Sometimes you'll need to neutralize the fear. A drowning person, terrorized at the prospect of dying, will thrash and flounder, inhibiting the lifeguard's rescue efforts. But if the lifeguard can remove this fear of death, the victim will relax and cooperate with the rescuer.

On the other hand, a person who is inclined to get behind the wheel after imbibing too many martinis needs a healthy dose of fear -- the fear of tragic death, either to the driver or to others in the path of the driver.

The more you know about your audience's fears, the better you will be able to establish effective communication.

What do they know?

If somebody from out of town calls and asks directions to your place, the first thing you normally ask is "Where are you now?"

You have to know where people are before you can tell them how to reach their destinations.

The process is similar in any kind of communication. There has to be a point of origin and there has to be a destination.

The point of origin is what the audience already knows, understands or believes. The destination is what you want the audience to know, understand or believe after you've finished talking.

So when you speak to an audience, you must start on common ground. You must know what the audience knows or believes. Otherwise, you won't know where to begin the presentation.

After you've established that common ground, you have to retain it throughout the presentation.

Some people, when they're speaking on their area of expertise, like to impress their audience with how much they know. That's a sure way to lose an audience. Your purpose is not to impress people with your knowledge, but to communicate your knowledge in such a way that they will be influenced to do the things you want them to do.

Speakers shouldn't worry about whether they know more than the audience or the audience knows more than they. If you think you know more than your audience knows, you may come across as condescending. If you think your audience knows more than you do, you may feel a bit intimidated.

It's best to think of yourself as neither inferior nor superior to your audience; just different. You know things your audience doesn't know, and the individuals in the audience know things you don't know. Neither is inferior or superior to the other.

What do they understand?

There's a big difference between knowing and understanding. When you're driving, it's not enough to know that the light over the intersection is red. You must also understand that a red light means you must stop.

The American audience that saw Nikita Khrushchev hold his clenched hands above his head knew what the Soviet leader was doing. But the audience didn't understand that it was a gesture of friendliness and not an act of braggadocio. Other incidents of international misunderstanding are more humorous.

Let me relate one other example of the difference between knowing and understanding.

A small community in a poultry-growing region was holding a festival to celebrate the industry that was the backbone of its economy. As part of the festivity, 4-H youngsters entered a poultry contest. The chickens they had raised were on display, all plucked and cleaned and ready for the cooking pot. Representatives of the area's supermarkets were there, vying for the honor of offering their customers the prize-winning product while reaping some favorable publicity.

An out-of-town visitor arrived late just as the bidding was reaching its climax.

"I'm offered nine dollars; who'll make it ten?" chanted the auctioneer.

The visitor looked at the boxes of high-quality poultry -- about 30 pounds of it. Ten dollars seemed like a steal.

"Ten dollars," he called, and the auctioneer said "Sold."

The visitor came forward, taking a crisp $10 from his wallet.

"That'll be $300," said the auctioneer.

The visitor was mortified. He knew he had bid $10 for the poultry. He understood that he was bidding $10 for the whole batch. Had he arrived at the start of the auction, he would have known that he was bidding $10 per pound.

So when you're speaking to an audience, be alert for any misunderstanding and be prepared to deal with it promptly. When you're asking $10, make sure your audience understands that you mean "per pound."

ARTICLE TAGLINE FOR NIDO QUBEIN

Nido Qubein is an international speaker and consultant. Visit his website at www.nidoqubein.com, write to Creative Services, Inc.,
P. O. Box 6008, High Point, NC 27262, or call 1-800-989-3010.

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