How to Know Your Audience Better

Once upon a time, learning someone else’s language was a highly coveted skill. To be able to converse in a tongue that was not your own gave you an edge in the days when vocabulary dictionaries, grammar guides and hours of study were the cutting edge (and only) tools available. Then the smartphone came along and now everyone has an AI boosted interpreter in their pocket.

Understanding your audience and speaking to them so that they are engaged is a communication skill which many seek and is grounded in the ancient principles of ethos and logos. For it is one thing to be an expert, your head filled with knowledge and experience about how to do things, and quite another to be able to communicate that to a room full of people in a way that they connect with.

Some people are naturals. For example, Warren Buffet (one of the most successful investors of all time) is a ‘great’ when it comes to demystifying the complexity of financial systems, with an ability to wrap them up in folksy metaphors that are accessible to most people. When he talks about what makes a company a good investment, he paints a picture of a castle, surrounded by a ‘moat’ that protects it from its competitors. In doing so he conjures an image we can all relate to.

Buffet taps in to the power of storytelling, a tradition that still carries tremendous weight with audiences otherwise numbed by data and bland slide shows. Data is royalty, but don’t forget the need to take your audience on that ride with you.

Another speaker who typifies this approach is the podcaster and academic, Brené Brown,

whose effectiveness comes from her emotional intelligence and ability to identify and mirror the anxieties of her audience. By channelling themes of vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame, she is someone an audience naturally warms to – after all these are universal themes which are present in everyone’s lives.

Add to this list the legendary former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was able to engage different audiences by tailoring her narrative and inspiring audiences, rather than simply just arguing the law. Take this razor sharp snippet:  “Whatever you choose to do, leave tracks. That means don’t do it just for yourself. You will want to leave the world a little better for your having lived.” And who’s to argue that the world doesn’t need a bit more of that at the moment?

The most brilliant professionals will often stumble when they prioritise their own message over their audience’s reality. Here are some common pitfalls that undermine the experts when they speak to people.

The ‘curse of knowledge’ or ‘expert’s curse, refers to cognitive bias where experts forget (or ignore the fact) that their audience doesn’t have their high level of knowledge. They fail to adjust their language and the result is often a ramble of incomprehensible jargon, obscure references and a patchwork of unconnected dots, which leaves the crowd baffled, bored and unrewarded.

To this I will just add, in its own special category, ‘drowning in jargon.’ Examples of this are using dense legalese or peppering your speech with acronyms that make it sound like you’re speaking a foreign language (and good luck to your pocket interpreter in picking this sort of speech apart). If we don’t understand, we switch off.

Another failure comes ion the form of relying on the same templates. This is the curse of someone who has spent too long in the same industry and delivered too many presentations. They will just ‘dust out the old classics’ for whatever the next speaking gig is and those classics will inevitably become relics over time. It’s vital to keep up with the times, refer to current trends, and especially adapt your material for a younger audience as you get older.  Many a ‘celebrity’ after diner speaker falls into this laxy routine and leaves their audience underwhelmed and disappointed.  Those that make the effort get booked time after time.

So how to speak to your audience better?

• Do your research: What makes your audience tick? Never mind the solutions you think they need, what are the issues that they actually have? While you’re preparing what you’re going to say, constantly check yourself and ask ‘What’s the point (of what I’m saying)?’. Give your audience value for money and avoid waffling just to make the time pass.
• Put the effort in: Once you’ve done your research – pointer, talk to people who can inform you and not a chatbot – put the effort in to work out how you are going to present your solutions in a way that empathises with your audience’s needs.
• Keep tweaking: Great stand ups are great because they take notes on what works with an audience and what doesn’t. If you get a laugh on one part of your presentations, if you notice the room is hanging on your words at a particular moment (or scribbling notes) it’s likely it will work with a different crowd too. If there’s a section where the energy is flat, edit or get rid of it.
• Information is abundant, but resonance is harder to come by. AI can’t speak to your audience like you can. It doesn’t know what the energy of an audience feels like. As the world gets filled with more AI insights, authenticity and human connection gains more value. Fer that reason, now more than ever, is a time for investing in knowing your audience. Mr Buffet would probably frame it as giving those castle walls a bit of attention.