tips on public speaking

Targeting Your Message
These tips on public speaking will highlight why it is important to target your message to the correct audience. If you prepare for reflective candidates and your audience is predominantly directive then they are likely to become bored - and being directives they will probably make their feelings known. Of course this profiling depends, to some extent, on a familiarity with the audience. This will be easier with work colleagues than, for example, when creating a sales presentation for an external audience. You will often have to piece together the audience profile from a variety of snippets of information - such as their job titles and ages. Other information that may prove useful includes any previous correspondence or conversations and anecdotal stories passed on by colleagues. Audience profiling is an important precursor to preparing the content of your presentation and you may need to use all of your investigative instincts to gain the most advantage from this process.

Who Should You Aim Your Presentation At?
Unfortunately presentations are normally targeted at an audience that is a mixture of personality types. So the question is ‘Who should you aim your presentation at?’

The answer will depend on the size and composition of the audience. Whilst there are an infinite number of audience scenarios we will consider three examples which illustrate the kind of issues you should consider when deciding where to pitch your presentation.

Unknown Group of about 30 People
You are going to present to an audience of around 30 people, who are not known to you. Here you may not be able to gain any specific intelligence and therefore you should exploit the fact that large groups tend to be fairly homogeneous - that is there is likely to be a predominant personality type. If they are sales and marketing staff they are likely to be emotives, a senior management group will be predominantly directive and engineers will tend to be reflectives.

Small Mixed Audience with Key Decision Maker
You are going to present to a small mixed audience, about the size and composition of the one shown. The first question you should ask yourself is whether or not the group contains a key decision maker who will influence the others. If you can establish that this is the case then target your presentation at that individual.

Small, Mixed Audience with no Known Decision Maker
In this scenario you are presenting to a small mixed audience, but this time there isn’t an identifiable key decision maker. Presenting to this kind of group will be your biggest challenge, and if you are unable to gain any further information about the group then your best strategy is likely to be to prepare a DIRECTIVE presentation. This will keep any directives happy - and they are often influential, the emotives will be satisfied because your delivery will be fact based and punchy. To keep the reflectives happy prepare a handout that will supply further details. The supportives will be influenced by the others during the presentation but may also warrant a pep-talk before or afterwards to address the specific concerns they may have.

Further Audience Intelligence
As well as understanding the personality types that you will be presenting to there are other questions that you should ask about your audience.

1. How many people will attend?
2. Why are they attending?
3. What do they want from the presentation?
4. How are they likely to react to the presentation?
5. What level of knowledge do they have already?

Each of these questions should provide you with information that should help you to fine-tune the content of your presentation as well as making you better prepared when you come to deliver it. For example, audience members who have chosen to attend are likely to be more receptive than those who are there by obligation. In addition, an understanding of their existing knowledge will enable you to adjust the level at which you pitch your presentation. The most important thing to remember is: The more you know about your audience the more you will be able to translate your presentation for them and therefore the clearer your message will be to them.

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