Look closely enough at the audience you’re about to speak to and it’s no longer one audience. It becomes groups.
The ones who already agree and the ones who need convincing. The people who were in the last meeting and the people who weren’t. The ones who want detail and the ones who want direction.
And the closer the talk gets, the more of these you see.
More often than not that’s a distraction.
Because what happens when you’ve identified the groups? You’ll try to cover them of course. Something for this group, something for the others, a line to reassure the nervous, a proof point for the doubters.
The result is a talk that’s actually three talks in one, feels somehow heavy and complex and speaks only to a fraction of the audience at any moment in time. The more people you try to speak to at once, the less you can say to any of them.
The way out is not to pick a faction and abandon the rest. It’s to notice that the split you’re seeing is almost never a split in what the audience needs.
Here’s what I mean by that. Your situation might look different. But the underlying principle will be identical.
A director is promoted. Shortly after the announcement, she starts to prepare for her first all-hands. Of course she studies the team. What she finds is what you have certainly already guessed: half of them are anxious, the other half are skeptical.
So what does she do? She writes something for both.
Except.
She stops and asks a different question: Not who is in the audience. But why are they in it together?
And there’s only one answer to that. She’s in charge now and nobody yet knows what that means for them. Anxious and skeptical were never two groups with two different needs. They share one question, asked in two tones of voice: what happens to me now that you’re here? Fear asks it one way. Doubt asks it another.
Your audience is split too. Along different lines, for different reasons, with different people in it. But maybe they, too, are asking the same question, just in a different voice.
The question that’s worth asking now is why are they there together? In this room? At the same time?
Find that and the groups unite again to form one audience.
But beware: it might lead you to giving a completely different talk than the one you set out to give. That’s usually the one worth giving.
Keep lighting the path,
Michael
PS: If you’re stuck on a question like that, that’s what a 1:1 Clarity Lab is for.
