Audience

The most important thing in any presentation is the audience. If the audience is not being served in some way, then the presentation is a waste of time. And yet many speakers are very presenter-focused (‘I covered that material.’ 'I think that went OK.' 'I was fine once I got going.' etc.) which is understandable given how nerve-racking public speaking can be.

One of the key assumptions of the courses centres the relationship between the presenter and audience. The terms ‘expert’ and ‘interested group’ are used to describe each respectively. You will always be the expert in the material you are presenting, relative to the audience. Even if you are presenting to senior management, and you are only in the job six months (a situation where you may feel the real experts are in front of you), what you present is what you have done, why you have done it, what were the results and what are your recommendations based on this. The audience will be there to learn from you, and you will be the expert.

In the picture, you could ask is the mother reading to her child, or is the child showing her mother how to use the computer? The term expert is relative, and a presenter will always be the expert to a given audience, for a particular presentation task.

The second term ‘interested group’ is also worth exploring. Everyone fears that people will fall asleep in front of them as they speak, but you have to realise that the audience does have an ‘interest’ in what you are saying. If they don’t, then why give the presentaton? The key is to focus in on what this interest is and this will enable you to deliver on the needs that the audience has. You always have to figure out what is useful to the audience, and this will guide you on what you should then say.

Defining clearly what the audience’s interest is, and what you are expert in relative to this audience, will enable you to construct a useful and interesting structure for your presentations. This runs through all of the training.