Understanding Your Audience

Steps for understanding your audience quickly.

1. Scan the surrounding environment. - Browse the audience; look for general patterns in people's appearance and behavior. What is the overall mood of the gathering? What's going on in the background that may be influencing your audience members? For example are there many distractions?

2. Identify key traits you want to read. - Focus on the person or individuals you want to read. mentally draw up a list of several key traits you want to observe in those audience members. For example, do you want to gain a sense of your listeners' energy levels, ability to focus on your message, and openness to new ideas? Do you want to gauge their emotional state and confidence levels?

3. Interpret behaviors. - Bring the key traits you identified in step 2 into sharper focus. Examine the behaviors associated with those trains in minute detail. For example, to detect readiness to hear your message, observe whether your audience members are making eye contact with you, showing lively facial expressions, and nodding in agreement. To detect boredom or indifference, watch for blank stares, heads held in their palm of the hand, finger or foot tapping, and doodling. To detect openness, look for unfolded arms, warm smiles, leaning forward, and open palms.

4. Test your assumptions. - Look for ways to test your assumptions about the traits you observed in step 3. for example, don't assume too quickly that leaning forward always signifies openness. For some individuals, that posture may mean they're having trouble hearing you. In this case, you might test your assumptions by asking, "Can everyone hear me okay?" And whereas dropping eyes or limited eye contact may indicate boredom in some people, those same behaviors may reveal fatigue in others--especially if you're presenting your case after lunch or fist thing in the morning.

ACTION POINT: Think about the range of possible meanings for the behaviors you're observing and test your conclusions to ensure that you're reading your audience as accurately as possible.