Consider Your Audience
When giving a talk, it is important to form a mutual exchange between yourself and your audience. Considering your audience allows you to make intentional decisions to frame your talk in a way that best suits their needs and most effectively communicates your message.
How Can You Consider Your Audience?
As you begin to plan your talk you should reflect on who your audience is: What is their level of understanding, knowledge, and expertise?
Know Your Audience
If you are invited to give a talk, ask the organizers to provide you with any known information about the audience. The organizers may be able to share things like the attendees’ degrees, faculty ranks, specialties, affiliated institutions, research interests, and other general information. Depending on your audiences’ level of expertise, you can vary the depth and detail in your discussion of the background and methods of your research.
There are many situations where you will not have access to this information and, in general, there is no way to truly ‘know’ your audience. However, it is possible to tailor your talk and make it accessible to any audience by checking your assumptions, building trust, and setting goals that center on them
Check Assumptions
Part of understanding your audience is understanding your own positionality and biases. You will likely be presenting to people with diverse abilities and experiences, and it’s important to not make assumptions about your audience. Check your assumptions and reframe them as considerations. How might your assumptions manifest in your talk? What questions are your assumptions getting at?
“I assume that my audience consists of only clinicians, so all of my examples are clinician-focused.”
Instead, reframe your assumption as a consideration:
“I recognize that my audience may consist of clinicians, but that does not mean that it is the only discipline in my audience. How can I use examples that capture this variety?”
Build Trust
Establishing trust early and often is critical. How can you begin to build trust? You can build trust by being:
Honest
Discuss what questions persist and acknowledge that you don’t know everything.
Relatable
Research areas of concern or skepticism and address them where you can. Incorporate interactive elements during the talk to engage audience members.
Accessible
Make decisions in your talk that show you recognize your audience is not a monolith. Include examples in your talk that capture a variety of disciplines, backgrounds, and preferences.
In the video below, Junaid Nabi, MD, MPH, asks Jessica Malaty Rivera, MS, how people can establish trust when communicating science. Rivera talks about trust as a social determinant of health. Trust or lack of trust has real-world impacts on how people make informed decisions about their health and wellbeing.
Set Goals
Another way to consider your audience when preparing for a talk is by setting goals that center on them. Centering your audience can help you prioritize being understood. Rather than simply sharing as much information as you can fit into a talk, focus on the mutual exchange between you and your audience. You may not fit as much in your talk, but more will be communicated clearly.
Move from information-centered goals to audience-centered goals
- Information-Centered Goal: I want to get as much information into this talk within my given timeframe.
- Outcome: You may have reached your goal of sharing tons of information, but at what cost?
Reframe
- Audience-Centered Goal: I want to have a conversation with my audience: stay attuned to cues and questions that arise.
- Outcome: Now you are recognizing that giving you talk is an exchange, and you can begin to consider how to put this realization into practice.
Clearly Communicate Your Message
A main goal of creating an audience-centered talk is to clearly communicate your message to everyone in attendance. To help everyone in the audience understand you and your talk better, use these tips:
- Tailor your topic based on considerations for your audience. Explore Know Your Topic for topic identifying related resources.
- Manage your pace and keep your speech clear.
- Include key ideas in text on your slides and use readily read-able colors and fonts.
- Describe any visuals on your slides.
- Be as interactive as possible with your audience (e.g., use polling questions, audience response, breakout groups, a show of hands, or the chat box).
- Use examples that capture a variety of disciplines, backgrounds, and preferences.
Gather Feedback
You can gather feedback before, during, and after your talk. Before your talk, practice your presentation and ask for feedback from mentors, colleagues, and friends. See Be Prepared to learn how to create a practice routine.
During your talk, check in with yourself: How are you feeling (ex. rushed)? What adjustments can you make mid-talk to recenter (ex. take a pause) or continue maintaining a level of comfort? Is the audience engaged? What could you do to increase engagement?
After your talk, take some time to reflect on how it went. You can gather feedback from your audience or those who invited you. For example, you can do this through post-session evaluations or by speaking with the audience members.
Put it into Practice
To create a mutual exchange with your audience, use this check-list:
- Determine who is in your audience.
- Check your assumptions about your audience: Convert assumptions into considerations
- Build Trust: Be honest, relatable, and accessible
- Set Goals: Center goals around your audience
- Progress Towards Goals: Be intentional about putting audience consideration into practice
- Gather Feedback: Before, during and after your talk as appropriate
Next Step
Click on the box below to learn more about storytelling in science communication.