To Increase Your Impact, Think From Your Audience’s Perspective

The next time you have to share an update at a meeting, give an important presentation, or deliver a speech in front of large audience, you’ll have more impact if you frame the conversation from the proper perspective. When we have to speak in a professional setting at work, we can only talk about one of three things.

We can talk about ourselves.

We can talk about our content.

We can talk to the audience about the audience.

Those are our only three options – ourselves, our content, our audience.

Well, nothing personal, but no one cares about us when we’re speaking. I talk in front of groups of lawyers, consultants, financial advisors, and other professionals multiple times a week. No one has ever come to a class for me. And no one comes to your meeting for you. Sorry.

They don’t care about our content either. So called “knowledge workers,” people in more cerebral professions, are more likely than others to think their talk is all about their content, mainly because they spent all their time thinking about and preparing their content. We love our content. We’re steeped in it. Unfortunately, no one else cares about our content.

Instead, our audience cares about how our content impacts them, which is different from our content itself. So, the goal is to always talk to the audience about the audience.

Easy to say, but what does that mean in practice?

Most people start talking at a meeting by saying,

“What I want to share with you,”

“What I want to cover today,”

“What I want to tell you about is….”

They start with, “What I want,” as if anyone cares what we want. Again, nothing personal but no one cares about what you want. Excise that phrase from your delivery. It’s not helpful.

Instead, start with, “What I thought would be most helpful to you today is….” When you start with that language, two things happen.

First, you’ve told your audience – an audience of one or one hundred – that you have put all your focus into what’s helpful to them.

Second, and more importantly, if you have the phrase, “helpful to them” running through your head before you even get in the conference room or on the Zoom call, you start challenging everything you’re about to share and the way you’re about to share it based on your only legitimate reason for being in the room, which is to be helpful to someone else.

And it’s not just a semantic difference. It’s substantive.

Let’s say I walk into my manager’s office to give her an update on the Acme deal. Susan is busy. She is dealing with a dozen important topics. I walk in and say, “Susan, I want to give you an update on the Acme deal.” Susan is thinking, “Well let me drop everything I’m doing, Jay, because you want to give me an update on Acme.” All I am doing is interrupting Susan.

Instead, I should consider, “Why is this information helpful to Susan at this moment?” Then, I’ll knock on Susan’s door and say, “Susan, I think you have a call later today about Acme. I thought it might be helpful to you if I gave you a quick update on that situation.” Susan will be thinking, “Great. Haven’t had time to think about that yet. Come on in.” I’ve positioned myself as thinking not about me, but about Susan and her needs. I’ve become a more strategic ally to Susan in accomplishing her goals.

In addition, because you’ve now thought about why this is helpful to Susan, you’ve also thought about what jargon will resonate with her, what key facts are most important to her, and how she likes to receive information, meaning with lots of detail or just a high level overview.

Now extend that concept to when you have to give a major presentation. Your topic, ostensibly, is about the newest data about changes in demographics in your target market. Your instinct might be to title your presentation, “Changes in Demographics in the Southeast,” which is all about your content.

You would be better served if, instead, you reflected on the impact to the audience of those changes in demographics. Then, your presentation title becomes, “How to Keep Your Market Share in Spite of a Changing Landscape.” I guarantee your audience will be more interested in your talk when the title itself is about them rather than your data.

Using language that is less about you and more about your audience is not about denying your own needs. Your needs are important and have to be met. You’re just more likely to have those needs met if, when communicating, you do so from the particular focus of your audience, which is always on them, not you.

In the coming weeks, many of us will be listening to graduation speeches. Note the ones that resonate with you. Some speakers will talk all about themselves. Many will start with the weakest opening ever, which is to use the speech to talk about the speech. “When I was asked to give this talk, I reflected on….”

Other speakers will talk about themselves, their accomplishments, and challenges.

The best speakers, however, will talk to the graduates about the graduates. They may reference their own successes and failures, but they’ll tie those stories to a learning point for the graduates. They’ll think of the particular challenges ahead for their audience, about the threat of global instability, domestic conflicts, ongoing injustices, and the looming uncertainty of how AI will impact us all. And they’ll give us hope, because we can all identify with needing hope. In short, they’ll make their talk all about us.

Originally published on Forbes.com.