A point I often stress is that you should cater your talk to the audience.
There are a lot of reasons why, and a lot of ways to do it, which we're not going to get into here. Instead, I'd like to answer a great follow-up question I received:
What do you do when you have a mix of people in your audience? Specifically:technical with non-technical or senior leadership with peers
If you ever find yourself in that situation, start by asking:
Do I really need to combine these groups...
or could I deliver a separate presentation to each?
If you can do the latter, great, read no further!
But if you've got to do a one-size-fits-all, no worries!
Here are 4 tips to help you do it well:
1. Consider your objective.
We start with you and what you want. Ask yourself, what is it that you're trying to achieve by the end of your presentation? For example, do you need buy-in, approval, support? And if so, from whom?
Craft your content such that you achieve your aim. To put it bluntly, if you need approval from one particular group, your first priority should be to target your talk to them.
2. Acknowledge everyone.
Of course, you cannot just ignore parts of the audience - that's not what I'm saying! In fact, you still need to achieve a balance to give the people what they want. When you must delve into a high-level and low-level overview, the key is to make sure you don't lose anyone in the process. Luckily, you can often salvage this with a simple statement like:
"I know some of you are already familiar with this, but bear with me a moment while I bring the rest of the group up to speed."
or
"I'll take a moment to dive into some of the details, for those of you that are curious."
These types of statements say: I see you, I hear you, I know this is not what you're here for, but give me a second to talk to the other group and I'll get right back to you. By simply acknowledging people, they're less likely to check out.
3. Go easy on the technical, or separate.
Generally, the more senior our audience members, the less opportunities we have to meet with them. This is especially true of executives. And given that their time is extremely limited, be sure to address their priorities, whatever those may be.
Since they don't usually want the details, consider how you can include them for folks that do:
Invite questions in the Q&A to get everyone involved.
Add details in the appendix.
Share your detailed deck as pre-read or follow-up material.
4. Use an analogy or metaphor.
These literary devices use comparison to explain or illustrate an idea. They can serve to simplify complex concepts, making them more relatable and even interesting. With your audience more engaged, you may even have more flexibility to get into the weeds. See what I did there? 😉
Here are some more examples:
Software updates are like oil changes for your car.
Social media is a double-edged sword.
The stock market is a roller coaster.
You can also be creative and make up your own. I do this often with Soapbox strategies:
Play 'duckie'.
Divide your content into 3 buckets.
Make your audience the star of the show.
That final example brings us back to where we started. To make your audience the star, you must cater your talk to the audience. Yes, it can be tricky when some people want the nitty gritty...while others do not.
But by following the 4 tips above, you're much more likely to make everybody happy...including yourself! (Refer to tip number 1)
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