Case History: Andrea, The Speaker With 35 Years Of Terror Induced Laryngitus, Part 4

 Part 4: Writing For Your Unique Audience

Remember that just like your audience, you bring a unique set of circumstances, history, and experience to the public speaking process.

I explained to Andrea that the next thing was I was going to ask her some key questions about her audience that would help us in our writing process.

Who is your audience?

This lead right into my next question. Who is your audience? This is one  of the key aspects of giving a speech that most people overlook. Knowing who your audience is should have a huge impact on how you write and deliver your speech.

I asked Andrea to look again at her list of objectives and tell me who her audience was. She came up with this list:

1.    The kids in the graduating class and their families
2.    The Administration and the Teachers of the school
3.    My own family

A Demographic Analysis Is Key To Establishing Rappore

Knowing your audience and doing a full demographic analysis is important so you make sure you don’t speak either above or below their level of understanding and it also helps you to target your objectives more closely. It is also a key to creating rappore.

Ratio of Men To Women?

So I asked Andrea to tell me what she knew about her upcoming audience for this speech and what was the ratio of men to women. She thought about this and then replied that her audience for this speech is:

1.    Roughly split 50/50 of Men to Women

I then asked her how old her audience was or what was their age range.

What is the Age Range of Your Audience?

Andrea figured that her audience was probably on average 15-70 given that it is a family audience. This is important as it tells you that you have several generations present, each who value and who want to hear different things from you as a speaker.

Gen Y: Ages 14-35
Gen X: 25-39
Baby Boomers: 40-55
Traditional: 55-70
   
What does your Audience know about your subject?

Next I asked Andrea, “What does your Audience know about your subject?”

“Not much.” Andrea said. “It’s more like a welcome to the Alumni rather than a long drawn out speech.”

“So most people don’t know much about the Alumni at this school?”

“No not much. We’re trying to raise the visibility of the Alumni Association.” Andrea replied.

“So really it just needs to give basic information correct?” I just wanted to be clear.

“Correct.” Andrea confirmed.

How do you want your audience to feel?

Next I asked Andrea, “So how do you want your Audience to feel about your subject?”

“Well, ” Andrea thought for a moment. “I want them to feel warm and welcomed.”

What are the three most important points you want them to remember?

“OK.” I said. Equal men and women,  ages 17-70, They know little about your subject and you want them to feel warm and welcomed right? So now we are going to figure out what you want to say. What are your three most important points you want them to remember?”

“Well,” Thought Andrea, “I want them to know
1.    That the Alumni Association exists and a bit of history
2.    That everyone in the class is welcome
3.    And if they need any help or have more questions, they should feel free to give me a call.

That’s pretty much it.”

People write more formally than they speak

“Great!” I said, Now let’s get all that information down on paper in that order, We will write an opening welcome paragraph and a closing summary and you will be done! But I want you to tell me the information out loud first. People always tend to write more formally than they speak so let’s talk it out here before we write it down. Then we can write it in your own language.”

“That’s so interesting!” said Andrea. “I never really thought about it in that way before! Let’s see. I want to give a brief history of the school which I will look up, then I want them to know about how much fun it is, what the benefits are to them short and long term, how it benefits them to stay in touch with their classmates, when the Association meets and how often, and why it’s important.”

So that is what we did. In very little time and with these parameters, we had her speech written. It sounded like her and she was for the first time really comfortable with what she was going to say. Then the bomb dropped.

The Bomb Drops

Andrea called me and told me that the headmaster from the school had asked to see her speech, she sent it and then got it back filled with red writing with entire sections crossed out in red. Andrea was practically in tears.

“How could he do that? It was my speech. What do we do now?”

I calmly listened to Andrea’s concerns. I knew instinctively that this could be a major turning point for her either forward or backward in her speaking development. So I was quite careful in how I phrased my response to her:

“Well Andrea. As I see it we have two choices here. We can do his version of your speech or we can do yours. I know you want to get your son into that school and that was one of your original key concerns and objectives. SO I just want you to know that if you want to do his version, we still have time to get you ready to deliver that speech. However, in the end it is your ten minutes. If you give your version, the Headmaster isn’t exactly going to race up to the front of the stage and scream,. “Hey that’s not my speech?!” now is he?”

Andrea had to admit that was an unlikely scenario.

I went on, “So we have a decision now to make. As I said before, it’s your ten minutes. Do you want to make him happy by doing his version no matter whether his version is good or not and hopefully get your son into the school or do you want to your version and take that risk of angering him but do your own speech that you know has been written from your heart? I can get you ready either way. It’s your choice.”

Andrea makes her choice

I knew giving Andrea the choice was key to her ownership of the speech and to her future as a speaker so I kept silent and waited. Andrea thought about it for a bout a minute and then had her answer: “I want to do MY version of the speech. As you said, he can’t do anything to me once I open my mouth now can her?!” And she laughed!
For Andrea, this moment proved to be the one that determined the entire outcome of the speech. Andrea wrote it and now she owned it. Now she needed to practice and get the speech up on it’s feet.

But there were a few more critical factors that had to be addressed before she got to the point of being able to perform it. She had to deal once again with those dreaded, “annoying Little Weasal” voices in her head.

And I will be covering those tomorrow in our final part 5 of our series:

Part 5: Andrea meets her inner mind chatter head on and gets ready to perform!