Know who the audience is. You need to make it your business. Find out as much as you can about them. How do they learn? This can be as a collective or individually. In this chapter you will learn how to identify your potential supporters and your saboteurs, especially if the stakes are high. You need to know what makes them tick and adapt your style accordingly.
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People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou |
In many ways, your skills, confidence and experience as a facilitator will account for a high percentage of your success. To make success more certain, knowing your audience can give you an added advantage.
Some people find it harder to deliver to people that they know, others find it the opposite. There are positives and negatives to each – they are personal feelings. A good facilitator should take the emotion out of the situation and focus on logical outcomes.
There are various types of learning intervention available to you. We all learn in different ways. Teams and organisations learn in different ways. This is where building rapport with the client is crucial. You need to ascertain what will and will not work and why.
For example, if you are in front of a group of financial accountants, understand the environment they work in, what is important to them and how they approach their work, as well as the ways things are done there. My experience has taught me that to run a day full of extroverted activities, with role plays and high level theory, will not be received as well as a day using practical exercises linked to theory and allowing for reflective thought.
Likewise, with a marketing team, it will generally not be as effective if you include lots of individual working and little in the way of creativity and expression of ideas. Although this is not always the case and we must not stereotype, really get to know your audience, the environment they work in and know what will work for them.
Get to know the language and jargon that the audience use and incorporate it into your design and delivery.
Think about the following.
Who are they?
- Find out who will be there and how many will be there.
- Divide the audience into generic groups or broad categories. This will help in positioning your presentation and give you some idea of their level of knowledge and level of interest in your subject.
- It may not be possible to do more detailed analysis than this, particularly with a large audience. If it is possible, obtain more detailed information about each individual:
– experience;
– education;
– attitudes;
– seniority;
– role in any organisational politics;
– work pressures and priorities;
– attitude to change;
– level of knowledge;
– sensitivity to subject, etc.
- Try to identify the decision-makers, and find out how they have reacted to speakers/presentations in the past.
Why are they coming?
- Again, it may be possible to split your audience into broad groups:
– those who are there to be entertained – ‘the joy riders’;
– those for whom attendance is compulsory – ‘the captive audience’;
– those who are interested in the subject – ‘those who want to know’;
– those who need information – ‘those who need to know’.
- If your talk has been successful in their terms, what will this mean, i.e. what is ‘successful’ to them?
What do they expect?
- Think through their expectations.
- Find out what interests them.
- Identify how they will benefit from attending.
- Include information which is appropriate to their range of feelings – are they hostile, cynical, worried, enthusiastic?
- If you express your message in terms of what the audience want, they are more likely to listen and accept what you say.
- They will always retain the right to switch off if:
– they are bored;
– they don’t get the information they expect or need;
– they don’t understand what is said;
– they are distracted;
– they are threatened or offended.
Individual learning styles
As mentioned in Chapter 3, each person is an individual and therefore has an individual learning style. As this book is based on practical rather than theoretical content, David Kolb’s theory of experiential learning will be very briefly explained now.
David Kolb believes that ‘learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience’.
Kolb’s four-stage cycle shows how experience is translated through reflection into concepts, which in turn are used as guides for active experimentation and the choice of new experiences. The first stage, concrete experience (CE), is where the learner actively experiences an activity. The second stage, reflective observation (RO), is where the learner consciously reflects back on that experience. The third stage, abstract conceptualisation (AC), is where the learner attempts to conceptualise a theory or model of what is observed. The fourth stage, active experimentation (AE), is where the learner is trying to plan how to test a model or theory or plan for a forthcoming experience. For more information, see Kolb, D. A. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Source: Based on data from Kolb (1976, 1981, 1984); Kolb and Fry (1975); and Honey and Mumford (1982)
Taking this work further, Honey and Mumford identified four learning styles which correspond to these stages. The styles highlight conditions under which learners learn better (see Figure 4.1). These styles are:
- Activist
- Reflector
- Theorist
- Pragmatist.
There are two versions of the Honey and Mumford Learning Styles Questionnaire – a 40-item and an 80-item version. More information can be found at www.peterhoney.com
By enabling participants to complete the questionnaire in advance, the facilitator can use the information to assist with design and to include exercises that meet everyone’s needs.
A colleague of mine sent out the learning questionnaire to participants well in advance of their workshop. This enabled him to design exercises for small groups that played to their learning preference. The majority were activists, so the exercises were based on the ‘learning by doing’ approach. Less talk, more action! The feedback afterwards was fantastic and they all thought that the workshop had been designed just for them!
Having the opportunity to discover learning styles before a workshop may not always be possible. There may be a shortage of time or it may not be totally relevant. You could always run this session at the beginning of the workshop to show how every-one learns differently.
Identifying the roles of resistance
If you are working internally for an organisation, you will have certain levels of access to the participants in advance of your workshop. This can be extremely useful in getting a feel for how the workshop is being perceived, who sees it as a need to develop or improve – and who sees it as interference to their day job.
Never assume that everyone who attends your workshops will want to be there. With experience, you can manage these emotions on the day, but some people may have already put the word round that it will be a complete waste of time and so the negative mindset has already been created.
The ‘roles of resistance’ is something that politicians use before canvassing for their votes. If you know the audience, or some of them, then you can complete this exercise and it will help you focus on who you need to engage with and who you shouldn’t spend too much time with.
Think about the people attending your workshop and identify which of the five categories below they fall into.
| Who they are | What they do | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Evangelists | Champion of the workshop/content. Shouting it from the rooftops. | +10 |
| Supporters | Will support you. They are right behind you/the concept but will not lead. | +5 |
| Floating voters | Sitting on the fence. They could go either way. They need convincing. | 0 |
| Protesters | Against the workshop and will tell others when asked and can blow a lot of ‘hot air’. | –5 |
| Saboteurs | Will deliberately set people off against each other. Actively against attending. | –10 |
The evangelists
By identifying and knowing the people that are 100 per cent behind you/the content/training and development, you can rest assured that they need no convincing. They are your champions, your sponsors.
Action: There really is no need to spend time here as they are 100 per cent committed. Identify the participants that come within this category and score each one with a +10.
The supporters
These people are also on your side. They may not be telling everyone or be as vociferous as the evangelists, but they will be fully behind the concept.
Action: All you need to do with supporters is to keep them informed about what is happening. This can be an email about the workshop or, if you pass them in the workplace, a positive conversation about it. Identify the participants that come within this category and score each one with a +5.
The floating voters
These are generally the majority of the audience. They may not have strong feelings either way. However, you need to get to them before the saboteurs do!
Action: Spend most of your time here. You will need to engage and influence these participants. Go and talk to them and sell the benefits of attending and the learning outcomes to be gained. Take time to sit with them. It will be time well spent. Identify the participants that come within this category and score each one with a 0.
The protesters
These people can talk a lot to colleagues about why they shouldn’t attend and why the workshop will be a waste of time or boring. They talk a great deal but if challenged by a senior manager they won’t show any resistance.
Action: Spend time here too. There is only a short distance to get them upwards to be a floating voter, so give them that time and sell the benefits. Identify the participants that come within this category and score each one with a – 5.
The saboteurs
You will always come across these people. No matter how great the design, the delivery and the feedback, they will never be convinced. They believe learning is something that others do and that they got where they are today by just doing the job. Their current knowledge and skills will carry them onwards and upwards. Of course, they may also not like the content or you!
Action: You do not need to spend any time here. It will be wasted. They will not change. To get them from here to a floating voter will take too long. Identify the participants that come within this category and score each one with a 210.
After initial identification, add up the scores and see how things currently stand. Although the scores are subjective, they can give you an overview of the types of challenge you may be facing when delivering. Think about who you will need to engage and influence in advance. Just talking to some of the floating voters can change their mindset about the workshop.
Again, knowing your audience in advance will help you manage expectations and build relationships, as well as influence those who need a little bit of extra understanding as to why the workshop is happening and the WIIFM factor – ‘What’s in it for me?’
- Get to know as much as possible in advance about your audience.
- Spend your time with people who are open to being convinced – floating voters.
- Become familiar with learning styles to maximise your delivery approach.
- Use the audience’s language/jargon to explain concepts and theories.
- Always answer the WIIFM factor.