One of the most common pieces of advice on public speaking is to “know your audience.” Experts advise the aspiring speaker to think about the audience they’ll be addressing, do some research, and tailor their speech to the group.
In a broad sense, there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s important to know if you’re talking to four-star generals or pacifists, second-graders or lion tamers. Knowing the most pressing interests or concerns of the decision-makers, board of directors, or other stakeholders in the room is useful, and that knowledge should inform your speech or presentation.
But the real challenge of addressing a group of people is that all of them are arriving at your talk with a mixed bag of experiences, opinions, and biases that you can’t possibly predict or adjust for. They aren’t a monolith. One pitfall of “knowing your audience” is that the more research you do, or guesses you make, the more you may be tempted to warp your talk to avoid this thing or highlight that thing, until this cohesion and coherence of your message is lost.
You are there to serve the audience. That’s the point of the presentation. But the job of the speaker is to connect the audience with ideas and information that they may or may not know that they need. The craft of speaking is to find the balance between incorporating your knowledge of the audience and staying the course of your unique message.
