Founder & Principal of SmartMouth Communications, a consulting, coaching and training firm that creates better messages and messengers.
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I’m pretty sure I can hear you already. You’re muttering (confidently or perhaps a little smugly) to yourself, “Of course, I always have a goal in mind.” I’m sure you do. Allow me to ask, though: Is it a goal for you or for your audience?
Let’s run through a checklist of possible scenarios. You have a goal for your talk that sounds like this: “I want to share my knowledge in a way that impresses and informs the audience.” Or like this: “I am hoping to give them an overview to bring them up to speed.” Or maybe this: “I want them to better understand [my topic].”
While any of the above are certainly worthy goals for you as a speaker, they are all about you—not about your audience or what your audience can expect to gain from your presentation. Instead of thinking about your goal for yourself/your talk/your topic, how about if you were to think about your goal for them? More specifically, what do you want them to think, know, do or feel by the end of your presentation?
The answer to that last question should be a goal for your audience, something you could turn into a statement and actually say to them. For example, if I were delivering this article as a talk versus a written piece, I might introduce my topic (a sentence similar to the title) and then say in my opening: “By the end of my talk, my hope is that you will think differently about setting a goal for your next presentation.”
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Setting a goal for your audience is a win-win. Trust me, you need it as much as they need it, and they definitely need it. Let me explain by sharing the three reasons why setting a goal for them will make you a better speaker:
Attention Spans
Audiences are paying the most attention when you open, and then again when you wind down or close. In the middle, where you’re getting into the real “meat” of your presentation, is when they fade in and out. This is an unfortunate reality of human attention spans.
If you offer up a goal for them in the beginning—basically alerting them to what they’re supposed to get out of your presentation or what’s expected of them—then you’ve done them a huge favor. If they do happen to fade away and come back (which, invariably, every audience member does), they are equipped to reengage quickly because they know what the end game is.
Clarity
How many times have you attended a presentation, left the room scratching your head, and thought or said to a colleague, “Interesting, but what was the point of that?”
Audiences need to know the point or goal of your presentation. And they need to hear it upfront when they’re paying attention. You can’t be subtle about it (they might miss it), and you can’t assume they’ll figure it out based on your content (they won’t work that hard). You have to spell out your goal and spoon-feed it to your audience. Even just this bit of one-sentence clarity added to your presentation can make the whole thing a lot more organized, memorable and impressive to your audience. It’s amazing how a little guidance can provide enough context and clarity to improve the audience experience and impression.
Prioritization
You’re a subject matter expert on your topic, and so narrowing or prioritizing what you’re going to share during your presentation requires some effort. It’s not unusual for someone with a lot of knowledge to feel the need to bring their audience up to speed on the topic, thereby delivering a lecture worthy of a master’s degree program.
For the majority of audiences, this is overkill. It’s too much information, it’s not retainable, and it’s downright overwhelming. All audiences are self-interested, frankly, and want you to give them something new, useful, beneficial or valuable. The self-discipline that’s required, therefore, is a combination of prioritizing: a) what is my goal for them today, b) what do they really care about, and c) given a) and b), what are the points that will be most relevant and compelling for them?
For example, if you are a transportation engineer delivering a presentation to a community group about a new road cutting through their neighborhood, your goal for them might be that they leave feeling updated and informed on progress. You would turn that into a goal statement and deliver it in your opening. For example, “I am going to give you an overview tonight about where the County Road project stands. It’s my goal that all of you leave this meeting feeling updated and informed on progress.”
Prioritizing what you share—based on your goal for them, what you know they care about and what is relevant to them—helps keep you focused and makes you a better speaker. Test the content you’re considering using in your presentation against your goal for your audience, and toss out whatever doesn’t help you reach that goal.
When a speaker has an overarching takeaway, directive, call to action or goal for the audience, it’s pretty typical for them to save it and deliver it as part of a resounding conclusion. Honestly, though, it’s too late at that point. Setting a goal for your audience, using it to help shape (or limit!) the content, and then articulating it clearly in your opening, right upfront, helps tremendously. It’s more compatible with attention spans, enhances the clarity of your presentation overall, and provides you with parameters for prioritizing your material—all of which make you a much better speaker.
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Author: Beth Noymer Levine, Forbes Councils Member
