When Tony Blair blew it with the Women's Institute

Tony Blair, then the UK Prime Minister, went to speak to the formidable ladies of the Women's Institute (WI) in June 2000. The WI is a conservative body of middle class women who know what they like and is not the most natural audience for a socialist (ish) Prime Minister. He made the mistake (and Tony often did) of using the occasion only as an opportunity to tell the world how well the Labour Party were doing in their first term of government. He missed a clear chance to build his popularity in middle-England, to say nice things about the WI and all that they had done over the years. He could simply have spoken a few words about their proud history, the great things they do for charity and how great their recipe for plum jam is. But didn't bother. The Reverend Blair just launched into a scripted set of platitudes, promises and abstract nouns and by 5 minutes into the speech he'd lost the old dears in the red plastic seats.

What happened next? It was breathtakingly thrilling and embarrassing. The ladies of the WI got restless, then they got angry. They started slow hand clapping the PM. Yes. they turned into a set of twin-set. blue-rinsed students. They were wolf whistling, jeering, singing clapping and generally doing everything they could to get the loser in the red tie off the platform. Tony was hopeless. He'd massively misjudged the audience and they let him have it, big-style.

It was unmissable television for each of the 50 occasions the broadcasters repeated it over the next few days. I enjoyed it too and I'm a fan of Blair the man. if not Blair the proselytising platform speaker. On that occasion, Tony talked down, at, over and through his audience. On that day he paid the price that those of us who've done the same thing probably never have to pay because our typical audience is much more passive than the WI. It doesn't change the fact that lots of us treat our audiences as clueless observers and rarely consider their experience, intelligence and needs in preparing what we want to say.

If you want to avoid Tony's mistake, present ideas and arguments in such a way that the style content and methods that you use are shaped for each unique audience you meet.  You need to ask the audience to describe to you exactly what they what need to know before you start to prepare. You also need to consider what (If anything) ou have to tell them and consider how you can resolve the inevitable tensions between what they want and what you need to tell them.  If you can't ask, then do the next best thing and use your imagination. 

Put yourself in their shoes and ask waht you'd like to hear if you were them.  I guess it's called empathy, and all the great speakers have it in spades.  Whoever is out there in the audience.  WI or not.

Making your presentations relevant to the people in the room

Yes you'll most often be presenting to a group of people, but remember that that group is composed of individuals with their own particular needs, wants and preferences.  Making something relevant to one person is no more complex than for businesses or departments in an organisation.  It just takes a bit of care.

Individuals want to achieve great success and avoid danger, just like businesses.  Understanding that for the key people in the room will make it easier for you to put a compelling message to them . Success for an individual is about-

• targets
• recognition
• reward
• reputation gain
• security
• happiness
• the avoidance of harm

Always remember that people are driven to avoid pain and achieve success. Releveance comes when the speaker understands this intuitively and applies it consciously to her speech, whatever the subject. There's really no good excuse for a generic presentation, only presenters that don't try to make it relevant to the people in the room.

What makes something relevant to business audience then?

What makes something relevant to someone? People, generally, are most interested in things that help them and their business become more successful. Success for businesses is made up of specific combinations of -

• profit,
  
• market share,
  
• share price,
  
• turnover,
  
• customer satisfaction,
  
• regulatory compliance

... Success for business departments, obviously, depends on their function in the business, but for a quick reference how about-

• Sales Departments - Success for sales professionals (after driving a great car, wearing lovely clothes and talking, endlessly about themselves) will be about the volume of sales achieved versus their targets, the ratio of wins vs. opportunities, the price achieved for those sales and the cost of those sales to the business.
  
• Marketing Departments- Success for marketers (as well as being able to look great, wear lovely clothes and talk a good game about how sales is really all about marketing), success for marketers is all about the brand and their support of sales through targeted and effective marketing and advertising campaigns. The brand effectiveness can be measured in terms of identity, awareness in their target groups and the demonstrable value of the brand in tangible terms; and campaign effectiveness can be measured through many complex and abstract means.
  
• Production Departments- Measure their success (after how much blood they've shed for this company and how hard their working life is compared to all of the 'tossers' in .... add name of any/every other department in the business here) in terms of total
  production achieved, the quality of that production vs. targets and the costs of that production vs their targets.
  
• HR Departments- Tend to be measured in their ability to deliver the right people with the right knowledge, skills, attitudes and habits at the right costs for the business to do what it must.
  
• Finance Departments- Are measured by the effectiveness of their
  financial controls on the business and the quality of advice they give to the Board.

Why presentations don’t fit

There are many reasons why we give presentations and speeches that just don’t “fit”. All of the reasons though are about the same thing, our message doesn't fit because we that we don't have a clear understanding of our audience’s needs and wants from the speech. Finding out, before we start to prepare, is a practised art of the brilliant presenter.

Let's pretend that you're a bus driver, called Norman. Norman is a confident driver and his confidence is one of his greatest assets. He fills his bus with passengers and they admire his coach, they like the music and the scenery they see through the windows and for the first 10 minutes all goes well. One person suddenly notices that they've been down the same road twice and says "Norman, where are we going?" Norman swallows hard and replies, "I don't really know!"

If you begin your journey without a destination in mind your passengers may enjoy the ride but eventually they'll get upset. They each have their own destinations in mind, they’re busy people, they’ve got a million things they could be doing now, and if you can't help them get to where they want to go, they'll give up and go home. Even if they stick with you to the end of the line, they’ll remember that you got lost, and choose another driver next time. People are always looking for a bus, or speech, to take them somewhere that’s useful to them, even if it’s not pleasant when they get there.

In the the real world of work. I agree, you don’t always get to choose your destination. Sometimes your boss says,

“Look just put together a few slides on the business for a guy we’ve got coming over to head office, about 30 minutes worth…” and that’s it.

Sometimes too, we turn up ready to go, to find a disaster in the offing. If you turn up on the day ready to go, you’ve got no real choices when you find out that 80% of your audience have buckets and spades for the beach, and your sat nav is programmed for Birmingham. (Which for those who don't know Birmingham in the UK, is a bit of a disaster).

It’s too late to do much else; unless you’re a brilliant improviser (and not many of us are) you have to dance with the guy you came with. And on you go with the devastating opening line:
“Well ladies and gentlemen I’ve some disappointing news…” Great start.

But let's be really clear here. When this happens we have helped to cause the problem. It's us who gets hurt by looking foolish so it's your responsibility to know your audience before you start any prep.