Ways to Analyse Your Audience - Part IV
Welcome to Part IV of this series.
In this part, I am going to share with you the third method I use to profile my participants before the actual delivery of the training.
This method is for me to invite my participants to give a brief self-introduction.
Obviously, I would not use this method if I were speaking to a big crowd.
Typically, this method works best in small group training.
A group size of 8 to 15 would be ideal.
It also works better if the training involves personal development, as it would make sense for them to give self-introduction.
As discussed in Part I of this series, it has been my experience that many trainers would not even bother to do any profiling of their participants.
Imagine the training in question relates to personal development.
I would be surprised to hear that a trainer would just start the programme without understanding his participants' profile.
The best part is that the trainer would only need a couple of minutes to do this.
How many of you know what I am talking about? Assuming that I consider that it is appropriate to use the third method, here is what I will do: Step 1 I would acknowledge all my participants for their effort to show up.
Typically, I would say that "there is a saying that 80% of success is showing up.
" This is a famous quote from Woody Allen if I am not mistaken.
How many of you would agree that by making your participants feel good about their punctuality, they would be more willing to listen to you and follow your instruction? Step 2 I would invite each of my participants to give a quick self-introduction and suggest that they share at least the following information:
Typically, I will create a "template" for my participants to follow.
There are two more important tips you may wish to consider.
Firstly, you have to give assurance to all participants that the training room is a safe place to share such information and at the same time, all participants agree that what is being shared in the room will stay in the room.
Secondly, you have to make it clear that each participant has only 1 or 2 minutes to give the self-introduction as there may be participants who are willing to share more than what you expect.
I understand that some of you might think or feel that it is sensitive for a participant to reveal his age.
I can sense the potential challenge here and this is what I would do - I will give them a choice of telling the group either their exact age or the age group (e.
g.
20s to 30s, 30s to 40s etc.
) Again, this must be explained to the participants clearly so as not to offend anyone in the room.
Now, how many of you know what kind of information you could get after this exercise? From my experience, I would be in the position to obtain at least two pieces of information: 1.
If a participant chooses to reveal his exact age, my experience is that he is more willing to open up to receive information I am going to share in my training later on.
Further, a person who is willing to reveal his exact age to a group of strangers could suggest that he has a higher self-esteem.
2.
During the self-introduction, I would pay attention to a participant's eye contact.
Was he looking down on the floor while sharing? Or did he make any eye contact with the group? Let's say he was looking down on the floor while sharing, it could suggest that he would tend to focus on himself and might not be aware of his surrounding.
In any form of personal development training, creating self-awareness is crucial.
This means that I have to spend more time on working with him in order to create more self-awareness for him.
If he was looking at me while sharing, it could mean that he has trust on me.
If he was looking at the entire group, it could mean that he has trust on everyone in the room.
As a personal development trainer, I would be in the position to utilise such information for the purpose of my training.
Obviously, I would just mention that as you become more experienced, you would be able to get more information from this simple self-introduction exercise.
I hope you will find my sharing useful.
Visit my website as you will find a lot of useful tips on public speaking.
I would also love to hear from you if you have any experience to share as to how you would profile your participants.
In this part, I am going to share with you the third method I use to profile my participants before the actual delivery of the training.
This method is for me to invite my participants to give a brief self-introduction.
Obviously, I would not use this method if I were speaking to a big crowd.
Typically, this method works best in small group training.
A group size of 8 to 15 would be ideal.
It also works better if the training involves personal development, as it would make sense for them to give self-introduction.
As discussed in Part I of this series, it has been my experience that many trainers would not even bother to do any profiling of their participants.
Imagine the training in question relates to personal development.
I would be surprised to hear that a trainer would just start the programme without understanding his participants' profile.
The best part is that the trainer would only need a couple of minutes to do this.
How many of you know what I am talking about? Assuming that I consider that it is appropriate to use the third method, here is what I will do: Step 1 I would acknowledge all my participants for their effort to show up.
Typically, I would say that "there is a saying that 80% of success is showing up.
" This is a famous quote from Woody Allen if I am not mistaken.
How many of you would agree that by making your participants feel good about their punctuality, they would be more willing to listen to you and follow your instruction? Step 2 I would invite each of my participants to give a quick self-introduction and suggest that they share at least the following information:
- Name
- Age
- Married or Single
- What do they expect to learn from the training?
Typically, I will create a "template" for my participants to follow.
There are two more important tips you may wish to consider.
Firstly, you have to give assurance to all participants that the training room is a safe place to share such information and at the same time, all participants agree that what is being shared in the room will stay in the room.
Secondly, you have to make it clear that each participant has only 1 or 2 minutes to give the self-introduction as there may be participants who are willing to share more than what you expect.
I understand that some of you might think or feel that it is sensitive for a participant to reveal his age.
I can sense the potential challenge here and this is what I would do - I will give them a choice of telling the group either their exact age or the age group (e.
g.
20s to 30s, 30s to 40s etc.
) Again, this must be explained to the participants clearly so as not to offend anyone in the room.
Now, how many of you know what kind of information you could get after this exercise? From my experience, I would be in the position to obtain at least two pieces of information: 1.
If a participant chooses to reveal his exact age, my experience is that he is more willing to open up to receive information I am going to share in my training later on.
Further, a person who is willing to reveal his exact age to a group of strangers could suggest that he has a higher self-esteem.
2.
During the self-introduction, I would pay attention to a participant's eye contact.
Was he looking down on the floor while sharing? Or did he make any eye contact with the group? Let's say he was looking down on the floor while sharing, it could suggest that he would tend to focus on himself and might not be aware of his surrounding.
In any form of personal development training, creating self-awareness is crucial.
This means that I have to spend more time on working with him in order to create more self-awareness for him.
If he was looking at me while sharing, it could mean that he has trust on me.
If he was looking at the entire group, it could mean that he has trust on everyone in the room.
As a personal development trainer, I would be in the position to utilise such information for the purpose of my training.
Obviously, I would just mention that as you become more experienced, you would be able to get more information from this simple self-introduction exercise.
I hope you will find my sharing useful.
Visit my website as you will find a lot of useful tips on public speaking.
I would also love to hear from you if you have any experience to share as to how you would profile your participants.
Source...