Reaching a Diverse Audience
Most of us have experienced a diverse audience, and post such
experiences, some of us have sat with our heads in our hands, wondering
what it was that could’ve been done to gain and sustain their
interest, and what could’ve made the training program or the
learning content effective for each one of them.
A diverse adult audience often is what our nightmares are made
of – because adult audiences are looking for that effervescent
yet highly desirable what-is-in-it-for-me (WIIFM), and when you
are dealing with a diverse audience than this personal WIIFM component
is different for each person in the audience. The adult audience
is much more demanding than the younger audience, and so they don’t
stay quiet – they begin to ask for their personal takeaway.
Unfortunately, you can’t design a separate takeaway for each
one of your forty participants, and so you end up cutting a sorry
figure.
Through this little article, I hope to address some of your worries.
My experience suggests that in a diverse audience the degree of
dissatisfaction among the participants, post the program would definitely
be higher than it would be for a well-scoped audience – especially
if the program was designed at a higher Bloom’s level. Yet,
if we follow one simple rule, we can improve the satisfaction levels
by leaps and bounds.
Let us begin by defining the term “diverse audience.”
A diverse audience is an audience that doesn’t have a common
set of characteristics. It is easier to understand the diverse audience
as an antithesis of a well-segmented audience.
Our dream audience usually would have common traits. The more traits
they share, the closer they get to be our choicest audience. Some
examples of a well-segmented audience are:
- English-speaking metropolitan youth for a V & A training
program.
- Fresh Mass-communication graduates from non-metro cities of
India for a creative writing course.
- Graduate Women homemakers for course that enables them to grow
and maintain flowers in their apartments.
- Engineer Trainees in a steel plant for an orientation-training
program on how the steel plant works.
Now let’s look at the diverse audience. Here are some examples:
- Individuals from all walks of life, who gather for a lecture
by Shiv Khera
- Individuals from all walks of life, who gather for a morning
session of Yoga with Baba Ramdev.
- Managers from different organizations, who enroll for a leadership-training
program.
- Individuals from around the world who take an online course
on motivation.
Do you see the difference?
In the first set, we had a very clear audience profile. The demographics,
the psychographics – all were tightly packed into a small
range. In the second set, the boundaries broke. The demographics
and the psychographics would now have mammoth ranges. With the second
set of people, figuring out the right kind of examples and activities
too would be mammoth task.
Let us take another look at the sets:
In the first set, the first three learning experiences would be
designed at BL3 and above.
In the second set, except the 2nd learning experience all target
a BL2.
When you are attempting to address a higher Bloom’s level,
a diverse audience is extremely tough to handle – unless the
task is either “very basic form of cognitive” or is
“psychomotor.” If only BL2 is being targeted, then handling
diverse audience is simpler. The audience isn’t expected to
go back and “apply the learning to solve real-life problems”
and so specific practice exercises needn’t be built.
I am yet to come across programs that are for everyone, and that
claim to take the participant to BL3 or BL5 (Remember that we aren’t
talking about dance classes here for they anyway are psychomotor
domain learning and so Bloom’s taxonomy doesn’t apply
to them.)
But even if you desire to impart learning at BL2 (like Shiv Khera’s
programs,) how do you manage it. I once attended a Shiv Khera program
about 15 years ago and at that time I had marveled at his ability
to address such a huge gathering and still make an impression. Today
I still think that he is charismatic and he has a fantastic stage-presence,
but I don’t wonder about his content anymore. Now I know that
he was doing what should be done while addressing a mass audience.
He had our experiences distilled to their lowest common denominators.
He took examples from our daily lives (not our professional lives
– mind you,) and he wove stories around them. When you are
talking motivation, you can apply it to the simplest of experiences
(who doesn’t understand disease, illness, family, love, education,
failure,) and then your content connects with almost everyone in
the audience.
The lesson I learned from Shiv Khera was huge. It enabled me to
connect with diverse audiences. Of course I don’t address
such mammoth groups as he used to – but even in my small groups,
I often find a lot of diversity. If you ask me, the mool mantra
for addressing a diverse audience is – create a picture of
this audience in your mind and try to find the Lowest Common Denominator
experiences – and then address those.
Author: Shafali R. Anand
(Read other articles by the author in Wavelength's
Articles Section)
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.
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