Know your audience

After my stand-up instructor (the brilliant Teddy Hall) told a really disgusting joke in class, I said, "That's gross." To which he replied, "No offense, Suzanne, but you're not my target audience."

He was absolutely right. I'm a middle-aged, religious mother and [evil] HR Lady who prefers clean comedy. Teddy's target audience is young-ish single adults who hang out in bars. I want to develop jokes I can use in keynote speeches at HR conferences, and he wants to develop jokes he can use in the redlight district.

Just because our audiences are different doesn't mean I can't learn from him. He's an excellent teacher and an excellent comedian.

But his statement had a pretty profound impact on me. He knows who his audience is, and he's comfortable developing his skills for that audience. He's happy to ignore the HR Professional audience, even though there's definitely a market for that. I'm not going to spend my time developing jokes that appeal to college students living off their parents, and I'm okay with that.

What is your audience?

We all have audiences. When you write an email, conduct an investigation, or interview a job candidate, you have a specific audience you target. And you need to know what you need to say to that audience.

It turns out HR speaks a different language than Finance, which speaks a different language than operations. And we need to learn to communicate with those different audiences, even though it's not our first choice.

Now, I have the luxury of developing my jokes for HR conference attendees and Teddy has the luxury of developing his jokes for the young comedy show attendees, but HR has to develop their policies (which are not jokes) for everyone in the company.

And that audience varies from company to company.

Do you know your demographics? Do you know your audience's problems and concerns? Policies you develop for your professional services consulting firm are probably not going to work for your household cleaning company. The presentation you make to convince the CFO why you deserve funding for training programs is probably not going to be the same presentation you make to employees to convince them to take the training classes.

How does improv play a role in this?

I'm glad you asked. One of the core principles of improv is listening to your ensemble members and your audience. Don't get ahead of yourself. Find out what they need and want before you bust out with your plans.

So take the time to listen and then when you understand your audience, you can move forward.