The Audience-First Advantage

The ten questions every leader should ask before crafting an important message.

Over the past three decades of coaching executives and observing leaders across industries, I've noticed a consistent pattern: over 80% of the communication I observe is centered on what the speaker wants and needs to express rather than what the audience wants and needs to hear.

Most communicators spend the majority of their preparation asking questions like:

• What do I want to say?

• Which slides should I include?

• How do I explain this?

Those questions matter, but they belong later in the process, not at the beginning.

The most effective communicators make their communication audience-centric, and that means starting with the audience in mind. 

Research in cognitive psychology has consistently shown that our brains prioritize information we perceive as personally relevant. Psychologists refer to this as the self-reference effect. This means people are significantly more likely to pay attention to, process, and remember information when they can relate it to themselves. 

One of the simplest ways to improve any presentation, speech, meeting, or difficult conversation is to view it through the Audience Lens, a simple but powerful way of evaluating your message from the audience's perspective before you begin crafting it. When you deliberately shift your perspective to that of your audience, the right content, structure, and tone become much clearer. So, instead of trying to figure out what you want to say, start by exploring what your audience needs to hear, understand, and act upon. The ten questions that follow will help you do exactly that.

1. What does my audience most want—and what do they truly need?

Those aren't always the same. Your audience may need to understand a new strategy, organizational change, or technical process. But they want reassurance, confidence, practical guidance, hope, or simply a clearer understanding of how a change affects them personally. The most effective communicators address both.

Consider the public rollout of generative AI across many organizations. While employees needed information about the technology itself, the information they wanted was often much more personal: How will this make my life easier or harder? Will AI replace my job? Is my privacy under threat? 

Organizations that acknowledged those concerns and provided support—rather than simply explaining the technology—were far more successful in building confidence and encouraging adoption. 

2. What are their biggest pain points?

Every audience walks into the room carrying challenges.

Executives may be balancing overwhelm and competing priorities. Customers may be frustrated by unnecessary complexity. Employees may be experiencing uncertainty following organizational change. People naturally devote more attention to information that helps solve problems they already have.

Before building your presentation, identify the problem your audience hopes you'll solve, then make that connection explicit. For example, if you're presenting a new software platform, your audience probably isn't excited about the software itself. They're interested in whether it will save time, reduce frustration, improve results, or make a tedious task easier. Lead with the problem they recognize, then move to the solution you're excited to explain.

3. How can I create the greatest value?

Ask yourself: What can I give this audience that they couldn't easily get somewhere else?

Perhaps it's a practical framework, a fresh perspective, a shortcut that saves time, or a clearer way of thinking about a difficult issue.

Knowledgeable professionals often fall into the trap of equating value with the amount of information they provide. In reality, value is measured by the difference you make for your audience. Will people leave with more clarity? Are they better equipped to make decisions? Can they solve problems they couldn't solve before?

A physician rarely impresses patients by reciting everything they know about medicine. They create value by identifying what matters most, explaining it clearly, and helping patients understand what to do next.

The same principle applies to communication. Don't ask, "How much can I teach?” Instead, ask, "How much better off will my audience be because they heard me?"

4. What do I want my audience to think, feel, and do?

Every communication should create movement. Perhaps you want your audience to think differently about an issue, feel more confident about a project, support a proposal, or adopt a new behavior. Thinking, feeling, and action work together. Information helps people understand. Emotion helps people remember. Clear direction helps people act.

Before you begin crafting your message, define what success looks like. If your desired outcome isn't clear to you, it won't be clear to your audience.

An interesting example is Earth's Black Box, a steel structure being built on the west coast of Tasmania. Designed to survive a global catastrophe, it continuously records data on climate change, biodiversity loss, political decisions, and other factors that could contribute to humanity's decline.

The project isn't being built because future civilizations are necessarily expected to recover it. Its real purpose is to influence us today—to make people think differently about the trajectory we're on, feel a greater sense of urgency, and ultimately change behavior, presumably before it's too late.

The creators understood that facts alone do not inspire action. They designed the entire project around the audience response they hoped to create.

5. What do they already think, feel, and do?

Effective communication begins by meeting your audience where they truly are. Ask yourself: 

• What beliefs and assumptions are they bringing into the room? 

• What do they already know? 

• What misconceptions or misinformation might they have?

• How do they currently feel about the topic?

• What behaviors have become routine? 

• And how do they feel about those routines?

  
  

Understanding your audience's starting point helps determine how much education, persuasion, or reassurance is actually required. If you're providing updates on an organizational change that employees already support, you'll communicate very differently than if they're confused, skeptical, or filled with trepidation. But how do you determine where your audience is?

Sometimes the answers already exist: 

• Review previous presentations, meeting notes, employee surveys, customer feedback, or past conversations. 

• Speak with managers or trusted colleagues who know the audience well. 

• For larger presentations, consider sending a brief pre-event survey asking attendees about their priorities, questions, or concerns. 

  
  

Not only will you gather valuable insights, but audiences often appreciate knowing you've taken the time to understand what matters to them before you ever step on stage.

6. What mindset or filter are they listening through?

No audience is completely objective. The way people interpret information depends not only on what you say but also on the lens through which they hear it—their role, experiences, incentives, responsibilities, current pressures, and even their worldview. Behavioral economists often refer to this as framing. 

The same message can produce entirely different reactions depending on who's listening. A CFO hears risk and return, while a CMO hears competitive differentiation; an optimist may see opportunity where others see uncertainty; and a new employee may hear possibility, while a twenty-year veteran hears disruption.

Ask yourself:

• What viewpoints and experiences are they bringing into the room?

• What assumptions or beliefs already exist?

• What competing priorities may influence how they interpret my message?

7. What concerns or obstacles might prevent people from taking action—and how can I help remove them?

Sometimes people don't resist change because they disagree. More often, however, they're constrained by uncertainty, limited resources, competing priorities, skill gaps, organizational politics, or fear of making the wrong decision.

Exceptional communicators anticipate those barriers before they get in the way. If you're asking employees to adopt a new system, explain how they'll be supported and where they can go for help. If you're asking executives to approve funding, proactively address the risks they may already be considering. If you're asking customers to change behavior, reduce friction wherever possible.

Remember way back when contactless payments were a new thing? Some consumers initially resisted, not because they disliked the technology, but because they questioned whether it was secure and reliable. 

Financial institutions and payment providers addressed those concerns proactively. Rather than focusing solely on speed and convenience, they emphasized encryption, fraud protection, and zero-liability guarantees. By removing the audience's biggest perceived obstacles, they accelerated adoption. 

8. Why does this message matter to them?

Consciously or subconsciously, every audience is asking the same question: "Why should I care?” If you don't answer that question early, attention begins to drift. Audiences may not automatically connect your message to their own priorities. Make the relevance unmistakable.

Demonstrate clearly and unmistakably how your message saves time, reduces risk, creates opportunity, improves performance, solves a problem, opens new possibilities, or helps them achieve something they already care about. The stronger the relevance, the greater the engagement.

During Delta Air Lines' recovery from the 2024 CrowdStrike outage, the company's early communications focused on restoring operations and explaining the complexity of the technical recovery. But as criticism mounted for their slow recovery, the messaging shifted. Rather than emphasizing what had gone wrong behind the scenes, Delta pivoted to the questions customers cared about most: How do I get home? Will I be reimbursed? What are my options? The company expanded reimbursement policies, offered refunds and travel credits, and communicated concrete steps to "make things right." 

The episode is a useful reminder that while audiences need to understand what is happening, that is not enough. The real takeaway is how it affects them and what happens next. 

9. How palatable is my intended message?

Even the most valuable ideas can fail if they're difficult to absorb.

Ask yourself:

• Is my language too technical?

• Am I presenting too much information at once?

• How easy—or difficult—will this be to hear?

• Will it surprise them?

• Will they find it credible?

• How can I say this simply without oversimplifying it? 

Think of communication like nutrition. Healthy food has little value if no one will eat it. Likewise, the best ideas have limited impact if they're presented in a way that's unnecessarily complicated, difficult to process, or simply too hard to swallow.

10. What do they need to remember?

People rarely remember entire presentations. They remember moments: a compelling story, a surprising statistic, a practical framework, a vivid example, or one sentence that changes how they think.

Behavioral scientists have long observed that memory is selective rather than comprehensive. Trying to make every point equally important usually means none of them stand out. Instead, identify the one or two ideas you most want people discussing after the presentation or meeting, then build everything else around those ideas.

Consider Admiral William H. McRaven's widely lauded 2014 commencement address, Make Your Bed. The speech covered resilience, courage, perseverance, leadership, and service. Yet years later, most people remember one simple idea: If you want to change the world, start by making your bed.

That single image became the organizing principle for an entire speech because it was concrete, memorable, and reinforced throughout. Twelve years, later that line is still considered iconic. 

Ask yourself: If the audience could remember only one thing from my presentation six months from now, what would I want it to be? Design your message around that answer.

Final Thoughts

The answers to these ten questions will help shape what you include in your message, how you frame it, how you establish relevance, and how you inspire action.

Audience-centric communication begins with curiosity. Before creating slides, writing talking points, or rehearsing your delivery, invest time in a deeper understanding of the people you're trying to reach. Great communicators know that the audience isn't where the communication ends. It's where preparation begins.