Great communicators never take their audience for granted. They understand their job is to answer two burning questions every person in the room has: 1. Am I going to listen? 2. Why should I listen? 

People fundamentally want to know what is it about what you are going to say that has to do with them? If they don’t get an answer to that question quickly, you will lose them. Nail this, and people will be ready to buy your product, vote for you, follow your leadership or make a life altering decision. 

When you stand up to speak, it is your job to connect the felt need of your audience to the core message of your talk. While your introduction answers the question of, “Am I going to listen,” the next thing you have to do is to move to the felt need, which centers around the question of, “Why should I listen.” (Note to preachers: When Paul tells Timothy that all Scripture is useful, he is saying every text of the Bible connects in some way to the universal need of humanity. Your job is to find what that universal need is.) This is exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., did in his iconic, “I Have a Dream,” speech. Speaking to a largely black audience, King said these words in just the second paragraph of his talk:

“But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.”

Can’t you just see their heads nodding as King is speaking to their felt need of freedom in the midst of segregation? What made King’s dream so compelling is he first stopped to address their present nightmare. His audience did not feel free. Many knew what it was to be poor. And every black person in his audience knew the inhumanity of being treated as a second class citizen. The reason why the crowd was so moved by his dream, is he first spent sufficient time making them feel the horrors of their reality. 

How do I connect the audience to the felt need of my message?

1. Take inventory of your experiences. There are two reasons why you will get better as a communicator. One is the reps you will get speaking. But the other reason why you are guaranteed to grow as a speaker is life experience. The more you live, the more you will be able to connect with the felt needs of others. You will know what it’s like to be betrayed, hurt or feel the joy of forgiveness. You’ll be able to speak to people who are battling loneliness and despair, or the euphoria of having a thriving relationship. Unlike athletes, communicators get better with age, because we can repurpose our life experiences to connect with the soul of our audience.

2. Make them feel it. I have a record producer friend of mine who worked with a very talented artist. When I found out about it, I asked him what this person was like? He said some nice things, but then concluded she wouldn’t last long, because as talented as she was, she didn’t know how to emotionally connect with the listener, through her songs. “She’s gifted, but she just can’t make us feel it,” he said. Sure enough he was right. After one hit she was pretty much done. Great communication is far more than talent, the ability to turn a phrase or tell a nice story. We have to make our audience feel it. The, “Why Should I Listen,” section of our talk, is our time to emotionally connect with the crowd. We do this by being vulnerable and drawing from our own experiences around the felt need. So if I’m talking about keys to a healthy marriage, it would really connect with the audience to talk about a time in my own marriage where things were not going well, and how we were able to come out of it. 

3. Ask questions. Remember, the body of your talk will give the answers to the problem you have surfaced in the, “Why should I listen,” section. As you are exposing the felt need, it’s helpful to raise questions, and even underscore them with pauses. Ever found yourself in debt? Ever been betrayed by a friend? Ever found yourself with the dream house, bank full of money, and still felt empty all at once? These kinds of questions, centered around the felt need of your audience, will not only cause them to nod their heads, but will also create a healthy tension, as they lean in wanting to hear your solutions. 

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