Let’s think of the mind of an audience as having two basic types of material–old impressions and memories of events actually experienced, and imaginative rearrangements of parts of these actual experiences which never really existed.
For instance, remembering how your uncle looked when he got angry at you as a child is real. Dreaming that your uncle is wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the kitchen sink is a rearrangement of reality. Remembering a character in a novel, or movie, is a mixture of both, so maybe there are three types of materials in the mind.
These raw materials of the mind exist at different levels of consciousness, like different kinds of fish in a pond.
When you present an idea to an audience, it’s as if you cast a baited hook into the water. The hook causes some fish to scatter, attracts others, and is ignored by the rest, but it rearranges the pool into new patterns.
Skilled presentation–like skillful fishing–requires a knowledge of what’s in the mind of your listeners, how to attract what you want, and how to reject what you don’t.
This brings us to the concept of resonance–the most powerful mechanism for transference of an idea from one person to another.
In the physical world, we tune our guitar strings until they vibrate in sympathy. We tune our radios by adjusting the resonance of our receivers to match the signal of a specific transmitter. Tenors shatter glasses when their voices vibrate at a certain sustained note. Bridges can be caused to vibrate and shake themselves apart.
Everything in the physical world vibrates, and can be stimulated to excess if a disturbing force is tuned to it. Resonance in the physical world is the way to get a maximum transfer of energy. In the world of the mind, it is the way to get a maximum transfer of idea content.
This is the deeper meaning of the old saying, “Know your audience.” It has its root in sympathy. The word sympathy is derived from two Greek roots–syn, meaning “together”; and pathos meaning “feeling”…feeling together.
Send out messages tuned to the feelings of an audience, and they will almost quiver in response.
Let’s take it a little further. As people respond, they send back messages to the sender, setting up a kind of feedback which amplifies the original message.
Some audiences are overt in their response: certain church congregations exort their preachers to a higher pitch of enthusiasm.
Others are more subdued, but still supply a collaborative source of energy for the performer. Musicians and actors often comment on the power of an audience to make them “better than they know how to be.”
If you’ve ever had such an experience as a speaker, you know its power. If you’ve ever been deeply engaged, or moved by listening to a speaker, you also are familiar with it.
Public speaking is a powerful tool requiring a good deal of training and experience to use effectively. Just as there are rules to be mastered by architects, lawyers, and doctors, there are rules for the presentation of ideas.
Furthermore, it is not enough to know the rules. Training teaches the rules; experience teaches the exceptions. There is art in knowing how to select, arrange, and transmit the various elements of a presentation for the benefit of a particular audience.
In reality, learning how to present your thoughts more effectively can be a personally transformative experience, because it requires so much of us–knowledge, skill, and emotional courage.
In fact, I believe that the ability to present your thinking is the most powerful professional tool you can have in your tool box. It is the primary tool of leaders, influencers, persuaders, and sellers–that is to say, anyone who is skilled at moving others to take action.
And you can’t develop that ability without deepening and developing yourself.