The Three Levels of Communication

What do you want the audience TO DO?

There is no point speaking to people if you don’t want to effect some change.  If you just want to give them information, send a memo!  You must want your audience to do something, or believe something, or you wouldn't have called them into a room together.

Here are some examples of action objectives.

• "I want them to change the way they approach customers to make good service primary"
• "I want them to embrace the new warehousing system and cascade the information to their reports”
• "I want them to start using the new invoices”
• “ I want them to come up with ideas to improve the new project”

This is better. Now you have a reason to speak, and a desire to change something in your audience. 

But to really effect that change you must go one step further.  You must understand that your words cannot directly change what people do, or what they believe, they can only change what they feel. Only that change in feeling will bring about a change in behaviour.

So, the key question you must ask before you stand up to speak (long before!) is…
 
 What do you want them to FEEL?