The CEO of a large company with 150 regional sales managers from all across the U.S. was planning his yearly address and about to make his annual mistake – a presentation to his sales team. To him, they were “the group.”

We’ve all made the same mistake that our CEO was about to make for the umpteenth time: making generalizations about our seminar audience. Our brains have the tendency to catalog things in familiar groups: young people, old people, female, male, beautiful, homely, smart, not-so-smart – all according to our upbringing, culture, and a variety of other influences - including things that are familiar to us. (See pattern recognition) We do the same thing when we see a group of people facing us from rows of seats: we put them in the familiar “audience” category.

We might make the mistake of preparing & delivering a seminar from a single point of view when in fact, individuals in the group of folks out there might know more about our subject than we do, might not care about the details of our subject and don’t care one bit about our multiple university degrees!

This image of apples reminds me that any audience is made up of individuals with different backgrounds, interests, preferences for learning and may want to know more about my subject… or they might just want to be entertained. It’s up to me to find out , not just make assumptions.

Spend some time finding out who makes up your seminar audience and see them as separate individuals with unique needs. Present to those needs and watch them respond to your call to action!