Deo Honuma Institute & Consultancy

The Problem with Saying “Don’t Bring Me Problems, Bring Me Solutions” Three ways to encourage a culture of communication.

4 interview questions that will separate top performers from the pack Draw out quality hires by listening out for nuanced and ego-free responses.

Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Actually Strategies They’re goals.

3 Easy Ways to Tell Whether You’re a Good Boss Do this and the business will take care of itself.

What to Do When Employees Don't Like Each Other ... and four other tricky workplace dilemmas.

A speaker must really understand who he or she is speaking to in order to make the desired impact. Find out whether the audience attending the event is predominantly religious, business, educational or traditional in nature. Take time to understand their demographics, gender, age, language and the predominant area of professional engagement, among others.

Appropriate profiling helps you to choose relevant examples and even the right language and tone of voice to enable you to connect appropriately to your audience. If you had to speak to a group of young Christians about making an impact in their youth, being aware that they are predominantly female might influence you to speak about Esther rather than Joseph.

If a group of health professionals invited me to speak on excellence, I would use role models like Florence Nightingale, Ben Carson, Easmon and Frimpong-Boateng as examples to help connect the audience to my message.

Understanding your audience involves more than knowing which broad category of people is in attendance. Even within the same category, there are peculiar interests that could influence your presentation or its impact.

For example, if you are speaking at an educational event, you must be interested in the participants’ educational level. Are they SHS level, polytechnic students, tertiary level, graduates, lecturers, researchers or educational policy formulators? Is the audience a mix of these groupings? Do they have a common or collective interest in certain peculiar issues? Is there a major development in their industry in the recent past?

In the corporate world, if you happen to be addressing staff of a company or industry where people are being laid off, you are likely to be confronted with a sense of uncertainty, mistrust and suspicion. Knowing this could influence your choice of topic, the tone of your presentation or your use of examples.

As a speaker, the more you know about your audience, the better it gets.

3 Ways to Dominate Your Market

Good Leadership Is About Asking Good Questions You don’t need to pretend to have all the answers.

Where Does Management Stop and Leadership Start? Most people don't know when to use management versus leadership. As a result, both end up collapsed.

Steve Jobs Knew How to Lead and Motivate Employees. Here's How He Did It 'Steve, like Napoleon, had two faces. On one side he was a brilliant genius ... And the other side ... '

How to Respond to “So, Tell Me About Yourself” in a Job Interview There is a right answer.

The Secret to Leading Organizational Change Is Empathy You’re leading people, after all.