Ready to “be prepared” for your next engagement? Start by getting to know your audience!

Who is going to be in the room? What are their needs? What are they expecting to get out of their time with you? Even now, all too often, I leave a workshop feeling like I didn’t get to know the participants well enough. Truly hearing and seeing your participants is imperative for being able to move them towards action and deep learning. First and foremost, you are dealing with real human beings.  

How can you best get to know your audience? This depends on your particular situation. For example, if I am going to be running a conference or professional development opportunity for a large group, I like to use a survey. The trick with surveys is to either make them part of the registration process, so that everyone is obligated to complete them, and/or to keep them very short. Some open-ended questions you might consider asking include, “What motivated you to sign up for this event?” “What do you hope to be able to do as a result of attending this event?” “What type of environment, activities, or supports will help you feel most comfortable at the event?” and/or “What resources related to [topic] are you already using?”

Quantitative questions you might add include, “On a scale from 1-10, how familiar are you already with [topic]?” “Please check which topics you are most interested in having us cover during the event [list possible topics],” and/or “Are you interested in leading, or co-leading, a session during the event?”  

Of course, if you are doing this as part of a registration process, there are many pieces of demographic information that you can ask to help you understand who will be participating. These include job titles, employers, number of years in the field, etc. If I am doing a workshop on Staff Supervision, I’d like to know how many years the participant has been supervising, how many people they supervise, and whether they see their role primarily as a coach, manager, or mentor.  

You might also try to incorporate questions that you can work into your event in some way.  For example, for a recent learning event I hosted for a client, I asked participants in the registration survey what their “superpower” on the topic was.  I turned their responses into a slideshow that ran while they had lunch. It was fun to see them reading the slides and, subconsciously or consciously, knowing that their voices were being highlighted.  

One thing to keep in mind when administering a pre-event survey is that the survey sets participant expectations. If you ask whether someone is a vegetarian or not and they click “yes,” they will expect a vegetarian meal option. Similarly, if you ask for input on what topics to cover during the event, it is helpful to be transparent when you set your agenda, and let everyone know that the topics were selected based on participant input.

Focus groups or interviews are also a great way to get to know your audience prior to creating your agenda. As with the surveys, think about what questions will help you best plan for your event, keeping in mind that the questions you ask and the conversations you have prior to the event in large part become part of the event itself; You are setting the bed in which you will later plant the seeds.  

With focus groups or interviews, you do not need to speak with everyone who will be attending. These can be done with a subset of participants, ideally, a representative subset. For example, if you will be doing a school-wide professional learning event, try to speak with at least one teacher, one administrator, and one support staff member. Ask the same or similar questions to gauge how you may need to tailor the event for each group of participants.

Especially for smaller workshops, I find that my only point of contact is the person coordinating the event on behalf of the client. This is less than ideal, but if there is no way to be in touch directly with participants prior to the event, I try to ask my point of contact as many questions as I can.  “Is this event mandatory?” “Why are you bringing in this topic?” “What other workshops have your staff participated in recently?” “How does this workshop fit in with the mission of your agency?”  

Another great way to get to know your participants is by observing them at work. This is particularly easy if you are going to be running a meeting with people that you already supervise, since you most likely work in the same place.  But even if you don’t already work with the audience, you can ask to come visit to see what their situation is like. What is the work or learning environment like?  Can you see why you are being brought in to do a workshop on the proposed topic? Let yourself be seen and, if at all possible, introduce yourself and explain why you are there observing. Casual conversations during an on-site visit can offer a great deal of insight into your audience.

Lastly, if you have no way of getting to know who will be participating in your event prior to the event itself, you can still get to know people by being available as they arrive. I often walk around a workshop or meeting room and extend a handshake, ask where a person is attending from, why they are there, and what they are hoping to leave with. Even being able to do this with a handful of participants can be very informative, and it sets a great tone by showing that you are curious about the people in the room.  

Asking questions is an underlying theme of the transformational facilitation model. Getting to know your audience is all about asking good, meaningful questions, and the answers that you find yourself with are a vital piece of crafting your agenda.  Practice asking these getting-to-know you questions, and then practice using the responses intentionally. After each event, reflect on what information would have been helpful to know prior to the event. Make a note so that you remember to ask those questions next time. As with everything else in this model, getting to know your audience is an iterative process. Try something out, notice what works and what doesn’t adjust, and do it again.

Action Step: Before your next engagement, think about what questions would really help you get to know your audience – then figure out a way to ask the questions.