12: Tools, Culture, and Personality Types
The author refers to a "career skills" course at MIT, which teaches students the various things they need to know in entering the business world that are not taught in standard university courses - among them is the task of giving a presentation.
Of particular interest to the author is that the presentation module tasks teams of students with giving a presentation to specific audience types: analytical, creative, personal, and organizational. The message is clear: delivering an effective presentation requires you to consider the personalities of their audience.
Professional speakers understand this well, and may have prepared several versions of the same speech for different audiences. The way you present a topic differs whether you are speaking before a crowd of college students, or before a group of executives, or before a group of blue-collar workers, or before a general audience, etc.
For most people, tailoring your speech to an audience is natural when speaking to a single person: even if the message is the same, you would change your approach when speaking to your boss or a spouse, a minister or a casual friend, a young child or an elderly person, etc.
For example, when speaking to a group of introverts, they will be more engaged and attentive if you present them with information that leads to a conclusion, because that's how their brains are wired. For extraverts, you present the conclusion first and deal with the facts that support it as minor details, or better still skip the details that lead to the conclusion and speak of the consequences rather than the causes, because that's how their minds work.
It's stressed that the culture and personality of the audience matter more than those of the speaker: accommodating your own personal style is only effective when the audience is composed of people exactly like yourself - which is sometimes but not always the case. You will need to step outside your comfort zone in some instances to enter into the comfort zone of the audience.
In that sense, an introvert speaking to an audience of extroverts must understand what engages them - of he uses an introverted presentation style, he will not be effective for that audience even though he may be comfortable giving his speech.
Back to the university course, the instructor observes that most students "do fairly well" on presentations - thoughtful, well designed, and use logic and facts effectively to induce an emotional response from a particular kind of audience - if they are reminded to pause to consider the audience.
This is particularly useful for students in engineering and science, who tend to be introverts by nature, but who must exist and succeed in a world governed by business students, who are more extraverted in their concerns.
The author dwells on the introvert/extravert dichotomy a while, as it's very significant and something to which he can personally relate - because while he is an accomplished public speaker and is very often speaking in front of large audiences, he is an introvert by nature and public speaking has always been uncomfortable - it's for precisely this reason that he has applied his analytical tendencies to the practice of speaking, and is so attentive to the technical aspects of speech - but his success in public speaking is in the ability to focus on the needs of the audience rather than his own comfort on the stage.
Influence of Culture on Choice of Speaking Tools
The author mentions an unusual situation, in speaking in Saudi Arabia. Because of religious norms, the audience was divided by a drape with women on one side and men on the other. And because of the women's cultural dress, with a veil covering their faces, he was unable to read their emotions.
On the same occasion, he had a conversation with an Egyptian speaker, who remarked that female speakers do exist in the Muslim world - but because they are forbidden to show their faces or even make direct eye contact with men, they have to depend more on gestures and body language. To the westerner, it seems a terrible handicap, but they learn to be effective with the tools they have.
He mentions that there have been books and guides on intercultural encounters - the way that hand-gestures are interpreted differently in different cultures, the distance people stand from one another in conversation and the degree to which they make physical contact, and the like. (EN: all of these seem like so much random trivia, and are of decreasing importance in a world of cultural awareness and tolerance, but in all instances a person who goes abroad is expected to be aware of and show respect for the domestic culture.)
These cultural mismatches also impact speaking to crowds. He mentions a colleague who spoke in front of an Asian audience, who later remarked that they seemed to be in agreement with everything he said during a presentation, but later discovered that they were completely against what he was suggesting.
Especially with global business, it is becoming more common to speak to foreigners - and given the availability of telecommunications, you may be speaking to a foreign audience in a foreign country even if you are standing in your own.
As such, a speaker would do well to be aware of his audience, and learn what is culturally appropriate for them.