Member-only story
Framing Information For The Audience
Whether it’s in virtual meetings or written communication, it’s critical to consider your audience when conveying information. Not adding enough context means your audience might get lost and miss your message. On the other hand, adding too much unnecessary context wastes valuable time. It’s hard to determine precisely the right amount of information to share, but hopefully, these tips will help. I’ll start by sharing a general template before going into some more details about the trickier sections, and giving a few examples at varying levels of scope.
Template:
Context — What information does a typical person in this audience need to understand what you’re about to say?
What Happened — in short, why are you saying this? What’s your point?
Why It’s Important/Implications— Why should the audience care about what you just announced? What implications of this change apply to your audience?
Follow-Ups and Action Items — What should they do in response?
Tips:
- Consider your audience’s existing context — what do they know already, or what would you expect them to know? Someone that has less industry experience may need more…
