The Audience:Motivation

Analyze Your Audience

Who are they?Primary AudienceSecondary or Hidden AudienceKey Decision MakerAs IndividualsAs a Group

What do they know & feel?

Speaking or writing over the heads of your audience

Writing or speaking on too low a levelConsider their knowledge so you can talk

their language & provide them with just the appropriate amount of detail.

Motivate Your Audience

Understanding psychological theories of motivation

Without a theory, you can not keep things running or fix them when they break down

People are complex & unpredictable

Cont…..

Theorists believe, five techniques for motivating people:

1. Punish or reward them

2. Appeal to their growth needs

3. Use people’s need for balance

4. Perform a cost benefit analysis

5. Be sensitive to character traits

Punish or Reward them

Researcher Walter R. Nord has found six reasons why threats may not work.

Imagine one of your employees spends too much time talking on the phone to friends during the work day. So you write him a memo or call him in for an interview and say: “If you don’t stop talking on the phone to friends, I’ll fire you”

Cont….

1. Your threat may work only when you are actually watching over your employee’s actions.

2. Threats may get rid of one response, but not produce the desired response.

3. Threats may stop the inappropriate action even when it is appropriate

4. Threats produce tension, making the work place less pleasant and productive in general

Cont….

5. Threats tend to make people dislike you.

6. Threats provoke counter aggression Some times they are clearly necessary, use

threat and punishment with caution Consider using rewards as a way to change

behavior Many psychologists would argue that

rewards, are the most effective way to shape behavior

Cont…

Rewarding certain behaviors is an extremely powerful way to get the response you want

You are likely to be successful if your rewards include the following four characteristics

1. They must be important to the person who is being rewarded. Some people might react to group acceptance, some to money

Cont…

2. Reward must be appropriate & sincere

3. Effective rewards must be immediate

4. Rewards don’t have to be elegant

Cont…..

One effective reward technique consists of breaking down large projects or tasks into smaller components, & rewarding the participants at each step.

Most business communicators could be more successful if they used punishment less and reward more often

Appeal to their growth needs

In most situations you simply won’t be able reward your audience with tangible prizes e.g., offer your customers free products, offer your boss money for accepting your proposal

Theories for effective rewards are Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy & Herzberg Research

Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy

Herzberg’s Research

Personal Growth Growth Needs

Work itself (achievement)

Self-esteem Advancement (recognition)

Group affiliation Working relationships

Safety Deficiency Needs

Working conditions

Survival Safety

Deficiency Needs are needs without which we can not survive such as food, water, sleep, shelter

Growth Needs are needs that enhances our lives

Herzberg’s business research shows that deficiency needs seldom motivate people. Security, physical needs & even working conditions might be perfect, but this won’t motivate people. They need things like good relationships & recognition

Herzberg’s research shows that the growth needs are the positive motivators

A research team from Columbia recently found that salary and other status symbols were not rewarding to computer professionals

If you want to motivate some one with rewards, consider the extraordinary persuasive power of the growth needs e.g., trying to get people to work together to devise a new plan.

Use people’s need for balance

According to this theory:1. People prefer a state of psychological

balance (called consistency or free from anxiety)

2. When they hear ideas conflicting with what they already believe, people lose that state of balance & feel anxiety

3. When they feel anxiety, people attempt to restore their sense of balance

According to third step it is restoring equilibrium. You should be aware that your audience may do so in any one of three ways.

1. They may resist or deny the new information. In cases where the new information conflicts with people’s important & well-established beliefs, they are likely to resist your attempts at persuasion

“As people move through life they build up a wardrobe of ideas and points of view”

2. A second possible audience reaction is to devalue the information, thinking something along these lines: “He has no right to give me advice”

If you have been successful, your audience will neither resist nor devalue the new idea; instead they will accept it & establish a new equilibrium

How can you use people’s need for balance to get them to accept your idea?

To emphasize an anxiety or a problem they have that is causing them “imbalance,” then offer a solution that will make them feel balanced.

3.A third application of balance theory involves encouraging active participation.

Perform a cost/benefit analysis

A strong benefit will motivate your audience, & a high cost may have a opposite effect e.g., you have a great plan for a new advertising brochure.

Be sensitive to character traits

Different people are convinced by different things. Just as engineers use electrical theory to predict how machines work, communicators must use psychological theory to predict how people work. Effective communicators analyze what will motivate the people with whom they are communicating.

Four C’s Model: Business personality traits

Four different cases illustrating how you might report exactly the same information to each of four bosses

Tends to work with group

Changes Status QuoMaintains Status Quo

Tends to work alone

Comptroller Commander

Collaborator Crusader

ThroughAffiliation

Through procedures

ToAccomplish

results

ToAccomplish

dream

Audience 1

Your boss is “bureaucratic”Preferring to work alone & carefullyVery consistentLikes facts & statisticsSlow to decide & doesn’t seem to like

change

The Comptroller

To motivate this boss, write in a matter-of-fact tone

Incorporate a good deal of information, including method & data

Instead of just stating one conclusion, offer various responses & your conclusion from among them

Emphasize tradition, process, system“That’s not the way we do things here”

Audience 2

Your boss is enthusiastic & idealisticCreative & is eager to change things

based on his idealsBecause of great enthusiasm, is

sometimes prejudiced

The Crusader

To motivate, adopt an enthusiastic & informative tone

Emphasize how your ideas tie to his ideals or dreams

Because he is motivated by ideas, you might include many points of view and a lot of information

Audience 3

Almost always works as part of a tea.Does not like to make decisions to change

thingsAvoid conflict and risk

The collaborator

Adopt a trusting & non threatening tone You might include various options, but since the

collaborator is less interested in ideas themselves, you would avoid long, detailed, enthusiastic explanations

You might use testimonies from people you know he respects, or back up your argument with statements from the organizational policies & goals you know he agrees with.

“Well, I can’t really decide until I find out where she stands on that issue”

Audience 4

Likes action & resultsBases decisions for change on results, not

idealsDecisive & efficientDominating

The Commander

To motivate, adopt an efficient & result oriented tone

Prefer a short summary format, stating your own conclusions & recommendations clearly

Motivated by results & power, emphasize the outcome for the company as well as “what’s in it for them”

“What’s the bottom line on that?”