In today’s world, whether it is personal or professional the audience still matters – you need to know who you are talking to…
Everybody has a different basis to start.
- Their own bias.
- Their background.
- Their experience.
- Their education.
- Their culture.
- Their upbringing.
- Their language.
All of this will be taken into consideration whenever you communicate.
If you text somebody – it’s a one way street. Send. Stop.
Until they choose to make it two-way. Green light. Go.
At the last minute, and you never know if or when, auto correct will change your message. (Come on, you know this happens.) Or, even if that doesn’t happen, it is only a matter of time for them to read, interpret, (mis)understand something and the message will be entirely different.
Generation-wise, we are at a crossroads and it is becoming harder and harder to see the nuances between groups of people and, yet, it is even more important that we are open minded, flexible, understanding and willing to ask.
“What did you mean by that?”
In a totally genuine, sincere, inquisitive and not confrontational way.
It is more important than ever to think about what we say and make sure we are clear as we possibly can be.
So.
Who is my audience? Do I really know them?
Do I really know you? My reader?
Most of my audience I can guess. They are friends, colleagues or family. Generally my age, plus or minus a decade or two. They have similar experiences, or maybe even the same ones. We had those experiences together.
- They work – whether inside or outside of the home.
- They are parents. (Maybe even grandparents or, have been an active baby-sitter involved in helping raise children in some way or another.)
- They are older than 20.
- They (and I will go out on a limb here,) do not think of texting as their first choice of communication.
- They like to talk to people. In person is probably even better than on the phone.
Am I right?
I hope so…and yet, to some extent, I hope that there are some surprising differences in the audience, and this is still engaging (even if this post isn’t.) Still I hope it is.
But. Yes. I wonder.
Because it is so important to our future as part of humanity.
On this matter, I completely believe the future will depend on us getting better, not worse.
After nearly 5 years of daily blogging… I still want to know the answer to the question “Do you know who you are talking to… right now?” And if I don’t, why is it that you are listening?
Dawn aka Hat Girl