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The Audience:

Motivation
Analyze Your Audience
Who are they?
Primary Audience
Secondary or Hidden Audience
Key Decision Maker
As Individuals
As a Group
What do they know & feel?
Speaking or writing over the heads of your
audience
Writing or speaking on too low a level
Consider 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 peoples 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 dont stop talking on the
phone to friends, Ill fire you
Cont.
1. Your threat may work only when you are
actually watching over your employees
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 dont 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 wont 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
Maslows Needs Hierarchy & Herzberg
Research
Maslows Needs
Hierarchy
Herzbergs
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
Herzbergs business research shows that
deficiency needs seldom motivate people.
Security, physical needs & even working
conditions might be perfect, but this wont
motivate people. They need things like good
relationships & recognition
Herzbergs 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 peoples 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 peoples 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 peoples 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 Cs 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 Quo
Maintains Status Quo
Tends to work alone

Comptroller
Commander
Collaborator
Crusader
Through
Affiliation
Through
procedures
To
Accomplish
results
To
Accomplish
dream
Audience 1
Your boss is bureaucratic
Preferring to work alone & carefully
Very consistent
Likes facts & statistics
Slow to decide & doesnt 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
Thats not the way we do things here
Audience 2
Your boss is enthusiastic & idealistic
Creative & is eager to change things
based on his ideals
Because 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
things
Avoid 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 cant really decide until I find out where
she stands on that issue

Audience 4
Likes action & results
Bases decisions for change on results, not
ideals
Decisive & efficient
Dominating
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
whats in it for them
Whats the bottom line on that?

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