Planning the intervention: purpose, audience, and structure

Defining the Purpose: The "What For" of your intervention

Before preparing any public speaking engagement, the first essential step is to define your objective with absolute clarity.

You must ask yourself: what do I want to achieve with this presentation, what do I want the audience to think, feel or do after listening to me?

The purpose of your speech may be primarily to inform, in which case your goal is for the audience to remember key facts and figures.

It may also be to convince or persuade them to side with an idea, in which case they will remember your arguments.

Or, your goal may be to build relationships, which will require a combination of both elements.

It is important to remember that, regardless of the objective, the most effective communication is presented as an invitation to reflect, rather than as an attempt to impose an idea, since the audience always values the ability to reach their own conclusions.

Knowing Your Audience: The Key to Connecting

Understanding who you are targeting is a fundamental pillar for your message to really resonate.

To do this, you must analyze your audience by asking key questions: Who are they (students, managers, etc.), what is their level of knowledge about the topic (beginners, experts), what are their expectations and why have they come to listen to you?

Knowing these details will allow you to adapt your message, your language and your style to capture their interest and meet their needs.

For example, explaining a technical concept such as artificial intelligence to a group of high school students requires the use of simple examples and a language they can relate to, while a presentation for engineers will need to have more technical depth.

It is not the same to address an audience that attends voluntarily, and therefore is more predisposed, than one that does so out of obligation.

The Message Architecture: Structuring for Impact

Once the objective and audience have been defined, it is time to organize the information into a logical and coherent structure that guides the audience through your speech. Every effective speech is organized into three fundamental parts:

The Opening or Beginning: Its purpose is to capture the audience's attention from the first second and awaken their interest in what you are going to tell them.

The Development: This is the central body of the speech, where the main ideas are reasoned and argued in an orderly fashion.

The Conclusion or Closing: Its function is to summarize the key points and leave a lasting impression on the audience, often with a call to reflection or action.

For development, you can choose from different types of str