Building a Relationship with your Audience

Short All Things Teaching video on why and how to build a relationship with your audience.

Video Transcript

Building a relationship with your audience makes a difference. Relationship. Sometimes we don't even know these people. There might be more of them then we can count on two hands, we're only with them for an hour and a half. Or they might just be names on a Zoom screen. We're going to talk about what we mean by relationship, why it matters, and how we can develop a relationship with our audience. A relationship is just that connection that you have in that moment with your audience while you're interacting together. We know that adult learners learn better and an environment that fosters a trusting relationship. And we know that emotions of learners connect to their level of learning. So if your participants feel like you care and they can trust you and your responsive to their needs. They're more likely to believe what you have to say, to want to engage with you and to learn from you. So how do we do that? Well, first of all, you need to be yourself, like truly and authentically yourself. You need to move like you and talk like you and let your real personality shine through. If you have a quirky thought that enters your brain, go ahead and say it. Oh, I've got this itchy tag in my shirt. Oh well, we'll just move on. And that moment participants know that I suffer from itchy tags, just like they do. So we need to make eye contact, we need to smile and we need to talk to our audience like we would to a friend, it helps our audience feel like we care, it helps them feel closer to us. Secondly, think about how you can identify with a common value goal or experience of your audience. When I'm teaching parenting classes, I talk about myself as a parent who has similar struggles with my children, similar goals for my children. Someone who's still learning and messing up all of the time. If I went to a program and I had a hard time finding a parking spot, we might spend a couple of seconds commiserate about the lousy parking. It's a shared experience. Third, tell stories, personal stories. Some of the best feedback I have received is when I've told some of my most vulnerable stories, some of the hardest ones to tell, but it makes me real to my audience. Forth. Think about connecting what you're teaching to something audience already knows or has experienced. Have you ever listened to a speaker who used an example that you couldn't relate to at all. It made you feel left out, right? So what we wanna do is make our examples relatable and it makes our audience feel like they belong. 5th, think about being responsive to what's happening in the room. So notice, if people are shaking their head, you could say, Oh, I can see some people disagree with me on that. That's okay. We're going to talk about it some more. Or if people are laughing Oh, I noticed some of you have had a similar experience and you're laughing about that too. When you are engaging in the present moment with your audience's actions and reactions. They know that you're responding to them and that you care. And then finally, you just need to show up with your energy and your enthusiasm and your imperfections. So building a relationship with your audience is really a craft that's practiced and perfected over time. And the result is greater impacts with your audience. Your audience is going to like you and they're going to want to learn from you.