What do you want your audience to (know), (feel), and (do)?

I want you to know this mountain is gorgeous, feel inspired you can hike it yourself, and go and experience the joy I’ve experienced.

This is the classic question of a teacher. There’s no point in teaching (read: presenting) if you don’t have these things identified. Why miss an opportunity to influence someone?

An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. The audience is your object. You are the outside force. Your message is the action. You want to empower them with knowledge and motivate them with feeling.

Good and bad (know), (feel) and (do)s

Data scientists can easily get caught in the weeds and mess this up.

• (Know) My audience should know how much work I’ve done, how complex this situation is, and how many things could go wrong.
• (Feel) they should feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the situation.
• (Do) nothing. I want them to be equally paralyzed as I am.

Yea, that’s not a good place to leave your audience. My manager just shared with me a great idea: “people should see that you’ve made this problem super simple and that you’ve got it under control. Create a doc or journal to track how complicated things are. But your audience doesn’t need to know.”

So a better know-feel-do for my (or your) audience:

• (Know) it’s under control because XYZ.
• (Feel) comforted the work is in my good hands.
• (Do) what I recommend because XYZ.

Of course, there are other know-feel-dos beyond just their feelings about me. There should be knowledge and feelings about the actual problem I’m communicating about: I want them to know that X thing broke and feel Y about it so they find time to do Z. But that’s usually the easy part.

The hard part is the subconscious know-feel-dos.

Go forth and do

So what do I want you to know, feel and do? Know that people don’t need to know everything. Feel excited to simplify your life. Be more thoughtful about what you want your audience to do.

FAQ

What about “status updates”? Sometimes you’re presenting just info. You might not have a (do). But don’t you? Sometimes the “do” is nothing at all.