Connect to your audience by adopting a regenerative perspective

“5 ways to connect to your audience”

“6 ways to connect to your audience”

“How to connect with your audience”

You will find zillions of similar topics, worded differently, with varying number of “ways”. In other words, there is a lot of advice out there—in writing, in videos, in private conversations with your friends and colleagues. Specialized coaches will teach you many possible “ways” to connect, you may try some or all of them, and even convince yourself that you’re connecting.

What are some of these ways? Let’s see—“Put only few words on each slide”; “Make and maintain eye contact”; “Move freely and own the room”; “Smile”; “Dress the part”; “Don’t use jargon”; the list goes on and on.

Are these tips inherently bad? Not necessarily—they may indeed help you, but how? They will help you to fake a connection to your audience and, in exchange, the audience may fake a connection to you. Connecting to your audience means to be “emotionally” connected. In absence of emotional connection, audiences feel manipulated—they recognize “communication techniques”, and they may think you’re good at using these techniques. At the same time, audiences will keep you at bay, meaning they will ignore your message.

So, let’s be double clear (and perhaps repetitive, which is OK)— they will not ignore your message because of insufficient communication techniques, they will do so because of emotional disconnection.

People feel “a hidden agenda” when they recognize you’re attempting to connect using communication techniques.

How to connect then? Shift your mindset and adopt a regenerative perspective. Talk to your audience with the awareness that we’re all part of the same living system. We’re naturally connected, and we need to embrace the capacity to evolve with increasing vitality as a system where all is one, and one is all.