Persuasive communication should be designed according to the audience's current position toward the proposed idea or action. Determining whether the audience is supportive, resistant, or complacent enables the TD professional to select arguments, evidence, framing, and calls to action appropriate to that audience.
A supportive audience may require reinforcement and a clear path toward action rather than extensive persuasion. A resistant audience requires the communicator to understand objections, address concerns, establish credibility, and present relevant evidence. A complacent audience presents a different challenge: members may not actively oppose the message, but they may see no reason to change. The communicator therefore needs to create relevance and urgency.
Knowledge and interest levels are useful audience-analysis variables, but they do not capture the audience's disposition toward the proposed change as directly. “Motivated” and “moved” are also less useful categories for diagnosing the starting point of persuasive communication.
Effective persuasion is audience-centered. The communicator should understand the audience's perspective before deciding what message is most likely to produce the intended response.
Study Guide Topics: Communication; persuasive messaging; audience analysis; resistance; stakeholder communication.
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