Know Your Audience: The Hidden Risk in Every Presentation

2.30 AM 1st August 2026

I love the line:

"Do you know who you're speaking to?"

It usually arrives shortly before someone makes a spectacular error of judgement.

My favourite example was police body-camera footage shared online. A politician had been pulled over and, apparently deciding the situation was not already embarrassing enough, asked the officer:

"Do you know who you're speaking to?"

Well, yes. A person being filmed by a police camera. Not an ideal moment for personal branding.

Yet beneath all the entitlement and theatre, there is a serious question: Do you know who you are speaking to? Or, for those who enjoy correcting grammar at dinner parties:

Do you know to whom you are speaking?

You rarely know what people are carrying

This week, I recorded a podcast for dentists.

During the conversation, I spoke about my childhood dentist: a deeply disturbed post-war character who, in retrospect, may have been carrying his own severe trauma.

Unfortunately, he handed some of it on.

Behind the closed surgery door, he would smash drills against dental models, jab instruments into my skin and terrify me psychologically and physically.

Perhaps some of you remember these dentists.

They did not offer headphones, scented candles or a choice of television programs. Their customer experience strategy was closer to: Sit down, open wide and prepare to meet your maker.

That experience shaped how I responded to dentists for years.

Then, more recently, I experienced a very different kind of pain.

On the weekend, I lost my beautiful 33-year-old horse, Sir James. He was not "just a horse". He was a long-loved companion, a daily presence and part of the rhythm of my life.

Grief is physical. It sits in the body. It appears in disrupted sleep, missing routines and the strange shock of entering a familiar place where someone is no longer waiting for you.

That certainly nails it.

So, if you were speaking to me today, there might be 2,000 apparently innocent comments capable of producing an unexpected reaction.

Now imagine speaking to an audience of 400 or 600 people. Someone in that room may have just lost a parent. Someone may be facing a diagnosis. Someone may be worried about a child.

Someone may be navigating a divorce, redundancy, financial pressure or a private crisis no one else can see.

And someone may simply be exhausted because the neighbour's dog has discovered opera. You do not know.

Sometimes, even the strawberries are dangerous

Let us take the issue down a rung.

Have you heard of trypophobia?

It describes an intense aversion to clusters of small holes or repetitive patterns. Images involving honeycomb, seed pods and, occasionally, strawberries can produce surprisingly strong reactions.

In other words, part of your audience may be distressed by strawberries.

Strawberries.

The fruit we place cheerfully on pavlovas. This is the difficulty of dealing with human beings: you can never fully know what experiences, fears, associations or memories people bring into the room.

Yet you still need to engage them. Because communication is not something you do to an audience. It is something you create with them.

Interaction is essential, but it requires judgement

When I suggest greater audience interaction to coaching clients, some look at me as though I have proposed crowd-surfing through the board meeting.

They are accustomed to delivering information, not creating communication.

Once encouraged, they often reach for a seemingly harmless question:

"Who here has children?" I would be very careful.

For some people, that question is simple. For others, it touches fertility, loss, grief, estrangement, family choices or deeply private circumstances.

Suddenly, your friendly attempt at audience engagement has landed you in more hot water than a witch's cauldron.

The answer is not to become frightened of speaking.

Nor is it to disinfect every presentation until it contains no humanity whatsoever. A presentation that offends absolutely no one may also interest absolutely no one.

The answer is awareness.

You cannot predict every reaction

There are several truths we need to hold at once.

People carry different levels of trauma, loss and sensitivity. Apparently ordinary comments can produce unexpected reactions. And communication must still be interactive.

That means engagement is no longer optional, but careless engagement is not good enough.

You cannot know every experience in the room. You cannot protect everyone from every possible discomfort.

And you cannot deliver a leadership presentation wearing verbal oven mitts in case you accidentally touch something hot. But you can prepare intelligently.

Borrow another person's perspective

Before an important presentation, involve your claque, meaning your trusted supporters.

Historically, a claque was a group employed to applaud a performance. I am not suggesting you start paying staff to leap to their feet after every PowerPoint slide, although it might enliven the quarterly results.

I mean the people who will tell you the truth.

Share your stories, questions and examples with people whose experiences differ from your own.

Ask:

• What do you hear when I say this?

• Could this question exclude people unnecessarily?

• Is there a better way to invite participation?

• Where might the audience misunderstand my intention?

• Am I creating connection, or merely satisfying my own curiosity?
  

Remember, you only have your perspective.

It may be informed, thoughtful and well intentioned.

It is still only one perspective.

Awareness must not become paralysis

There is a danger here.

Once people realise that almost anything can trigger almost anyone, they can become frightened to speak at all.

That is not the solution.

You will never eliminate every risk. Human interaction is not a controlled laboratory experiment. It is more like cooking for 500 people when you do not have the full list of allergies.

You prepare carefully. You ask questions. You exercise judgement. And then you serve the meal.

The goal is not perfection. The goal is greater awareness, stronger judgement and a genuine willingness to learn. So, stop worrying and start doing.

Prepare. Speak. Observe. Adjust.

Or, in the language of continuous improvement:
Plan. Do. Check. Act.

Just make sure that, before you begin, you have considered who you might be speaking to.

Love,
Dr Louise Mahler