Understanding Your Audience’s Needs

If you feel that your child isn’t getting sufficient or proper instruction in mathematics, you probably aren’t going to be too interested in hearing a speech on the importance of raising money for new school football uniforms. That’s because that topic doesn’t address your personal needs, or deficits that create tension. Abraham Maslow (1954), a foundational scholar for how we understand needs, argued that an individual’s motivations, priorities, and behavior are influenced primarily by that person’s needs. He identified needs in a hierarchical structure of five categories (see Figure 16.1), from low (immature) to high (mature), known as the hierarchy of needs.1

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Figure 16.1: FIGURE 16.1 MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

The theory proposes that the most basic needs must be met before an individual can become concerned with needs farther up in the hierarchy.

Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs matters in organizations as well. As you learn in Chapter 11, the human resources approach to management helps managers to better understand the higher-level needs of their employees, such as self-esteem and personal development, which helps employees to feel more self-actualized in their communication (Chapter 2) and motivated to achieve on the job.

  1. Physiological/survival needs: These are basic survival needs, such as air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, and so on. Even in the short term, if you listen to a speech while you are very hungry, your mind is likely not on the message but rather on getting food.
  2. Safety needs: These are needs for security, orderliness, protective rules, and avoidance of risk. They include not only actual physical safety but safety from emotional injury as well. When people in a community are concerned with violence and crime, for example, they are less likely to listen to persuasive appeals to increase local arts funding.
  3. Belongingness/social needs: These needs are centered around interactions with others and include the desire to be accepted and liked by other people and the need for love, affection, and affiliation. These needs are normally met by family ties, friendships, and membership in work and social groups.
  4. Esteem/ego-status needs: These needs involve validation—being accepted by some group and being recognized for achievement, mastery, competence, and so on. They can be satisfied by special recognition, promotions, power, and achievement. Unlike the previous three categories, esteem needs are not satisfied internally; they require praise and acknowledgment from others.
  5. Self-actualizing needs: Needs at the highest level focus on personal development and self-fulfillment—becoming what you can become. Instead of looking for recognition of your worth from others, you seek to measure up to your own criteria for personal success.
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MASLOW’S HIERARCHY of needs is helpful in understanding your audience’s needs. For example, it might be hard to convince a group of low-income single mothers to enroll their kids in various costly extracurricular activities. (top left) John Moore/Getty Images; (top middle) Getty Images; (top right) Josephine Soughan & Simon Pentleton/PYMCA; (bottom left) lzf/Shutterstock; (bottom right) AFP/Getty Images

The implications of Maslow’s hierarchy for persuasive speaking are straightforward: understanding your audience’s needs will help you determine your strategy for persuading your listeners. The message must target the unfulfilled need of the audience, as a need that is already met will not move them, nor will one that seems too far out of reach in the hierarchy. A speech persuading audience members to plant more flowers on an already beautiful campus is unlikely to have much effect; the same appeal to plant flowers on a campus where buildings are in disrepair is also unlikely to get a response, as the audience may be more concerned with those basic infrastructure issues.