From the category archives:

Audience

8 tips for encouraging questions in your presentation

November 27, 2008

Most of us would like people in the audience to ask questions. A lively Q&A session is stimulating and engaging for the audience. But sometimes you ask for questions, and you’re just met with blank gazes back from your audience. It’s a let-down and your presentation ends on a sour note. Questions from the audience [...]

Read the full article →

6 Major Distractions to Eliminate in your Presentation #2

August 11, 2008

Yesterday I talked about 4 environmental distractions which cause people to stop focusing on your presentation. But it’s also easy to distract your audience by what you say (or don’t say) and by what you show on your PowerPoint slides. 5. What you say (and don’t say) This is the major cause of people starting [...]

Read the full article →

6 Major Distractions to Eliminate in your Presentations

August 10, 2008

We tend to assume that if we say something in our presentations, people will get it. As if it was a direct brain-to-brain transfer of information. In the courses that we run, we give a short presentation, and then ask the course participants to complete an exercise based on what we’ve said. When we first [...]

Read the full article →

How to manage unruly question time

July 29, 2008

A while ago I posted about various ways to manage hostile Q&A sessions. There was one powerful technique that I missed out. Ask each questioner to state their name before they ask their question or make a comment. They’re likely to behave better. This technique was inspired by research on the way people behave when [...]

Read the full article →

Three steps to take before you answer the question

July 8, 2008

From the earliest age we’re trained to answer questions - and as quickly as possible. But in many presenting situations, it’s not the best thing. We work with many organisations who are involved in community consultation. They may be presenting proposals for new projects that the community don’t want (for example, a new road or windfarm) [...]

Read the full article →

Audience management – Don’t copy your teacher

July 6, 2008

The No 1 mistake people make managing difficult audience situations is to use sarcasm, put-downs and humiliation. They were the weapons of choice of the previous generation of teachers. And for most of us that’s the only model we have for how to handle difficult audience situations. How does this show up? The classic is when people are [...]

Read the full article →

How to handle a difficult audience #2

June 18, 2008

In my last post, I discussed what you could do to set yourself up as the leader at the beginning of a controversial presentation. There’s a second thing that you can do at the beginning of a presentation to reduce the likelihood of audience members getting upset and annoyed. Acknowledge the issue that people are [...]

Read the full article →

How to handle a difficult audience

June 16, 2008

We work with many public sector agencies who are often in the firing line in meetings with the public. Knowing how to handle concerned and angry people in the audience is an important skill. Remember back to your school days. You can probably remember a teacher who you and your fellow students respected. There was no [...]