How To Deal With Difficult Audience Members [Episode 185]

Have you ever had your confidence shaken by a difficult audience member?

This is a common scenario: you have a presentation coming up. You prepare, you practice, you listen to this podcast (of course ;)), you meditate, you power pose…you do everything in your power to feel good and prepared.

You get up to speak and first thing you notice is…someone in the audience sitting there, with their arms crossed, scowling at you.

And all of a sudden, everything you’ve prepared and rehearsed flies out of the window. All you can do is focus on this one person, who continues to stare at you like you’ve just told them to kick a baby. You catch them glancing at their phone, raising their eyebrows, or rolling their eyes.

And the little voice in your head starts screaming:

“They don’t like you! You’re not interesting! They are bored! They don’t agree with you! You’re a loser! You don’t deserve to be up there! You don’t know your stuff!”

And so on. Has this happened to you?

I thought so. It happens to me.

Yep. All the time.

Unfortunately, many of us let these unresponsive, disengaged or difficult audience members get to us, and we allow them to derail our presentation. And often, experiences like these are enough to put us off doing more speaking engagements.

Wouldn’t it be AMAZING if you could face your audience, and remain cool, calm and connected to your message, no matter what the audience is doing?

That is what we’re exploring on the podcast today. I share the powerful mindset shifts you can make to have a more positive view of your audience, shift your thinking and your negative beliefs, which will help you to deliver your presentation effective, regardless of who the audience is, and how they are behaving.