Dealing With Difficult People In Your Audience
A How To

How you deal with a person who is giving you a hard time depends on what kind of person it is! There are several different kinds of personalities and each has a good way to head them off.

• The heckler. You know this person. They have some remark about everything you say. Sounds familiar, isn't it? Here's how to deal with hecklers:
  1. You could ask them to leave, but that's not always possible. The best way is to take the wind out of their sails.
  2. If you comment on what they are saying, bring it back to your speech topics. Or even better turn the tables on them by asking them what they think about the public speaking speech topic at hand. That will turn the tables on them and will put them on the spot.
• The know-it-all. There is one in every group. They think that they know everything about everything, including your speech topics.

  If this is a group that you have worked with before you know who the person is and you can reduce their damage to your presentation. But if you don't know who that person is before you get started, you will find out soon. They are eager enough to spoil your talk and step forward in the first minutes.

  1. The best method for dealing with difficult people who claim to know everything is to involve them.
  2. Take them serious and ask them what they think of the speech idea, how they understand it, and what they think should be done about the situation.

Public speaking may be one of the most stressful things that you can do, but it doesn't have to be. Using simple techniques you can conquer your speech anxiety, give a great speech and succeed in dealing with difficult people :-)

You will also be able to deal with anyone who gives you problems because you feel confident in yourself and public speaking efforts. You might even enjoy speaking in public or even look forward to it, and you can become an excellent and relaxed motivational speaker in the end :-)