Watch out for the Negative Glarer

Chloe is a storyteller and her stories relate to all sorts of situations in business and personal life.

Chloe’s advice for speaking in public

• The best advice I was ever given – because this really does happen! – is:

  "In every audience there will be one person who loathes you on sight. Can’t stand your voice, hates your clothes, assumes you’re stupid. Usually they’re in the front row glaring at you.

• IGNORE THEM.

• You cannot win this person over, however brilliantly you speak – if you performed a genuine bona fide 24 carat miracle there and then in front of them, they’d sniff at it.

• Yes, it is difficult and unpleasant to feel those negative vibes coming at you but your job is to work with the rest of the audience, who are quite ready to listen. If you focus on Negative Glarer you will try too hard, and you will confuse and lose the normal portion of your audience!

• "Negative Glarer sometimes turns out to be short sighted and hearing impaired, sitting in the front and frowning horribly in their willing effort to listen to you!

• "Most of these Negative Glarers just want to leave the room as soon as possible, not interested in questions, in fact they didn’t want to attend in the first place…

• If Negative Glarer asks a hostile question, make sure you LISTEN, and be ready to gently ask them to say a little more – this gives you time to be sure you’ve understood them properly, i.e. are they really hostile?, and time to think of something to say.

• Never ever respond aggressively – even if you’re right, the whole audience will resent you for picking on that poor questioner…

• In the face of gratuitous hostile questioning, invite comment from the audience. Steer hostility away from you. Early in my speaking career I was interrupted by an arrogant prat of a managing director who sneered ‘I’ve been here an hour and I haven’t heard anything useful yet!’ Luckily I was bereft of speech – luckily, because the whole of the rest of the audience rounded on him and told him to shut up. He behaved like a lamb for the rest of the day…"

• Remember most audiences want your presentation to go well!
  

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