How to Be Brilliant at Public Speaking, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6

Managing the crowd

Key wisdom from this chapter

• Love thy audience: if you think negatively of your audience, you’ll be surrounded by difficult, aggressive listeners. If you seek to love them, you’ll start to notice that they may be nervous, curious, tired or worried – and that you can help them.
• Set agreements with your audience: show them at the start what to expect and they’re more likely to enjoy your talk.
• Manage any difficult audience types: find ways to engage or neutralise difficult audience types. Typically, through being authentic and seeking to serve them, you can win over any audience member. And if you can’t, it’s probably their issue, not yours.
• Build an ongoing relationship by seeking feedback: your audience are the best ...