It's important to anticipate difficult questions and be ready for the person who says,
"That'll never work."
- Know your audience
and get as much background information as possible
- Anticipate disagreement and try to address it, before it addresses you
- If you anticipate a challenging person, meet with them ahead of time to try to establish
credibility, common ground, and agreement
- Always acknowledge the troublemaker, never ignore them
- Avoid
- Being defensive
- Lecturing
- Ridiculing
- Make and maintain eye contact with participants that interrupt
- If a participant perpetually interrupts and dominates, you can:
- Ask them to be clear about the point to their argument
- Ask them to be involved in an administrative function of the presentation, taking notes
or follow up action items
- Avoid eye contact