The Seven Strategies of Master Presenters - Lifecycle Performance ...

Manage Yourself, Difficult Participants... / 193
misread her. What I took as disinterest was instead intensity.
She was so focused on learning that she wouldn’t allow
herself to be distracted by all the other “lively and fun” activities.
What I learned from this is that some people’s outward
appearance belies their true feelings.
As these examples illustrate, sometimes the difficult person turns
out to be ourselves. We know the topic and the materials so well that
we don’t set up the presentation properly. In any presentation it is
helpful to highlight that the tone/opening you use goes a long way to
clarifying expectations and setting the tone with the participants. Clear
agendas and guidelines for how the presentation will be structured
are important to most people. On the other hand, there are difficult
people in the world and their difficulty comes in varying degrees.
The Change-First Principle states that if you want to change the
behavior of another person or your relationship with that person, you
first have to change your own behavior. In a similar vein, the literature
on Brief Solution-Focused Therapy states: “If it is working, do
more of the same; if it isn’t working, do something different.”
Doing the unexpected, the Change-First Principle, and “if it isn’t
working do something different,” all have a common element. That
element is changing a behavior pattern. When the old pattern no longer
works, try a new pattern that does. In order to do this more frequently,
we have to be aware of when we are at a “choice point”—those critical
points in a situation when, if we choose to do something different,
the situation will move forward toward a resolution. On the other
hand, if we choose to do more of the same behavior, we will continue
the old pattern, reach an impasse, or escalate into a conflict.
As presenters, we are constantly negotiating, as the following example
illustrates.
Brad: My workshops are highly interactive, and the participants
spend a lot of time doing simulations and role-playing in the
workshop. Just before the beginning of one workshop, one
of the participants, Bob, came up to me and said, “I don’t
believe in role-playing. It is a complete waste of time. I have
been to lots of workshops. I have never learned anything
from role-playing and I refuse to do it in this workshop.”