Your Ten Point Execution Plan to Fearless Engagement with Challenging Questions
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Challenge.
Always be in readiness to challenge comments for relevance to the topic being discussed, ensuring you are in rapport before beginning the challenge. Unless of course you wish to provoke the audience into heated debate, then you would break rapport and be totally comfortable and satisfied with the results.
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Simplify.
Listen for over complex questions or statements and apply the method of 'restate verses reframe'. Browse through PM's Question Time for different approaches to restating and reframing questions.
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Outcomes.
You are in control, and the strategic goal of your presentation is more important than the agenda of an individual. It is not necessary for you to respond to a particular question, you can choose to engage, or, park the comment/question in a quarantine area until the end of the presentation. Examine the following pages for a step-by-step structure of how to achieve this. Always check that rapport is present before moving into this area.
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Satisfaction.
Respond with real satisfaction of achievement when participating with hecklers be patient and allow the group to control them on your behalf.
Challenging people, like challenging questions, come in two main varieties:
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Individuals who deliberately set out with a hidden agenda and a need to be heard and who debate in an argumentative manner.
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Those that 'You' the Presenter experience as being a personal challenge.
There are few individuals that really enjoy the type of questioning that will heckle a Presenter into battle, and in all my years of presenting I can count on one hand the number that would fall into this category. From the presenter's point of view, both can be a challenge and an opportunity. Think how boring presentations would be if everyone agreed with you all the time - although sometimes this certainly seems to be an attractive proposition. So what is your next tactic should the Execution Plan not have dissolved the challenge?
Your Tactical Engagement Plan - Guaranteed to work!
The 5 Operational Moves
1. Stay Focused on Behaviour
You must stay focused on the behaviour. An individual's behaviour will affect you emotionally but you must never react as if the behaviour is directed at your identity, it is not, so quit acting as if it is. Remember a person is responding to your deliverance, and as such may have taken offence to something you said or by your actions. Engage with confidence, courage and coolness with the behaviour and evaluate where rapport needs to be realigned.
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