Laying down the law!

This tip is in response to two people asking me the same question inside a week – it doesn’t often happen like that but when it does, I figure the universe is trying to tell me something…..

The question in question was how to deal with/cope with questions and so on and how to handle an ‘unruly’ audience.

Fake it. It’s that simple. I’m married to a teacher who tells me that the whole school discipline thing is a game: teachers pretend they have authority and pupils act as though they have. In real life, if pupils decided not to do as they were told there is precious little that can be done. It’s called “Assumed Authority”. If you act as though you’ve got it, people will (generally) behave as though you have.

One way to assume it is to lay down the law by establishing clear ground rules at the start of a presentation. For example, tell your audience how long you’re going to speak for and tell them when you’re going to take questions (at the end? in private?). A brief, closed question to get people to ‘sign up’ to that will then mean that if anyone steps outside those ‘rules’ you can pretty much assume most people will be on your side when you refer back to them. By that I mean just saying to the audience “…..is that okay with everyone?” and then move on.
Authority – fake it till it’s real! :)