Having a stock pile of specific statistics or approaches to expand and extend a point would be really helpful. And that's where your preparation is so valuable. You start to anticipate where the scepticism might come and how you're going to handle it. There might be three or four different approaches that you've mapped out to each of those specific objections. Time and circumstance, time and audience will determine which a response you might apply to that particular pushback.
Preparing to speak in front of a skeptical audience is more than thinking about objections beforehand – there are specific techniques you can use to respond to these challenging situations without sounding defensive, evasive, or dismissive. Here, we offer a few key tips for how to handle skepticism with aplomb.
In this podcast, host Matt Abrahams and Stanford GSB lecturer Burt Alper share how to prepare for these challenges from your audience and discuss the importance of tactics like acknowledging audience input, reframing responses, and how to remain cool, collected, and credible.
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