In this episode, I share my experience in facilitating an intimate conversation with my most intimidating audience to date, in a challenging environment. I wasn’t speaking with a group of CEO’s or folks in an industry I am unfamiliar with…I was speaking with teenage girls at a Girls Inc. conference in Brooklyn, New York. Tune in for a new perspective on how you can approach your own challenging audiences and overcome the anxiety or fear you may have about it.
Key tips for how to successfully connect with, engage and influence challenging or intimidating audiences:
1. **Clear Old Fears and Past Experiences**: Acknowledge and clear any old fears or past experiences that may be creating a narrative of the audience or the situation. Doing this will enable you to approach the audience with a fresh perspective and genuine intent.
2. **Understand Your Audience**: Take the time to understand the perspective of your audience to make sure you aren’t operating on any outdated or false narratives you’ve created about them.
3. **Be Fully Present to be Adaptable**: When you’re fully present in the moment, you are more prepared to flex to what is needed – and sometimes this involves get out of the way of the group dynamics and wisdom.
4. **Build Trust Immediately**: Being vulnerable, authentic, and honest is the fastest way to build a foundation trust. This might even involve addressing the elephant in the room.
5. **Focus on Intent Over Outcome**: Instead of focusing on the outcome, prioritize aligning with the intent you want to bring to the occasion. As you know – we can’t control how people react to us, but we can control how we show up.
6. **Trust the Impact of Your Message**: Trust that your message will reach and resonate with those it is meant for, even if the immediate feedback may be limited. Celebrate the seeds you have planted that came with your pure intent.
14:50
“I know that I planted seeds into those girls. And even though I didn't get the necessarily all the feedback right of how it went or the feedback of how it landed, I trust and I know that whatever they were meant to receive, they received. And they walked out of that room with something new. And I think that for anybody who is in these situations, I don't care if you're in corporate, you're trying to influence change or you have your own business and you're putting out social media, that you have to trust that when you are aligned to yourself and you are your true self and you're your authentic self and you have good, positive, pure intentions, that what you put out in the world matters. And it will reach who it's meant to reach, and it will plant the seeds it's meant to plant."
18:17
“My invitation to you is whatever that challenge is that somebody has invited you to, or that you want to invite yourself to do it! Because there is the growth opportunity. There was growth in me clearing old stories and narratives and my past and clearing the way for a new experience."
Links and Resources:
Submit your question for Tosca to answer on her ALL ACCESS episode
Girls Inc. NYC
Giving Flowers and Appreciation To:
Theme music by: Adrian DiMatteo
Podcast audio edited by: Landis Podcast Editing
Additional Music:
Tuesday by Sascha Ende
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/2992-tuesday
Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
