How To Deal With Tardiness or Absenteeism In YOUR Presentation

Be prepared…  This feature article is only for people who are committed to being excellent platform speakers.   Because isn’t it true that when challenges appear that we tend to give up?  So if you’re serious about taking your speaking skills to the highest level – read on.

How To Deal With Tardiness or Absenteeism In YOUR Presentation

Giving a great presentation is easy when the audience is also easy to deal with. When the audience is challenging or causing you concerns or problems, getting through your content becomes quite difficult and challenging

Tardiness or Absenteeism
Probably the most common problem that you will notice with any group that have been together for any particular amount of time, is people showing up late after breaks or in the mornings for longer trainings or not showing up at all.

The Cause – Recognizing Common Behaviors
If you are doing personal development, financial trainings, or any presentation where you are pressing people’s buttons, they are being forced to look at how they are responsible for the results that they are getting in their life.

As soon as any group work is involved, then it becomes a bigger problem. It’s then they start disliking what you are saying or start to unconsciously undermine what is going on by being late or not showing up.

Systems and Strategies
You will to need to develop your company’s policy on tardiness and absenteeism with systems and strategies to handle these situations.
The easiest and simplest way is to have name tags that people put on when they come in the room and that you collect when they leave the room for breaks.  In smaller groups, it is obviously easy to notice when someone is not there, but in larger groups, you need better strategies around that.

I always have a list of mobile phone numbers of everyone who is there. If someone does not show up after a break, I want them to know that we notice, that we care and that if there is anything we can do to support that we will do that. I always train my event manager’s to contact anyone who does not show up.

Potential Problems
If someone is not showing up, they will ask for their money back at a later stage.  They will use the excuse that it was a “bad training” rather than confront their own unconscious blockages. You need to make sure those participants are aware that if they have not been in the room, then they have not had the experience of it.

Get good systems and strategies in your business policy. It will resolve many of the issues upfront, minimizing the impact on the group and your business.

How To Manage Lateness.
At the very beginning of your presentations, you need to set a frame around the fact that you got a lot of content to get through. On each of these 3 frames you need to get the agreement from your participants:

• You have a lot of content to get through and it’s important that they are in the room, on time, so that you get through everything that you want to teach them.
• That you are teaching at two levels – conscious and unconsciously. 
• If they are late back from the breaks, they are distracting for everyone else in the room.

Train your event manager and your crew to watch out for this and to address it if it comes up. A frank and honest conversation with the person is usually the best way to deal with it.

If you set your frames up front, most people will be on time.

Summary
This week, why not commit yourself to being an excellent platform speaker – one who does not give up when beset by challenges, but one who will do whatever it takes to succeed.  So craft some systems and strategies around tardiness or absenteeism.   Do whatever it takes to be the best.