An audience is never wrong in feeling disengaged. You can’t argue with their state of being. Here some solutions to the problem of a crowd not wanting to hear your message:
- You needs to be better. Tell better stories, speak with more emotion, make it more relatable.
- You need to set better expectations. Let people know they’re not here to learn “one quick hack to improve your happiness.” They’re here to do the difficult work of learning something new.
- They’re just the wrong people. It’s too late to do anything about this when you’re already on stage. But now you know for next time and it will help you not take it so personally that no one paid attention.
It’s usually a combination of all three. The important part is that they’re never wrong about feeling disengaged. They just are.