WHAT IS A 'DIFFICULT' AUDIENCE OR PERSON ACTUALLY?

Have you ever felt challenged by your participants in the training classroom? Ever experienced difficulty in handling some types of behaviours from your audience? Did that bother you much? Have you ever experienced a situation thinking, "How did I end up with this audience from hell!?" Are they truly audiences from hell?

What do you consider as 'difficult' audience? Or 'difficult' people for that matter? What is 'difficult people', anyway? Are they deliberately trying to make your life a misery? Or is there something else?

Let's take the example of an audience in your training room, whom we'll call John. He likes to talk about himself. He has a lot of ideas, however, is reluctant to elaborate when pressed for details. He is quick to disagree with other people's opinions and almost consistently points out why those ideas will not work. Has strong opinions about things and will not listen to other people's explanations. Will not perform exercises according to instructions and attempts to do things his way. When that doesn't work out, he'd point out that the pattern doesn't work and that you are a poor trainer!