Every person has different personality. Some people are basked with proud when the audience do applause. Others are denying it, considering that they’re just ordinary people who are not great enough to receive that applause. Some others? They ignore any kind of respect - they forget it.

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Each respond has different effect. It also reflects speaker’s personality. And audience will naturally adjust their rate of applause. This case is a chain-effect one, so you must be careful.

Today I will mention 3 ways to respond respect action (applause, standing applause, compliment, etc.). I’m not saying that you must do one of them - every person’s respond is naturally set by their personality. It’s like saying “don’t be anxious, everything will be okay” to anxiety patient - it's useless.

Well, these are the ways.

1. Accept It

Remember that most of famous people accept audience’s respect. They spread their hand, like they wanna hug someone - and show a smile. Others do different action, but basically, they’re accepting audience’s respect to them.

Accepting respect is usually done by people with high confidence. They put high expectations on themselves, they know they will win, they win, they get respected, they accept it because they KNOW they will win.

I personally recommend you to accept audience’s respect to you. It indicates your high confidence. It also has positive effect on your image in audience’s eyes. They will think that you respect back - a great habit.

Remember that I do recommend, not insist.

2. Ignore It

Psychologically, ignoring respect is an introverts’ habit. Yep, they think public speaking is a job to do, and they’re not so enthusiastic about it.

Ignoring respect is also usually done by people with low confidence. They don’t even want to see their audience’s eyes. They’re nervous, afraid, a little bit feeling embarrassed, etc.. They also think that public speaking is a job to do, and sometimes worse - a nightmare that must be done as fast as they can. They are literally happy to receive audience’s applause, but they don’t know how to respond to that, so they just pack up their laptop, and then go away.

Well, it’s okay if you get into this category. Your confidence will be increased day by day, presentation after presentation. Just remember that people feel respected when you accept their respect and respect them back.

3. Denying It

This kind of respond is somewhat unique. This kind of respond often done by people with high confidence, but they want to stay low profile so they deny audience’s respect.

Denying audience’s respect, based on my experience, can also be a kind of funny moment. I remember when I spoke about civic in front of class, right almost at the end, everyone applause and I shouted “hey, this presentation is not over yet! there are still some slides I want to present. Come on guys” - then everybody laughed.

Well, that’s 3 ways to respond to audience’s respect. Maybe you want to ask yourself where are you in?

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