You’ve spent the last three evenings pulling together your presentation.
Practising it.
Getting every word right.
And two minutes in, it’s going well.
Then the unexpected happens.
You’re interrupted by a question, a mobile phone. Maybe a heckle.
So how do you keep your cool?
Here are seven strategies for dealing with seven different types of interruption.
Common emotional response: irritation, concern over lack of engagement.
How to deal with interruption: ignore the interruption / speak louder / ask the person next to the interrupter a question.
Avoid: calling the interrupter out, or stopping and waiting for them to finish.
Often it’s a cultural thing.
You’re less likely to be interrupted by people talking in Glasgow or Edinburgh than you are in Budapest or Buenos Aires.
Often it’s because something you’ve said has resonated with your audience that they simply have to discuss it with a colleague.
Sometimes it’s absolutely necessary: there may be an emergency.
Best to ignore an interrupter.
Show resilience to the audience by keeping talking.
In a mixed group, people will start to self-police, and you’ll hear others in the audience start to sshh the people still speaking.
Better that comes from other audience members than from you.
If that fails, ask a question to someone near the interrupters.
That will put the focus back on the audience and create an expectation from the interrupter that he/she may be asked a question next.
Common emotional response: surprise.
How to deal with interruption: ignore.
Avoid: getting distracted.
Remember that the person whose phone is ringing is often more distressed than you are.
Cue an awkward fumble from the owner and a muted ‘sorry’.
Best to ignore the ringing phone, rather than drawing attention to it.
Common emotional response: anger, frustration.
How to deal with interruption: set rules of engagement.
Avoid: embarrassing the texter by calling them out.
Phoning, texting and tweeting is now something we all have to contend with during our presentations.
Even though phones are so commonplace, there are few ground-rules about how and whether an audience should use them.
So the burden is on you to set the rules.
Before you start, let people know if you’re happy with them using their phones.
I’ll often start by saying:
“I know today is an important day, so please feel free to text, tweet, or step outside to make a call – and I’ll make sure I bring you back up to speed when you return”.
Now everyone knows what’s expected of them, they feel far more relaxed about sending an email or a text.
And once they’ve done that, you have their full attention, rather than them getting increasingly distracted and waiting for the first chance to duck out.
Common emotional response: disbelief.
How to deal with interruption: ignore on the way out / welcome on the way back in.
Avoid: marginalising the person leaving the room on their return.
Our Chairman Bill once gave an hour-long presentation in Glasgow to a group of 100 workers, in which time ten people left the room and failed to return.
Ten people also came up to him afterwards and told him how much they’d enjoyed it.
Your audience’s actions are totally out of control.
If you accept that, you’ll understand that people have other things going on in their lives.
Important meetings, developing crises, personal problems.
Part of your job as a presenter is to make everyone feel at ease.
I always ignore someone leaving a room, but if the group is small enough, welcome them back into it.
For example:
“Hi Sarah, we’ve just been discussing the need to engage your audience fully with positive body language. I’ll bring you up to speed at the coffee break”.
Common emotional response: impatience.
How to deal with interruption: ignore it / declare a coffee break.
Avoid: calling the yawner out.
We’ve all been in an audience when we’ve needed to suppress a yawn.
Most people make an effort to suppress it.
Others see it as a chance to inflate their entire bodies with oxygen, so the yawn becomes audible and the stretch visible.
I worked with someone a couple of years ago who told me that she’d been making a presentation, when someone in the front row yawned expressively.
She called him out:
“Are you tired?”
He responded ‘yes’, before announcing that he’d been up all night taking care of his ill mother.
That’s difficult to come back from.
So stay calm, ignore the yawn and by all means, declare a coffee break.
Common emotional response: panic, frustration.
How to deal with interruption: answer the question / move back on to your presentation.
Avoid: getting drawn into a debate, or saying “I’ll take questions at the end”.
A great way to engage the audience is to welcome questions at every point.
Telling your audience at the start that you welcome interaction is a great way to get everyone to listen.
You instantly turn a lecture into a discussion.
By all means, ask people to raise their hand if they have a question, to allow you to retain control.
Here’s more on how to retain control during Q&A.
The technique is simple: answer the question and find a link back on to your point.
If, for example, you’re discussing the need to communicate openly within your organisation and someone asks:
“How do we communicate openly if we’re all in different places?”
Answer the question:
“There are lots of different ways to do that. Skype, Lync, phone calls, regular hub meetings. I’ll discuss these each in more detail in the next section, and I’d be delighted to talk further with you after today…”
Give people just enough, before moving on.
Common emotional response: feeling exposed.
How to deal with interruption: engage or ignore, dependent on occasion.
Avoid: letting the heckle destroy your confidence.
This one depends entirely on the situation.
You need to decide whether to engage or ignore.
Comedians have created all sorts of strategies to deal with hecklers.
US comedian Jerry Seinfeld used to side with his hecklers and turn the heckle into a therapy session:
“You seem unhappy, so let’s talk about you”.
Andy Kaufman cried on stage when heckled, as an elaborate act to unearth a new joke.
British comedian Jimmy Carr has a ‘heckle section’ in his live gigs, where he invites the audience to give him their worst heckles, before retorting with a heckle of his own.
You need to decide whether you engage or ignore.
Judge the mood of the audience.
Just remember that if you attempt to make someone look foolish, it’s likely you’ll be the one who regrets it.
If you judge that person to be reasonable, by all means ask for them to articulate their point to you.
Now you can welcome it using one of the following:
“Thank you for your point”.
“I’m glad you’ve raised that”.
Address the point, and restate the rules of engagement.
“I’d ask that if you do have a point you want to make, please raise your hand at any point and I’ll be happy to take it”.
Now you have legitimised the point, you’ve taken the wind out of that person’s sails.
We’re programmed to catastrophise.
To see something as far worse than it is.
Often, that means we respond emotionally.
In addition to that, research shows we’re more likely to remember these negative moments than the positive ones.
To prevent that negative thought pattern breeding lifelong nervousness, you need to stay in control of your emotions when the unexpected happens.
Marketing blogger Seth Godin wrote recently about keeping a ‘catastophe journal’.
He urges people to wrote down everything that goes really badly, and your expected consequences.
In time, you’ll see that things worked out much better than you expected at the time.
And the next time something ‘really bad’ happens, you’ll see it for what it is.
Andrew McFarlan is the Managing Director of Glasgow media training and presentation skills firm, Pink Elephant Communications.
You can view his full profile here.
Photos by: seefit / CC BY; Soon. / CC BY-SA; Georgie Pauwels / CC BY; Chris Yarzab / CC BY; Robert Couse-Baker / CC BY; Juanedc / CC BY; all on Foter.com.
19th July 2018 Featured in: Blog, Communication skills training blogs, Media training blogs By: Pink Elephant
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