Ep 99 What if During Q&A Someone Launches Into Their Own Speech April 8, 16

So what do you do if an audience member launches into his or her own mini speech during your Q and A session?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Sooner or later this is a problem that will face you if you speak often enough. I know, it's happened to me many times. This is a question that comes from Brother Ted, one of our regular viewers at YouTube. By the way, those of you listening on itunes, your iPhone or anything on the itunes platform, Android. This show is also available in a video format on YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, places like that. This question comes from Brother Ted, T.J. if you have Q and A after a speech and someone in the audience launches into their own speech, what should you do? And what if they keep jumping in again without being called on? This is a delicate situation. There are a lot of nuances involved. I'm going to try to tease these out and be as helpful as I can because there isn't a simple one size fits all solution. Let's say the person is saying interesting things and the audience does find him interesting or her. But it is taking away from your time. It's taking away from the other time that people have who want to ask questions. I would certainly listen respectfully. What you don't want to do is look frustrated, look bored, look at your watch, look annoyed. That can make you look sort of mean and nasty. Listen to the person carefully. Certainly if they go on for more than a minute, you may want to say sir. If it's a man, for example, is there a question or sir, interesting insights. This is the Q and A section. Did you have a question? Again, you don't want to seem annoyed. You don't want to seem grumpy. You want to seem fair minded. Now you have to take into consideration who the person is. If it is the CEO of an organization and your presentation is pitching that organization for business, well, let that person talk on and on and on and on. What I have found is that the more audiences speak, the smarter they think the speaker is. So there are exceptions. I certainly wouldn't try to speed along someone who's the main decision maker. If you're giving any sort of a sales presentation. Let's go the other extreme. Let's say you're giving a speech to a large audience and it's the public and you don't necessarily know who they are, and this person is bringing up an issue that perhaps is a tangent to what you even talked about. Maybe they're Just ranting, maybe they really seem like a lunatic. You don't want to say, get this lunatic out of here. That doesn't work in most situations. Again, I would look at the person, listen, be respectful. But after about a minute I would say, sir, you bring up some intriguing points. They're so important, they deserve even more conversation in depth. And that's why I'd like you to meet me at the door when we finish so we can talk about it in more depth. But now I want to give other people a chance to talk about the subjects brought up in my speech. That should do it. Every once in a while you can find someone belligerent, crazy, drunk, and they keep interrupting. There are a lot of different tactics. If you are not the organizer of the event, you maybe try to look at that person and give them a little head nod, ask someone else to do the dirty work. You don't really want to have to have someone brought drug out of a meeting or presentation. There are a lot of things you can do a little shorter than that. Sometimes you have to just be clear and forceful. Sometimes someone gives a speech and just say thank you and go to the next question because they might ask a question, give you a three minute sermon on something attacking you, even end with another question. And then the appropriate thing is just say thank you rather than try to go into every little nuance of their charges because that would take every minute of the remaining time. You have more on how to handle these difficult situations in just a moment.

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So if the person has been called on once they've asked a question, maybe gone on too long, now they've gone in again. What I try to do at that point is in a polite way with a smile on my face, but fairly quickly say sir. And it typically is a sir. Let's not kid ourselves. Because I found personally women are just a lot less. Sorry if this sounds sexist. I have found that women are a lot less likely to be obnoxious in meetings and asking questions and talking over people. That's my own experience. You may have a different one. So if someone's interrupting again and wanting to really dominate, I'll say sir. Thanks for your interest. I want to be fair to everyone else I see on this side of the room there are some other questions. I want to give everyone an equal chance to get their first question in. And now maybe the person is a Little annoyed, but everyone else in the room is on your side. You don't necessarily want to draw things into a confrontation between you and the audience and this one outspoken person. But sometimes you have to. And in the most extreme situations, I don't like to do this, but there have been times when I've had to say to someone, okay, we're going to have to take a vote, folks. Did you come here to listen to this guy or did you want to hear from me? It's fine either way, but there seems to be disagreement. How many of us want to listen to this fine gentleman for the next half an hour? And typically you will have the audience bullying that person and telling that person to sit down and shut up. That is a last resort. I'm certainly not suggesting you say that just because someone had a 20 minute or, excuse me, a 20 second question or a three part question or said something that disagreed with what you said. It's not a first strike. It's not something to just shut down any opposition. But if someone clearly goes on and on and it's clearly not interesting to the rest of the audience and you've asked politely, sometimes you're left with no other option. So keep that in mind. But I prefer to think of that as sort of the nuclear option because that person will never like you again. You've essentially made a lifetime enemy. I don't like to go around making lifetime enemies for no particular reason. And that's why I do suggest sort of an easy out is just telling the person, hey, you're bringing up so many interesting insights that were not really a part of this discussion. But I am interested. I'd like to talk to you in greater detail. If you can meet me in the back of the room or at the bar or where the coffee pot is in the back after the program, which is. And you can just be specific, say at 11 o', clock, it's 10:30. Now we can talk about that in more detail this way, rather than attacking the person and basically saying, shut up, you're obnoxious, you're giving them an easy out, you're boosting their ego, saying their ideas are so important. Now, I would at least make an effort to go back there and meet with them, talk to them for a few minutes and then you have to say, well, excuse me, I have to go, I have to catch a plane, whatever it is, you don't have to spend the next three hours placating someone who just wants to sermonize to you. If you think this is going to be an issue. Let's say you're speaking at a town hall meeting and you're standing up for some sort of contentious issue. That's when you want to get to the meeting early in advance. Find out who the moderator is, who's going to be introducing you, who's in charge. It's nice to have someone else be the bad cop and have someone else say, sir, we've asked everyone to ask one question in one minute. It's not a time for speeches, and we're now going to ask our speaker to take the next question. It's nice to have someone else do that so you stay above the fray. That's a great technique. There's no one perfect solution to this, but there is one bad ending, and that is if you just passively listen and let the person go on and on and on and on. Because it is true that many in the audience will dislike that person for speaking too long and giving their own mini speech. But they also don't have a great opinion of you because frankly, they either don't remember much of what you said because this person who is trying to dominate has overwhelmed anything you said, or you get sort of the image of being weak and letting someone walk all over you. You didn't show leadership skills, you didn't command the platform is another way of looking at it. So that's why it is important not to be just completely deferential. I hope these tips have helped. I do definitely want to thank Brother Ted and that is his name on YouTube. I'm not just being extra familiar with him for calling him that, but Brother Ted, your questions are always welcome, as are the questions from all of you. This show is about answering public speaking related questions from you. Yeah, I mentioned some of my trainings from time to time or have a free giveaway for my online trainings, but about 99% of this show is me simply answering your questions about speaking to the media, speaking to live audiences, speaking when giving a PowerPoint presentation, speaking to large audiences, speaking to small audiences based on my expertise of having taught people how to do this for 32 years and having given thousands of speeches myself. So that's the premise of the show. I'm glad you're here with me, appreciate those of you who are regulars and if this is your first time, please subscribe. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success. Thanks. I'll see you, I hope soon and I really hope you come back here tomorrow.

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