Archive for February, 2010

Inside The Mind Of A Heckler

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
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Just What Is A Heckler Thinking About?

Just What Is A Heckler Thinking About?

It’s All About Control

If you could wish for just one thing before you give your next speech in public, what would it be? Sure we’d all like to be able to talk like Tony Robbins, move a crowd like Zig Ziglar, or even have a powerful story to tell like Rudy Giuliani. However, I’m willing to bet good money that after considerable thought, we’d all settle for spending our wish on making sure that there were no hecklers in the audience.

The reason that speakers fear hecklers so much isn’t that they are so rude. Rather it’s an issue of control – we have it and they want it. The person up on the stage who is speaking (that’s you) “owns” the crowd. When a heckler starts to harass you, they are trying to wrestle control of the crowd away from you.

In order to start to find out how to deal with hecklers, the very first step is to take a step back and understand just who they are. It turns out that they (normally) are not wild-eyed radicals. Instead, they are very much people just like you and me. They are speaking up because they are feeling enormous pressure for some reason. This leads to a feeling of being powerless, intimidated, uncomfortable, or simply being overlooked. This is what is what turns them into a heckler.

It’s very easy for a speaker to lose control when a heckler starts to verbally assault them. However, you need to realize that when a heckler starts to speak, very quickly the audience will recognize them for what they are – a disruption.

Why Do They Do It?

Judi Bailey has looked into the psychology behind why people become hecklers. She reports that mental health experts agree that a heckler’s disorderly conduct is a symptom of an unmet need.
Just what kind of unmet need they are dealing with will determine what action you will need to take. Judi has created an acronym, H-O-S-T-I-L-E that can help speakers to quickly classify the type of heckler that they are dealing with:

  • Heckler: these are the ones who are simply being rude to you. The reason that they are doing this is because they have a feeling of low personal worth and they are trying to build themselves up by getting into a shouting match with you.
  • Over-zealous: a strong need for approval causes this type of heckler to always want to lead a conversation. They’ll show up most often if you ask the audience a question – they will be the one who wants to answer it before anyone else.
  • Squawker: the ultimate source of negativity, this type of heckler will poo-poo any idea or proposal. The reason that they are doing this is because it’s easy to do (doesn’t take a lot of thinking to say “no” to a new idea) and because they desperately need acknowledgement.
  • Turned-Off: the heckler who isn’t confronting you directly, but who is doing something else – like having a phone call in the middle of your speech. This may be partly your fault because they very clearly have an unmet need for connection.
  • Intimidator: it’s all about power for this type of heckler. They are more than willing to sit through a speech as long as they are the ones doing the speaking. They are easy to spot because the vocabulary that they will use will be aggressive.
  • Lost: another way to refer to this heckler is “clueless”. For whatever reason they’re just not “getting” what you’re talking about and so they can keep asking the same pointless questions. Clearly this type of heckler has a need for either a direction to go in or information that they can use.
  • Expert: we’ve all seen this one before – he / she thinks that they know more than the speaker (and they may) and they’re going to let everyone else know it. What we’re looking at here is a clear need for personal recognition.

What All Of This Means For You

I’m sorry to report that to the best of my knowledge, there are no magic wishes available to speakers. This means that you’ll never be able to start a speech with the guarantee that you won’t interrupted by a heckler.

The key point that you always need to keep in mind is that no matter how inappropriate their behavior is, they are generally just people like you and me. However, because of their current situation they feel compelled to speak out.

Realizing that there are different types of hecklers is the first step in learning to deal with them. Once you are able to classify the type of heckler that you are dealing with, you’ll be well on your way to making sure that control of your speech stays firmly in your hands.

What type of heckler do you think is the most disruptive?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Nothing makes me more angry than when someone is rude enough to interrupt me when I’m giving a speech. I mean come on, I’ve worked hard to prepare to give this speech and here I am dealing with all of the nerves, logistics, etc. that a speaker needs to stay on top of and all of a sudden I have to put up with this? There has got to be a way to get this person to shut up and sit down, right?

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How To Rig A Speech To Get The Outcome You Want Every Time

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Image Credit If You Stack The Deck, Then You'll Win Every Time

If You Stack The Deck, Then You'll Win Every Time

You can’t always do it all by yourself. If you want to make a lasting impression on your audience, then sometimes you just gotta bring in some help to pull it off. Speakers who are ready to move up to the next level in their speaking often come to me and ask for advice. Now that they’ve gotten over their fear of speaking, they want to move on and start to make more of an impact with their audience. It’s time to bring out an advanced speaking skill – rigging a speech.

The Setup

If as a speaker you can put aside your ego long enough to admit that sometimes if you really want to make a lasting impression on your audience, then you are going to have to allow others to help you, then you’ll be half-way there.

An advanced speaking technique is to work with an outsider to act as a “plant” in the audience. Having somebody in the audience who you control gives you enormous power as a speaker when it comes to steering the audience’s mood and reactions.

The most important part of stacking the deck is to make sure that you take the time to rehearse what you want to happen with your partner in crime – these things don’t just happen by themselves.

The Action

When you rig a speech, you need to make sure that you’ve carefully scripted what you want to happen. The three most common uses of a plant are to generate anger, humor, and questions.

Having a member of your audience stand up and angrily shout something out or accuse you of something is a fantastic tool; however, it’s just about as dangerous as nitroglycerin. This is an unexpected action – your audience will not be expecting it and so it will wake them up and grab their attention. I’ve used this one when I knew that what the audience would be thinking at a certain point was directly opposite to what I was telling them. Since you knew that it was coming, you have a fantastic response ready for them, this calms your angry audience member down, and everyone else is very impressed with you. That’s exactly what I did and it took the tension out of the room.

Humor is difficult enough to try to do by yourself let alone with a partner, but if you can pull it off you’ll be able to make a lasting impression on your audience. As with all types of humor, timing is everything here. One of my favorite techniques is to have my plant ask a question and then we end up getting involved in a very fast back-and-forth dialog that amazes and entertains everyone. Once upon a time I answered my plant’s question by saying that something would take 1 year, they replied with 2, I said “3″, they said “4″ and so on.

Finally, one of the worst things that a speaker can do is to wrap up a speech by asking “does anyone have any questions” and then be greeted by dead silence. This is when having a plant can save your life: have them stand up and ask an interesting or controversial question just to get things going. Since you know what they are going to ask, you can structure your speech so that your answer to that question is really part of your speech.

What All Of This Means For You

When you are ready to take your speaking skills up to the next level, starting to “seed” the audience with your trained agents is a great way to ensure that you are able to control how the speech will flow. These agents can control the audience’s mood: get them angry, make them laugh, or ask the questions that they are all thinking about.

As with all tools, the planted agent requires skill to use. You have to take the time both to structure your speech in such a way as to accommodate your plant and to rehearse what each of you is going to say before the big day. Do it right and you’ll have left your audience with a positive lasting impression.

Under what circumstances do you think it would be a bad idea to plant someone in your audience?


Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you could wish for just one thing before you give your next speech in public, what would it be? Sure we’d all like to be able to talk like Tony Robbins, move a crowd like Zig Ziglar, or even have a powerful story to tell like Rudy Giuliani. However, I’m willing to bet good money that after considerable thought, we’d all settle for spending our wish on making sure that there were no hecklers in the audience.

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Posted in audience | 2 Comments »

What Is Your Body Telling Your Audience?

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
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Is true that people can know what you are thinking by what your body language is telling them?

Is true that people can know what you are thinking by what your body language is telling them?

What You Know About Body Language Is All Wrong

Did you know that when you are delivering a speech, there is always another conversation going on? No, I’m not talking about your rude audience (although they may be talking also), instead I’m talking about your body – it’s having its own conversation with your audience. Maybe you should know what it’s saying…?

The fact that we are always communicating with our audience through body language should come as no surprise to anyone. However, what might catch your attention is that most of what you think that you know about how to read body language is probably wrong. It’s just urban myths that have been told over and over again.

A quick example might help me to make my point: what’s the best way to make a first impression with someone? If you’re like me, you’ll assume that greeting them with a lot of energy will show spunk and drive – all good things. It turns out that we’d be wrong. Dave Zielinski has been looking into this and he reports that most people believe that people who are low energy and restrained have the most self-confidence.

There is nothing that we can do about preventing our body language from sending messages to our audience. However, the one thing that we can do is learn to read other people’s body language more effectively.

Common Myths

Have you ever had to give a speech early in the morning? The 900 lb gorilla in the room is the fact that everyone is still sleepy – several of them have probably not even woken up yet. What’s the best way to get some energy into the room?

If you are like most speakers, you’ll rely on what we’ve all been told is the best way to wake up an audience: hit them with a high-energy presentation delivered at a loud volume. It turns out that this is exactly the wrong thing to do. Instead, what you need to do is to start out at their energy level (low) and then gradually raise the energy up and allow them to come along with you.

How about when we see people in our audience who have their arms crossed over their chest? They must be resisting our message, right? Probably wrong – check the temperature in the room – they may just be cold!

In the end, once you get comfortable understanding what your audience’s body language is really telling you, you’ve got to adjust your body language so that they can connect with you. What really matters in your speech is not a lot of body language rules, but rather your voice quality & variation, conviction, strong content, and good eye contact.

What All Of This Means For You

Body language is something that every speaker needs to be aware of. However, we also have to understand that we are probably interpreting it incorrectly because it’s so hard to read. Don’t spent too much time trying to follow a set of body language “rules” because it will take away from your speech.

Instead, do what comes naturally to you. This will allow you to more fully focus on giving the best speech possible and you won’t get tripped up trying to remember a long list of do’s and don’ts.

In the end, if you can allow you body and mind to deliver the same speech then your audience will get a consistent message and you’ll be successful in connecting with your audience.

Do you think that your body language helps or hurts you when you give a presentation?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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The Hassle Of Hecklers

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
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There’s No Love Like A Heckler’s Love

There’s No Love Like A Heckler’s Love

Just What Is A Heckler Anyway?

Just imagine your next presentation. You’ve studied your audience, researched your topic, created a speech, and practiced, practiced, practiced. You take the stage and start to smoothly deliver your speech. Just a few minutes into your speech, you become aware of someone, gasp, talking. We’re not talking about quiet whispering here, we’re talking about someone in the audience standing up and shouting things at you. Congratulations, you’ve got a heckler…

Why Do People Heckle Us?

It’s in the world of stand up comedy that I suspect we are most accustomed to seeing hecklers in real life. That environment has an explosive mix of edgy humor, alcohol, and an audience who desperately wants to show off for friends and participate in the fun. Hecklers are an everyday part of that environment. But what about when you are giving a speech?

Just exactly what is a heckler? I’m going to define a heckler as being anyone who chooses to interrupt your speech with their own comments. More often than not, a heckler is motivated by deep-set emotions: hostility, resentment, or even simple anger. Whatever you are talking about has set them off and they’re not going to be quiet about it. Oh, and there’s one more thing – they just might be disagreeing with what you are saying.

As bad as all of this is, there is one more reason that you may have attracted a heckler – they may not like you. For whatever reason, there are people out there who will simply set their minds to not liking us for some unknown reason and during our presentation they’ll just stand up and let us know about it. Talk about poor timing!

The Best Defense Against A Heckler Is…

The now classic case of how NOT to handle a heckler was demonstrated by Michael Richards (“Kramer” on the TV show Seinfeld) when he was performing at comedy club. A table of Afro-American and Hispanic audience members started to heckle him and he responded by trying to “out heckle” them by using racial slurs. Needless to say this didn’t work and the fallout from this event is still being felt by him even today.

When it comes to dealing with a heckler, a speaker’s options are somewhat limited. What is going on here is a power play – you own the stage, but the heckler is trying to take over your audience. The big unanswered question is which way will the audience go – will they side with the heckler or will they side with you, the speaker.

In order to win your audience over to your side, there are three different things that you can do:

  • Ignore: It takes a great deal of courage to be a heckler. If the speaker doesn’t acknowledge the heckler and he starts to get disapproving looks and “shsss” sounds from people sitting around him, then his courage will start to fade quickly. By simply ignoring a heckler, you can often get them to sit down and go away quietly.
  • Respond: another way of saying this is to meet force with force. If your heckler is simply unable to restrain themselves from asking a question, then answer it and go on. If your heckler is being insulting, insult them right back and tell them to sit down and shut-up.
  • Joke: Humor is a very powerful tool for speakers to use. If you take a moment, and then use humor to either deal with the issue that the heckler has raised or to deal with the heckler himself / herself, then you can defuse the situation and move on.

What All Of This Means For You

At some point in your speaking career, you will be confronted with a heckler. It’s how you choose to deal with this interruption that will define how good of a speaker you are.

It’s all too easy to over react when someone has been rude enough to interrupt your speech. You’ve got a number of options from ignoring them to using humor to deflect the interruption. How you handle it will depend on the circumstances that you find yourself in.

The ultimate goal is to keep the audience on your side and not have them bond with the heckler. If you treat every interruption with dignity and style, you’ll have won the audience over and you’ll be seen as the great speaker that you can be.

What do you think the best way to deal with a heckler is?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Did you know that when you are delivering a speech, there is always another conversation going on? No, I’m not talking about your rude audience (although they may be talking also), instead I’m talking about your body – it’s having its own conversation with your audience. Maybe you should know what it’s saying…?

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Posted in heckler | 5 Comments »