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Dealing With A Heckler During A Speech Is Like Being Caught In A Dog Fight

Fighting Back

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?

Preparing For A Fight

The best way to deal with a heckler is to do your best to prevent them from becoming a heckler in the first place. A heckler can show up in any audience and so part of your preparation to give a speech, you need to spend some time taking steps to defuse the things that might set a heckler off. Judi Bailey has done some research into just exactly what you can do and she’s got the following suggestions:

• Research Your Audience: The easiest way to invite a hacker to attack you is to not take the time to understand who you’ll be presenting to. A key part of this understanding is to make sure that you know who in the audience will be supporting what you have to say, and who you need to watch out for.
• Double Check Your Data: The Achilles heel that trips up most speakers when it comes to dealing with hecklers lies in the information that you are presenting. If you aren’t careful and you present information that is either incorrect or out of date, then you will have opened a door for hecklers to attack.
• Watch Your Time: When are you going to be delivering your speech? If it’s in the morning, then your audience is going to be fresh and ready to listen to more detailed information. However, the later in the day that you go, the less willing your audience is going to be to absorb the data that you’ve based your speech on.
• Mind Your Purpose: One of the key ways to negate the impact of a heckler is for you to stay focused on what really matters to your audience. By making sure that what you are talking about is what they want to hear you’ll be able to keep everyone’s attention and reduce the chance that a heckler will rise to the surface.

Dealing With A Fight When It Happens

Even with all of the best preparation in the world, you will still get the occasional heckler. That means that you need to have a plan for dealing with them when they show up. Judi has the following suggestions for defusing these volatile situations:

• Establish Guidelines: At the start of your speech you have a unique opportunity to layout some guidelines for everyone to follow. These guidelines can include telling everyone what topics will and won’t be covered, what people should do if they object to what you are saying, and explaining if there will be an opportunity to ask questions during your presentation.
• Be Like A Ninja: If you do have a heckler stand up and take issue with something that you’ve said, then you have an opportunity to use your built-in ninja skills to deal with the situation. The simplest way to deal with a heckler is to side-step their comments. This means that you need to deal with the heckler, then step to the side to show the audience that you are moving on and keep on speaking.
• Take Them On: This is sort of the nuclear option for speakers – dealing directly with a heckler. Clearly there are all sorts of risks associated with this approach; however, it can be the most direct and decisive way to move beyond the distraction that a heckler is causing. Keep in mind that your goal is to deliver the most value to the audience, not to embarrass the heckler. Acknowledge their point, tell them to sit down, and move on.

What All Of This Means For You

Every public speaker needs to realize that hecklers come with the territory. Preparing to deal with them before a speech starts is the key to boosting your odds of successfully dealing with them.

You need to take steps as you prepare to deliver your speech and as you start to talk to your audience in order to minimize the chances of a heckler standing up and causing a disruption.

No matter how you choose to deal with a heckler, they are your responsibility. Realizing that you can’t make them go away, the next best thing that we can all do is to be ready to deal with them when they do show up…

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

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If I asked you to give a speech, how much time would you need to get ready to give the speech (including writing it)? Could you do it if I gave you half as much time? How about if I gave you 5 minutes? We don’t always control the situations in which we are asked to give a speech, knowing how to prepare one in just a few minutes is a key speaker skill…

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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?

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

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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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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All Speakers Need To Find Ways To Deal With Hecklers

How does that children’s rhyme go?

“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me”.

Bull! If there is one thing that presenters dread more than forgetting their lines, it’s having someone add to their speech without an invitation. Unlike President Obama we don’t have a flock of Secret Service agents at our beck and call who can fan out into an audience and cart off an unruly heckler.

What should you do when someone in the audience starts to deliberately take away from your carefully rehearsed speech? Start crying and go home is always a possibility; however, I’ve got some better ways to deal with this situation for you…

What Is Heckling?

Maybe a good place for us to start this discussion is to make sure that we both fully understand just what heckling is. There are two types of heckling that you WILL have to deal with during one or more of your presentations: active and passive.

Active heckling occurs when someone in the audience starts talking back to you right in the middle of your speech. For a public speaker this often feels like you’ve just hit  a speed bump in your speech while you were going 80 miles an hour. Talk about surprising!

Passive heckling is much closer to disrespect. This often shows up as people having their own conversations during your presentation. Normally this is their own call and you don’t really care, but if they are loud enough then it becomes your problem. Talking on  a cell phone or having a huddle at the back of the room are common ways that this shows up.

No matter if you are speaking at a wedding, a graduation, or a business function, hecklers will ALWAYS be in the audience and it’s just a matter if they decide to speak up. First off, we should talk about what you should NOT do…

What Should You NOT Do?

I sorta like to think of this as the North Korea problem – man they are annoying, but they are so small as to not really count in the big scheme of things. Likewise, when you are faced with either an active or a passive heckler, you need to make sure that you don’t come out with guns ‘a blazing. Here are a few things that you should NOT do when you are trying to deal with a heckler:

• Don’t try to be funny: this is the #1 response that trips up most presenters. They spend too much time trying to come up with a funney response to the heckler on the spot and it falls flat. A serious response will shut him/her up most of the time.

• Don’t Lose Your Temper: I don’t care if you were just coming to that point in your speech which causes everyone to burst into tears and now this rude heckler has spoiled the moment. If you lose your temper, then you’ll never be able to get back into your speech after the moment has passed.

How To Correctly Handle A Heckler

Some hecklers are a one-shot deal – they make one comment and then they’ll go away forever. However, depending on what they’ve said, even this type of heckler needs to be dealt with. Dealing with all types of hecklers correctly is the key to being a successful public speaker. Here are 5 ways that you can deal with hecklers during your speech:

1. Silence: Somewhat surprisingly the simplest solution is often the most effective. If you stop speaking and turn and stare at the heckler, everyone else will turn to see what you are looking at. In 95% of heckler cases this kind of social embarrassment is all that it takes to shut a heckler up.
2. Tie Your Response To The Event: This is a clever way to remind the heckler why everyone is at the event. For example, if you were speaking at a breast cancer awareness event and started to have problems with a heckler, a great response would be “Hey, I’m talking here – unless you’ve discovered a way to beat breast cancer, how about if you just remain quiet”.
3. Add The Heckler To Your Team: This technique turns an unexpected interruption into what appears to be a planned part of your speech. After the heckler has said what they are going to say, pause for a moment and thank your “speechwriter / joke writer / etc.”. The audience will laugh with you, the heckler will beam with pride, and you can go on.
4. Give Them The Mic: This is a fairly drastic tactic, but it can pay great dividends. Walk over to where the heckler is sitting and offer to hand them the mic. Generally they will decline the offer and will get the point that this presentation is not all about them.
5. Think Outside The Room: Certain hecklers, such as loud groups at the back of the room, can resist all efforts on your part to overcome them. This calls for innovative thinking. One way to handle this is either for you or your audience to move. You can move out into the center of your audience and deliver your speech “in the round” or you can have them move their chairs in order to be closer to you.

Final Thoughts

When I’m starting a speech, I always try to keep in mind that there are two groups in the room - me and everyone else. A heckler poses a unique problem in that if not dealt with correctly, he/she can drive a wedge in between me and my audience.

Ultimately what a great speaker tries to do is to separate the heckler from the rest of the audience so that there are three groups in the room: you, the audience, and the heckler. If you can accomplish this, then you’ll be able to silence the heckler while at the same time intimately connecting with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

Questions For You

How big of deal are hecklers for you during your speeches? Have you ever had to deal with active / passive hecklers? How much “force” did you have to use? Did it work? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you think about it, there are a lot of different types of speeches that we can give: humorous, informative, motivational, and of course, ones that are designed to get your audience to start thinking a particular way. Oh yeah, this last type just may be the hardest type of speech to give…

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