How to Manage Challenges from the Audience

• 00:04 Most speakers face two particular challenges from
• 00:08 audiences from time to time.
• 00:11 On the one hand, you could have audience members who interrupt.
• 00:14 They're bombarding you with questions.
• 00:16 They're interrupting you, being disruptive.
• 00:20 On the other hand, there are times when you simply lose the audience.
• 00:24 They're falling asleep worse case scenario, or
• 00:27 more likely they're playing with their cell phone, or even talking to people.
• 00:31 How do you deal with that?
• 00:34 Let's take them one at a time.
• 00:36 When it comes to someone interrupting your presentation by asking
• 00:39 questions, time out.
• 00:43 They're not interrupting your presentation,
• 00:46 because it's not your presentation.
• 00:49 It's their presentation.
• 00:50 The presentation is for the audience.
• 00:53 It's not for you, and you already know this stuff.
• 00:56 So when someone interrupts me when I'm giving a presentation with a question,
• 01:02 my first response is, oh, thank you.
• 01:04 You've helped me.
• 01:06 Because, now when this person asked a question, whatever I say,
• 01:10 I know that I'm gonna be a hundred percent relevant and interesting to this person.
• 01:16 And this person's mindset might be closer
• 01:20 to what everyone else is thinking in the room.
• 01:23 So, they're essentially editing my speech to make it more interesting and
• 01:27 relevant to the audience.
• 01:30 I might have glossed over something that's obvious to me, but I lost everyone else.
• 01:35 This person asking the question is helping me become more understandable
• 01:40 to the audience.
• 01:42 The other thing when someone asks a question,
• 01:44 is everyone's head in the room will then turn to that person.
• 01:48 So it's forcing people to move.
• 01:51 There's now more variety in what people hear,
• 01:53 because they're not just hearing my voice.
• 01:56 They're hearing the voice of someone else.
• 02:00 So I love when people ask questions.
• 02:02 Now, is it possible for someone to ask a whole bunch of dumb questions, or
• 02:06 try to monopolize, sure.
• 02:08 What I do in that situation is say, sir your issues are so important.
• 02:15 I'd like to give them the attention they deserve.
• 02:18 If you could meet me in the back of the room when the presentation is ended.
• 02:22 I'll go into greater detail.
• 02:24 That way I'm not saying shut up.
• 02:26 You're being obnoxious.
• 02:27 I'm being polite, but I'm letting them know we're not going to keep going down
• 02:31 that track, but in general, ask and answer questions.
• 02:38 Don't be bothered by someone tossing out a question because it might disrupt you.
• 02:43 Just go with the flow.
• 02:45 They may be asking you about something you're gonna talk five minutes from now.
• 02:49 Talk about it now, they don't care about your order.
• 02:53 Unless it doesn't make sense outside of the context
• 02:57 of what you have to talk about for the next five minutes.
• 02:59 There's nothing wrong with saying, it's a fascinating question.
• 03:04 I'm going to address it.
• 03:06 Forgive me for not talking about it right now, but
• 03:08 I have to give a little more background in order for it to make sense, but
• 03:12 I will be talking about that in about five minutes.
• 03:14 Nothing wrong with that, people appreciate that.
• 03:18 Don't worry about it eating away at your time.
• 03:21 You should have factored questions,
• 03:23 whether in the middle of your presentation, or at the end any.
• 03:27 So always leave time for questions.
• 03:31 When someone's asking you a question, it's saying hey I'm listening to you.
• 03:34 I'm trying to understand you.
• 03:36 I'm trying to process.
• 03:37 So it's a great thing when someone is asking questions.
• 03:40 You should be beside yourself with joy that someone's asking questions.
• 03:45 Now, to the issue of people doing the opposite.
• 03:51 You can't just just knock people upside of the head and say,
• 03:54 hey TJ your being a jerk, put your phone away.
• 03:56 You can't do that because then, you would look like a bully,
• 04:01 and you wouldn't have any sympathy.
• 04:04 I try to use several techniques.
• 04:05 For starters, I'll walk around the room.
• 04:07 I may walk physically close to the person who's using the cell phone.
• 04:11 That often makes them put it away out of embarrassment.
• 04:16 I might also mention them by name.
• 04:19 So if I see that this rude guy TJ over here is on his phone.
• 04:23 I might then intentionally go to the other side of the room and say, yes and
• 04:28 as I was talking to TJ out in the hallway about this issue earlier today.
• 04:32 Boom!
• 04:32 Now the person has heard his name mentioned.
• 04:36 That can bring him back in.
• 04:39 The bigger issue is, if everyone's on their cell phone,
• 04:43 that's kinda telling you what you're saying isn't interesting.
• 04:47 So, you need to go on to something else.
• 04:49 You've gotta dive into a story, give an example.
• 04:52 You've gotta ask a question from the audience.
• 04:54 That's another way I try to bring people back.
• 04:57 Is, if someone I can tell is slightly nodding off, or if they're on their cell
• 05:03 phone, I'll toss out something, and I'll make it somewhat of a rhetorical question.
• 05:09 And I'll say well, and TJ, that's happened to you before, right?
• 05:12 And I'll turn, and if he's clearly out of it and
• 05:15 checking sports scores on his cell phone.
• 05:18 All he has to do is, yeah.
• 05:21 And so I'm not embarrassing the person, but I'm letting them realize,
• 05:26 hey this is a conversation you gotta be paying attention, you can't be rude.
• 05:32 And that will get people back putting their cell phones away.
• 05:35 So, try those tactics and
• 05:39 I think you'll, I won't say eliminate every single problem with the audience,
• 05:44 but you'll minimize the problems and increase the odds that they stay engaged.

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