Episode #333: How Argumentative Should We Be With Audience Members?

What do we bring to our presentations? Usually we have two things – information and a point of view. For a lot of presentations, the information element becomes a data dump. This is very boring and tedious for the most part. The issue should always be “okay, what does this information mean and what does it mean for the audience?”. We should always try and break numbers down to word pictures because once we get into big numbers the level of abstraction goes through the roof. For example, for you, what exactly is a billion or a trillion of anything? It is very hard to understand that many zeros. This requires some level of interpretation and once we get into interpretation, we get into debate.

Having a point of view is the other pillar of talks. We want our audience to do something, think something or feel something. We believe something to be true and we want to alert our audience to this valuable morsel of wisdom. As soon as we start venturing down this path, we trigger a degree of debate in the minds of the listeners. Their experience may be different or missing. They may even have different information, data or “alternate facts”, the latter otherwise known as errors and falsehoods.

Whether we are pouring on the data and then adding an interpretation or elucidating our point of view, there is a good chance that when we get to the Q&A component of the talk, we will flag some opposition to what we have said. I am often surprised, listening to the Q&A for my own talks or those for others, how often the questioner has missed the point or misinterpreted what was just said by the speaker. Obviously if they have misunderstood what we are saying we have to correct them. This is where we can bridge into argument with some members of our audience. How should we approach this?

If you are strong in your advice and opinion and then just roll over at the first whiff of opposition to what you say, the listeners conclude you are a flake and don’t believe what you are promulgating. So you cannot ignore or agree with what was said, if it contradicts your line of argument. You have to stand your ground and back up your assertions. The problem becomes where is the line between an assertion and an attack on the questioner.

There are two levels here. What we say and how we say it. The worst outcome is when we become spontaneous and engage our mouth, before we turn on the brain completely. Blurting out a response, especially an emotional response, to someone questioning what we have said is bound to end in a trainwreck of our reputation. This is easier than you think. You are isolated, standing on stage and everyone is looking at you and you hear the sound of that incoming heat seeking missile aimed at you and what you have said. We can take the comments personally and feel we have defend our good name and off we go on the counterattack. This is definitely one approach to avoid.

Instead, we should use a trigger in the form of a cushion, to break the mouth-brain cycle and reverse the order. A cushion is an anodyne statement which will not prove or disprove what they said and being rather neutral, won’t inflame the situation. An example would be, “That is a point we should explore a bit further”. In the few seconds we take to make that statement we switch gears to engage the brain about how best to answer the question/attack from the listener. A considered answer is always the preferred methodology for speakers and sometimes we just need to buy some time to move from our emotional state to a more logical construct.

Now we are better armed to answer the point. The key is to not debate them. We do not want the proceedings to derail into a dialogue between the speaker and one member of the audience and allow everyone else to leap for their phones, during this boring, self-indulgent interlude in the talk. There are other people waiting with their own questions and we have a hard stop for the talk. We must keep within that time frame or we risk upsetting everyone in the audience, if we make them late by going over our allotted time. They don’t blame the questioner – they blame us.

We should answer their question or complaint to the best of our ability and then seamlessly and velvet like, glide into the next question by saying, “who has the next question?”. In my view, we should never ask the person with an opposing opinion, “Does that answer your question?”. Some people who teach presentations skills disagree and believe we should take this high road to show how balanced we are. I wonder how many public talks they have given, rather than just teaching presentations skills? In my experience, all you are doing is opening a can of worms and the debate rapidly spins out of control into an argument.

If we have a questioner with an agenda, they won’t let go so easily and may try to chime in before we move to another question. They will demand we debate them on their enquiry. This is bad form, cringe worthy and drives up the tension gauge in the room, but that doesn’t stop some people. This is when we hit them with “Thank you. I see you are passionate about this topic and in order to give others a chance to ask their questions, shall we continue this discussion together after the talk? I am happy to stay on after the event has finished”. They have nowhere to go with this clever volley return.

We should back up what we are saying and try to defend our point of view, but not let the presentation slip into a slugfest of contrasting opinions. We are the speaker, so it is up to us to control the flow and the architecture of the talk. Audience members are under no such restrictions and can do whatever they like. We can debate the point, but we should always avoid lapsing into argument. This is the sign of the amateur when presenting, because they don’t know how to control the street fight, which can be thinly disguised as the Q&A.