Murphy's Law states: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." This is especially true and especially painful when there is an audience involved.

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This blog was active from April, 2008 to July 2012.
It is no longer being updated. It will continue to be maintained for reference purposes.

Bookmarked: Jackman – Can You Hear Us Now? (TMZ.com)

Jackman – Can You Hear Us Now? (TMZ.com) – “Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig were trying to perform their play “A Steady Rain” Wednesday night in NYC — but some nitwit forgot to turn off his mobile phone. Jackman set the dude straight — staying in character all the while. Minutes later, the ring tone echoed through the theater again and Craig’s response was Tony-worthy. Neither actor seemed shaken or stirred.”

[Great example of keeping focused. It’s much harder to stay on track like that in smaller venues, say a conference room.]

Bookmarked: How to deal with rough crowds: A stand-up comic’s advice for Sarah Lacy

How to deal with rough crowds: A stand-up comic’s advice for Sarah Lacy – “Lacy got to perform in front of a sober audience. She faced a bunch of nerds yelling at her to ask tougher questions. That sounds like a bubble bath compared to what road comics have to deal with. While I had tougher nights than Sarah Lacy, I didn’t have the blogosphere and video replays exposing my every flaw to the world. Nor did I have to suffer through every two-bit critic’s endless post-game analysis. For that I’m grateful. … If you ever find yourself in a similar situation here’s some advice on how to deal with a rough crowd.” [Given that our culture seems to be moving more and more away from treating anyone onstage with basic civility, dealing with potentially rough crowds is becoming an important skill to acquire and develop.]

Civility failure

swiftYou may have noticed that, thanks to the recent outbursts of nastiness inflicted by Kanye West, Joe Wilson, and Serena Williams, more than a little ink has been spilled lamenting the current state of public discourse. Here are some random examples grabbed from my feed reader:

Create Your Communications Experience: Handling Hecklers – Obama does it well

Speak to Lead: Presidential oratory, discourse & disagreement – A look back at a kinder time?

USATODAY.com: What happened to civility?

Laura Bergells’ approach was to pose the question: “How will you handle a hostile audience member who wants to hijack your presentation or special moment on stage?”

I think the best way to handle a situation like this is to begin to handle it long before you get anywhere near the presentation venue. Plan for an unwelcome outburst the same way you would plan for any other occurrence that could lessen your chances of presenting successfully. Just like you need to prepare for a projector failure or a sound system failure, you also need to prepare for a civility failure.

We’re talking basic contingency planning here. Decide how likely it is that a civility failure will take place and characterize the nature of the failure(s) most like to occur. Then decide, for the types of civility failure that might actually happen, whether they are likely to cause your presentation to fail. If they are likely to happen and likely to wreck your presentation, plan for them. If there is some possibility of them happening but it’s absolutely certain that they will destroy your ability to continue presenting, plan for them.

For example, in a meeting with an audience of any more than ten or fifteen people, it’s pretty likely that someone’s cell phone is going to ring. A disruption caused by someone forgetting to be polite enough to put the phone on vibrate. It may be very likely to happen, but it’s effect will be negligible so you most likely don’t even need to take it into serious consideration. On the other hand, we have the example of last Summer’s town hall meetings. The civility failures seemed to surprise almost everyone and the early events went very badly. Careful, thoughtful pre-presentation planning became evident once it was clear that attempts to disrupt proceedings were both very likely to take place and very likely to succeed.

When you are preparing to deal with these situations, it’s crucial to remember our old friend, Principle Number 1:  If you can’t do without it, make sure you won’t have to.  If it look like civility is going to be in short supply at the meeting venue, be sure to bring your own as backup.

And of course, few people know more about civility failure than Dilbert:

Dilbert.com