Hecklers, Those Trying Participants

By Dave Arch

They come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes you can see it in their eyes. Sometimes they just sneak up on you.

I'm talking about those training participants who hate having you in control.

The techniques they use to wrestle that control from the trainer range from the brazen rudeness of reading a newspaper or visiting with their neighbor during the training session to the more subtle tactic of always asking questions or making comments.

What's a trainer to do?

When heckling takes place, one or more of at least eleven possibilities might exist:

1. A Misinterpretation Of The Heckler's Intentions

Some trainers insist on having absolute autocratic control of their training sessions. In this scenario, an honest comment or normal give and take between the trainer and a participant can be viewed as heckling. The trainer then assumes a defensive posture and the crisis escalates.

2. Low Prestige In The Eyes Of The Participants

In this case trainees have not been made aware of the trainer's credentials, and they consequently do not treat the trainer with respect.

3. Trainers' Lack Of Respect For Themselves

Self respect breeds peer respect. Trainers who have little respect for themselves allows participants to walk all over them. It's a sad scene.

4. A Trainer's Personality

Participants are not the only people with obnoxious personalities. Trainers can have them too. If the trainer treats participants in a condescending manner or with lack of respect, the trainer will eventually find himself facing a group of combative trainees.

5. Lack Of Adequate Training Tempo

If the course is moving too slowly, there will be an energy vacuum that someone will try and fill in an effort to alleviate their own boredom.

6. Lack Of Adequate Breaks

If the trainer doesn't provide enough breaks, the participants will.

7. Familiarity

"Familiarity breeds contempt" is a plaque to hang on every trainer's office wall. When you allow familiarity with your participants to get beyond an appropriately polite business level you will have greater difficulty maintaining control.

This has to do with the appropriateness of jokes you tell, topics you are willing to discuss and kidding you allow to be done by you and to you.

You may have difficulty defining the line before you cross it. However, after you cross it, you will know you've overstepped the boundaries. The quicker you can return to the other side of the line, the better it will be for both you and your group.

8. The Trainer's Costuming

Typically speaking the more casual the trainer's clothing the greater the difficulty in maintaining control of the group. Casual clothes silently signal an informal unstructured situation. This is exactly the opposite of a situation in which control is easily managed. A good rule of thumb is to try and be dressed at least as formally as your most formally dressed participant.

9. Inadequate Audience Involvement

If you are not giving your participants enough opportunity for self expression, they will create their own!

10. Inadequate Rehearsal

If the trainer fumbles instead of flows, he creates insecurity on the part of the participants that will eventually be acted out.

11. A Genuinely Neurotic Participant

These are people who genuinely have a problem with anyone else having any measure of control. In my twenty years of training experience, I have experienced one of these types in about every one hundred participants.

Here's the good news!

The trainer can unilaterally solve 90% of all heckling problems through some personal changes in style and approach. If you again look at that list above, you'll notice that fully ten out of eleven possibilities directly reflect back on the trainer.

But what about that truly troublesome trainee?

Although there is no magical solution, here are some approaches I've tried:

Ignore them. Remember that attention is what they want. The first step is to avoid giving it to them. If your ego is not allowed to get involved, you might be able to ignore them until they tire of their antics.

Contain them. By working in small groups you can keep the heckler contained so that they don't infect the entire group. This method of dividing and conquering will help to minimize the damage. Oftentimes the peer group manages the person's tendencies to control.

Overwhelm them. This will only work for certain extroverted trainers. Intensify the speed of the training session and/or your own personality to where the personality of the offender is dwarfed. Oftentimes they will feel more secure and stop the interruptions.

Involve them. At the next break invite them to help with some upcoming activity. Frequently, if it's merely the moving of a table, they will feel more like they're on "your team" and will work with you in the remainder of the training.

Confront them. As the last resort, this step involves talking to them privately about the problem and seeking to get their cooperation. Remember to confront in order to better understand the problem rather than coming at it in a spirit of attempting to change the individual. Receptivity is so much better with the former attitude.

A heckler should always cause a trainer to look in the mirror first and in the direction of the heckler only thereafter.

Taken from the book Showmanship For Presenters. Learn more about Dave Arch in our Contributors area.