Bill Connor's July 15 Column from Fortune.com: How To Handle Hecklers

Everything went according to plan. The CTO's presentation at the annual conference grabbed the audience's attention with a memorable storyline, visuals worthy of an Apple new product launch, and unmistakable "marching orders." She told them why they should care and what she wanted them to do.

But then came the question-and-answer period.

An underpaid and over-caffeinated software engineer in the seventh row wanted to know why the company had decided to discontinue a certain product. And then he wanted to hear about the company's policy on worker rights at a supplier in Asia. And then he had another thing on his mind, and then another.

None of this had anything to do with the CTO's presentation. But in an effort to be helpful, she tried to answer his questions, dragging herself into a contentious and lengthy back-and-forth that quickly made the audience completely forget all the important information she had delivered before.

Hecklers come in many forms, among them:

• The Narcissist - luxuriates in the sound of his own voice.
• The Falsifier – asks a question or makes a statement containing incorrect information.
• The Phantom – claims to possess information but won't reveal the source.
• The Omniscient Authority - demands that you know the answer to any conceivable question.
• The Machine-Gunner – asks several questions in rapid succession.

Unfortunately, business etiquette prohibits you from unleashing your inner Louis C.K. and telling the heckler to "Shut the @#$!* up!" But you don't want to get dragged down the rat hole. It's about your priorities, and you want to keep the content (in both your presentation and the Q&A) focused on your goals.

So if you're confronted with an audience member who wants to argue or pontificate:

• Touch and go. Deal with the offending question swiftly and then return to your topic.
• Take it outside. If the same miscreant keeps trying to dominate the conversation, say you need to move on to stay on schedule and offer to discuss the questions one-on-one after you've finished speaking.
• Give others a chance.  Say, "I'd like to hear from other members of the audience" and call on them.
• The eyes have it. Don't encourage the filibusterer by continuing to make eye contact. Look at others in the audience.

You did a lot of work to develop and deliver your message. Don't throw it all away by letting questioners with their own agendas seize control.

Bill Connor's June 15 column from Fortune.com: From DC to Saudi, You Had Me At Goodbye

As I huddled with a Saudi business contact in a conference room in Madinah, just a few miles from the final resting place of the Prophet Muhammad last month, I was struck by how exotic and yet how familiar it all felt. My friend, a banker, wore the traditional kafiyeh and thobe to my blue suit. Outside, the temperature approached 112 degrees Fahrenheit. On the breakfast table: fried lamb liver, cardamom-scented coffee, and camel’s milk.

But my friend spoke of exactly the same goals, hopes, and anxieties that I discuss every day with executives from D.C. to Dallas. How can I make more time for my family while growing my business? How do I stay ahead of the competition? How can I communicate more effectively with employees, customers, investors, and the media? And so, after years of working with clients from all over, I once again realized that in the world of business at least, we are much more alike than we think.

My conversation with Abdullah took place at the Madinah Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship (MILE.org), an executive-education program created by the Saudi government and corporate backers with help from McKinsey. Every day, over the course of each two-week program, a different marquee-name B-school professor from the U.S. or Europe delivers an eight-hour program to a group of 30 or so senior executives from the Middle East and Asia. The goal: to give executives from the Arab and Muslim worlds relevant business education without having to send them to Philadelphia or London. I was there to conduct media training and presentation skills coaching in small sessions. And I saw first-hand that public speaking challenges know no cultural bounds.

That morning I watched a speaker do exactly what he was supposed to do at the opening of his presentation: he started strong. Instead of boring us with the kind of half-baked opening we all hear too often, (Um, hello, great to be here today, can everyone hear me in the back? etc.) he launched right into a genuinely riveting story about a brilliant young university student named Ahmed that previewed the key themes of his presentation and made us eager to hear more.

The problem was that he didn’t end his presentation with quite so much panache. He just sort of finished talking and said, “I think that’s about all I needed to cover. Any questions?” No big wrap-up, no final crescendo to send us off with a sense of purpose. He missed the opportunity to advance his point one last time.

There are plenty of ways to end with a bang and keep your key points fresh in the audience’s mind:

A powerful quote. In wrapping up a paean to President Obama’s oratorical skills, former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, “When he speaks, he gives listeners confidence -- not in him, but in themselves. It is said that when Cicero spoke, people said ‘That was a great speech.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said ‘Let’s march.’”

A bookend. If you started with a strong story, consider saving the end of the story for the end of the presentation. “So: remember Ahmed, that gifted university science student I told you about when we started? Just last week he patented a medical device that stands to save 20,000 lives next year.”

A prop. Steve Jobs was celebrated for keeping audiences on the edge of their seats by saving his "one last thing" for the grand finale -- and that last thing was usually a prop. Pulling an iPod Nano out of his jeans pocket, or a MacBook Air from a manila folder, Jobs always got the drop on us. Sure, that's easier to do with cool consumer electronics than with Q4 marketing numbers, but use your imagination. What's something you can hold in your hand that will surprise and delight?

If you respect your audience by keeping things interesting from beginning to end, you’ll have a better chance of getting them to remember what you said and what you want them to do. And that holds true from Saudi Arabia to D.C.

Bill Connor's April 15 Column from Fortune.com: Perils of the Open Microphone

Just as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow in the east, politicians and business types will continue to forget the presence of a live microphone at precisely the wrong times. Consider President Obama talking sotto voce with Dmitry Medvedev after a joint appearance a couple of weeks ago, confiding to the Russian president that "This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility," presumably implying that what he had just said publicly was not necessarily what he really meant. To this, Medvedev replied, "I understand. I'll transmit this information to Vladimir and I stand with you." Not the sort of gift the Obama campaign would have chosen to deliver to Mitt Romney.

And how about former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown calling a senior citizen outside Manchester a "bigot" on a BBC wireless mike inside what he thought was the privacy of his chauffeured Jaguar? Or George W. Bush telling Tony Blair that "the irony is that Syria should just tell Hezbollah to stop doing this s -- and it's over"? Or Joe Biden whispering to the President that the passage of health care reform was a "big f-ing deal," and he didn't mean "fantastic"?

You would think that these seasoned public figures would know better, but the fact is that it's quite difficult to remain guarded and on-message for every waking moment.

I know a CEO who did the same thing, with disastrous results.

As part of his company's multi-pronged effort to spread the word about a new product launch, the company's communications professionals set up a newsworthy and disciplined news conference. They invited the right reporters (who showed up, because the company had a genuinely interesting story to tell), they thought carefully about the key messages the CEO would deliver, and they trained him so that he would be a compelling storyteller and know how to deal with both softball and tough questions from the reporters. The whole thing went swimmingly, until the CEO stepped on a crowded elevator to head back to the office.

"Whew," he said to his communications vice president. "Home run. And man, am I happy they didn't ask me about those merger rumors."

What he didn't realize was that there was a reporter at the back of the elevator. A reporter who proceeded to ask: "What merger rumors are you talking about? I cover your company and I hadn't heard those."

As his vice president shot him a look that fell somewhere between withering and horrified, the CEO tried to salvage the situation with a joke. "Well," he said, "you know how competitive our sector is. But that's life in the big city."

To which the reporter responded, "So you're saying that your chief competitor is spreading rumors about a possible merger between your company and another company?"

Finally realizing that he'd better stop talking (and with his VP's elbow now sticking him sharply in the ribs), he said, "No, I didn't say that, and that's all I'd like to say for now. And by the way, I'd appreciate it if you would consider this whole conversation off the record, since the news conference is over and we're standing on the elevator here."

The reporter then said, "With all due respect, this is a public place -- and perhaps if you had asked me beforehand to make this conversation off the record, I might have considered it. But the fact is, I'd be doing our readers a disservice if I didn't report what I heard."

And with that, the elevator doors opened and the CEO, the reporter and the VP stepped off. The vice president called the reporter right away, trying to cajole him into dropping the story, but his paper's website put up the following headline a couple of hours later: "CEO accuses top competitor of spreading false merger rumors."

Of course, all the other journalists picked up on this and changed their stories accordingly, throwing all the goodwill and the umpteen thousands of dollars spent in preparing for the announcement right out the window.

So, here are a few rules to go by, especially for those who have a public profile:

Assume that there are tiny microphones hidden in the bushes as you exit your front door every morning.

Okay, I'm exaggerating slightly here -- but do remember that the gym, the hotel bar, and business class to Chicago aren't the places for conversations on sensitive topics

Stick to your message.

You don't want to be robotic in an interview – you want to be engaging and natural – but maintain message discipline and don't let the reporter put words in your mouth.

Everyone is a reporter.

The Internet has permanently blurred the lines between traditional journalism and "citizen journalism." Anyone with an iPhone can capture you and your words and instantly broadcast them worldwide.

If you're President Obama, you might be able to shake off mistakes like this and carry on. But that's if you're President Obama. At an Associated Press luncheon this week, making an obvious reference to his earlier gaffe, he said: "It is a pleasure to speak to all of you," he said. "And to have a microphone that I can see."