A month and a day ago I promised that I was through writing about the Grow Rich, Stay Rich wealth seminar. I lied. I keep coming back to his rude way of telling people not to interrupt him. I’m not going to talk about the polite way to tell people not to interrupt you (if your mother hasn’t taught you manners it’s probably too late). Instead I am going to argue that we should use “don’t interrupt me” more frequently.

Some times when you should firmly but politely ask the audience not to interrupt you:

• Time: The most obvious is if you have a tight time limit and you have a set of material you absolutely have to get through. Keep in mind how valuable people’s time is. Even if you have an hour reserved, if by holding questions till the end you shave off ten minutes and let your audience out early, it is unlikely they will be upset. Unfortunately this is the only instance most speakers say “no interruptions,” and even then they will answer questions unnecessarily when interrupted.
  
• Hard Sell: When you have a product or idea to make a hard sell for, ask for questions to be saved till the end or don’t give time at all. Even a sympathetic audience can get you off message quickly if you’re not careful. This is why at news conferences politicians start with a prepared statement, so they get their spin on things first. It’s also why Get Rich, Stay Rich guy didn’t want to be sidetracked, though of course he didn’t say so this bluntly.
• Self-Discipline Problems: Even if they’re not doing a hard sell and even if there’s plenty of time, some speakers are easily distracted by audience questions and don’t have the discipline to stay on track. I’ve seen countless Microsoft presentations flounder when an audience member asks an interesting but irrelevant question. The question just happens to be something that the speaker is passionate about and before they know it 10 minutes have passed discussing some stupid, trivial subject. The ideal fix for this is of course to be disciplined in the first place, but an extra line of defense is getting the audience to help you without realizing it by asking for them to hold the questions you can’t handle. They’ll still likely interrupt you, but not as much, so you’ll have less chance to screw up.
• Avoiding Embarrassment: There are times when no answer will look good or even palatable. Rather than hanging around and saying “no comment” a lot, you’re better off saying what you have to say and getting out of there. A good example of this is the Attorney General resigning today. A brief statement and then exit stage left is the best he could manage given public sentiment.

“Don’t interrupt me” shouldn’t be used or plain won’t work when:

• You’re going for a more informal, relaxed feel. This is not an invitation to get completely side tracked.
  
• If you’re trying to get the creative juices flowing, do brainstorming, synergizing (I hate the word “syngery” for the record) or whatever, then you want to be interrupted.
  
• You’re presenting a hard subject where if the audience gets lost on Slide 1, they’ll be leaving in droves by Slide 4. Here you need to make sure everyone is with you. A teacher saying “don’t interrupt” would be questionable most of the time for this reason.
• You’re presenting to your superiors. Telling boss man, even politely, to “shut up until I’m done talking” is dicey.
• Related to presenting to your superiors, when you’re working with customers or supplier who have the power (and especially in smaller settings where there’s not legions of them you’re talking to at once).