Since I enjoy evaluating other people’s goof ups so much, it’s high time I evaluate one of my own speeches that went south.

This Friday I demonstrated a pair of VOIP phones for my group - about twenty five people - as part of a larger team meeting. Not only were my boss and his boss there, but my boss’s boss’s boss (hence forth “Big Boss”) also showed up.

Fifteen seconds into my demonstration, my boss’s boss’s cellphone rang. Big Boss was bringing us ribs, had just got to the building, and needed people to help him carry them in. I asked if we just wanted to eat first and then we could go back to the demos (that would have been the best I could’ve hoped for), but no such luck.

After the rib carriers filed out, I spoke for another minute and was interrupted again when the ribs were brought in. To make matters worse, the way the room was laid out I was standing with the door behind me, so my audience was staring at the ribs coming in. They were placed directly behind me for the duration of my talk. Ugh!

Lessons:

1 - Obsess over your speaking environment. Professional speakers have long lists of requirements as far as their environments - including “no eating while I’m talking.” When you don’t have control, anything is possible.

2 - Smile and shut up when things go south.
My VOIP phone demonstration was really cool. Just not as cool as free food. They say actors never like sharing the spotlight with animals and children since they always steal the show. This is true - I’ll never share the stage with a rack of ribs if I can avoid it! Since I knew I had lost the audience and they wanted me to shut up so they could start eating, I just covered the essentials of my talk and then did shut up. And I didn’t let the interruptions fluster me, I just smiled.

3 - Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you. In some sense I was setup to fail on this one. I wasn’t able to tell Big Boss, “I’m a performer and won’t be interrupted!” At any rate, everyone was so eager for the ribs that I could’ve stood on my head and spoken in a made up space language and no one would’ve cared. The only person who was upset by the talk being broken up like this was yours truly. I’d rather me being unhappy than my management chain.

My consolation prizes were really good ribs and getting a blog post out of this - but mostly the ribs!