The Mean Audience Member
The following chapter is from Street Smarts: 101 Short Stories, Essays, and Insights to Improve Communication Skills
I used to be in a class called Engineering for Professionals.
It was a class to teach engineers about soft skills.
A few of the basics:
- How to network, dress up, write persuasively, etc.
One of the other acts we had to do was public speaking.
The odd part was that we didn’t learn any public speaking.
Our professor, Mr. Breckenridge said:
‘Pick a topic & get ready to give an 8-minute presentation on it.’
8 minutes seems like light work.
However, for a person who hates public speaking?
It feels like an eternity.
The next week, each of us were going up one at a time presenting our topics.
It was a wide range of material.
Some people talked about their love for cooking.
Others talked about a sport they played growing up.
Some people talked about their first internship.
Everything seemed to be going well.
It seemed like everyone was going to be laid back.
But that was not the case.
There was this bitch named Adam.
He had a long beard, 5’4 ish height, skinny & a snarky smile.
‘Why did you call him a bitch?’
Because he made it the intent to make each speaker look like a fool.
You see, we had a question-and-answer section after our speech was done.
This guy would keep asking “Gotcha” questions to make the speaker stumble.
For one of the speakers who was talking about their love for cooking, Adam was like:
‘You claim to be a chef. But you working alongside your dad growing up makes you a Sous Chef. Do you even know what that is?’
Then the crowd would await to hear the speaker’s response.
Seeing Adam blatantly be so disrespectful put a lot of anxiety on the other speakers. They were wondering what sort of condescending question Adam was going to ask them.
This caused the entire vibe of the classroom to be thrown off.
I could hear Adam giggling and doing this ridiculous smirk anytime someone would stumble.
The day I went up, I was talking about my most recent internship in an aerospace company.
Talked about my time working there & the project that I worked on.
After I was done, Adam’s hand sprang up.
Then he proceeded to ask these questions raising doubt that I worked on the project at all:
‘You claim to have worked on this project. But you never went into detail about the hardware & software of the equipment that you claimed to have worked on.’
It’s an 8-minute speech bud.
I didn’t know I was supposed to tell you every single last detail.
Adam wasn’t asking the question to become more well-informed.
He was asking the question to make me stumble.
After class was done, I was angry at this dude.
Face was super-hot & I felt like everyone was staring at me (they weren’t).
Once the class bell had rang, I went to confront Adam.
Nothing violent. But just to see why he behaved the way he did.
This clown had a rollie backpack & would walk with his eyes staring at the floor.
Hey man, why were you trying to embarrass me like that? I asked.
‘Huh? What do you mean?’ asked Adam.
You were asking these questions with a condescending tone. Not only to me, but to everyone. What’s your problem? I asked in anger.
That’s when he looks at me all confused.
‘My bad bro, I have no clue what you are talking about.’
The way he was responding now versus in class was night and day.
He seemed like a calm, composed kid, now.
It’s like he was trying to put on this tough guy persona when he was in class.
Other than that, he was super soft-spoken.
You may be wondering what the lesson of this story is.
To be honest, it is vague.
Just like human nature is supposed to be.
To this day, I have no clue why Adam acted like that when asking others questions or what he was trying to prove.
Then again, we often have no clue why people act the way they do.
We think we know once the act has been committed.
However, that’s why the hindsight bias exists.
This story goes to show that the ball is always on the speaker’s court.
To go with the intention of being the most prepared that you can be.
The Adam’s are highly rare.
Plus, the Adam’s do not win the other audience members over.
The other audience members find people like Adam to be repulsive.
From the grand scheme of things, the audience wants you to do well on stage.
They rarely actively want to see you fail.
I don’t know if Adam even wanted me to fail.
Or if he was just a quiet kid who felt heard when he was asking the ‘tough questions.’
Just know that the public speaking world presents different challenges.
Challenges that they do not teach you in books.
The beauty is that public speaking is a crash course on becoming anti-fragile.
Not only are you okay when conflict hits.
You get better when conflict hits.
No matter how bad it gets, it ultimately comes down to how you perceive the information.
As a few years have gone on by, I thank Adam.
You gave me a great lesson, my friend.
With you, I became tougher.
Now I have an extra data point to refer to in the future.
Embrace the Adam’s of your journey.
They will only make you stronger.
That’s when the battle-tested speaker will rise within.
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