Address the Bigger Audience, Not The Person Arguing With You
Address the Bigger Audience, Not The Person Arguing With You
Exceptional Public Speaker Strategies
Consider three public speaking situations:
While facilitating a class or workshop someone interrupts with a question.
While giving a talk to a public audience someone blurts out a provocative comment.
Something bothers you on social media, you post a response, and this initiates a highly charged exchange.
Some comments and questions are non-controversial. You give a talk on well-being interventions and someone asks why most people show no discernible increase in happiness after earning a six figure salary (read the footnote).1
Some comments and questions are controversial. In that same talk on well-being interventions, someone asks why we would expect the same psychological strategies to work for disadvantaged populations? Particularly, racial minorities and people at the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum (read the footnote).2
When someone speaks, everyone listening is part of the conversation - even if they lurk without a peep. In terms of pure numbers, you can be more impactful as a public speaker by broadening your attention to the entire audience. Yes, a speaker raised an issue and deserves respect and consideration. As a public forum, however, it is disrespectful to ignore the vast swath of characters in the vicinity.
How can you be inclusive of others in the room:
Repeat the question before responding. This is a gift of responsiveness. You acknowledge that some in the audience might not hear what has been said. Even if they did, you invite them in with a rehash.
Take a few seconds to consider whether an answer requires background information. If so, provide it succinctly. Do not assume everyone has the same level of information about the topic. Define jargon that the questioner used. Offer a micro-education on the topic.
Use meta-comments to point out what is known, unknown, misunderstood, and why. Lean on evidence as much as possible and pinpoint when you deviate to give subjective opinions or hypotheses (Rule #4 of persuasive dissent).
It is the responsibility of you, the public speaker, to help guide the audience away from pseudoscience, dehumanizing statements, or anything that is potentially problematic for the culture in the room. Be willing to absorb social friction in pointing out logical problems, political grandstanding, or a lack of evidence in the questions and comments.
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I entered a social media debate this week in relation to a new American trend suggesting “instead of focusing on ‘good’ or ‘bad’ choices try to approach food with neutrality in mind.” That is, “the only foods that are bad for you are foods that contain allergens, poisons, and contaminants, or food that is spoiled or otherwise inedible.”
Another doctor posted:
There are no bad foods or good foods3
All food is good food.
Some food is for sometimes and some food is for always.
I find these sentiments to be strange and wonder how this framework operates within a worldwide uptick in overweight and obese children who often become obese adults. Additionally, there is substantial evidence of how certain foods are unhealthy such that a consistently small amount (“sometimes”) increases the risk of immunosuppression, neuroinflammation, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, and premature mortality.
Things that are unhealthy choices outside of very rare, extreme situations: Bugles. Fanta Pina Colada. Fried Oreos. And of course, Jarritos Mandarin Soda with six tablespoons of sugar in a 12.5 ounce bottle! Tasty? Maybe. Healthy? Absolutely not.
Here’s what’s interesting. The initial videos and postings were extreme (“there are no bad foods or good foods”). My response can be considered extreme with a stubborn set of citations to evidence that foods can be rank-ordered on a continuum from healthy to unhealthy. Honestly, I didn’t know this would be controversial (there is after all, an entire field of nutritional sciences!!).
By paying attention to not just people disagreeing with me but the public listening, more nuanced, valuable comments emerge that benefit everyone. For example:
Josh Pritchard said, Food is defined as being a nutritious substance organisms eat/drink to sustain life and growth. This seems to me that if it has calories; vitamins; or anything that are nourishing (necessary to growth), it qualifies as food. And food cans be characterized as tasty (Oreos dipped in milk); nutrient-dense (spinach); or calorically empty. The values statements shouldn’t really be made without reference to the quality. That food can be tasty but unhealthy. So from a taste perspective it can be “good” but from a nutrient perspective it can be “poor”; I like precision and I like authentic frankness and being willing to be factual. I can get behind the fact that fried Twinkie’s are potentially a tasty treat, but do not provide health benefit and after x quantity create health issues.
Anna Sofia Canetti said, Any therapy that is based on encouraging a client to lie to themselves is harmful. If somebody can’t tell the difference between “this decision is bad” and “I’m fundamentally bad” they need to work on recognizing that difference. Not the rest of the world lying so that they can continue their erroneous self-perception.
Luis Morales Knight said, I personally would stay away from the question of what food "is" or what words "are". Rather, WHAT HAPPENS WHEN we use specific language around food in specific contexts? How does language, which is relating, affect a person's relationship to basic functions like eating? Of course food cannot "be" "good" or "bad" except in context. Of course eating disorders are heavily driven by language behavior. Of course blanket rules in black and white about how people "should" use language can't have unalloyed good outcomes.
When you invite the larger audience into conversations, when you are receptive to collaborating and tinkering, knowledge and wisdom builds. In this recent social media food discussion, the best, nuanced ideas emerged not from the original poster or responder but the next wave of entrants.
We can do the same in our classrooms, boardrooms, and social gatherings. Even in online spaces.
Design cultures for minority voices and constructive dissent. But don’t forget to retain logic, high standards for evidence, analytical thinking, and an attempt to minimize cognitive biases including the plague of motivated reasoning.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please leave a ❤️. Even better, share this conversation. And if you read The Art of Insubordination (with the Strategies and Rules of Principled Dissent), send me thoughts, questions, or beefs. I love hearing from readers.
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Extra Curiosities
The LISTEN/WATCH - The new science of psychedelic social psychology by Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky. Provocative review of the science in this talk and article. Stay tuned as this is a growing area far removed from 1990’s “This is your brain on drugs” commercials with eggs cooking on a skillet.
The READ - A workbook called Choose Growth by Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman and Jordyn Feingold on how to deal with the adversity and challenges of being human. It’s a powerful compendium of strategies from decades of well-being research.
Two mechanisms that account for a great deal of the explanation for why money does not lead to sustainable happiness are: hedonic adaptation and affective forecasting errors. Hedonic adaptation suggests that changes in our life only have a temporary impact because we get accustomed to new situations. Affective forecasting (which I prefer to call perverted emotional time travel) suggests that humans are terrible at predicting how they will feel during some future event. As a result, humans often make poor decisions among competing options about what to do with their time, energy, and money.
This is a useful opportunity to address the over-emphasis in science on samples drawn from populations that are primarily White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD). Instead of lecturing on what we know about other populations first, I like to ask the audience to hypothesize what they believe will be different in the population they are interested in and why. This often leads to the production of creative hypotheses that go far beyond what is in the scientific literature. This also lets the audience be a collaborator instead of a passive recipient of knowledge.
You might notice different words for the same phenomena. Good = healthy = always versus bad = unhealthy = sometimes. Regardless of the term, food is being judged (even if people are claiming no judgment is being applied). After all, by what criteria does a food enter the category of sometimes?