I was making a presentation as part of a panel at a regional meeting of a contact center association a few weeks ago, when a fellow in the audience made an obscure point, and then followed it with a quick advertisement:

“I consult, too; I just wanted to mention that!” he declared to the group.

“How nice for you,” I recall thinking, and if you believe you’re actually going to earn anyone’s business by crowing like this, you’re deluded.

But his self-promotion is mild when compared to some that I’ve withstood while speaking from the platform and delivering seminars.

I’ve had people almost literally hijack the sessions by positioning themselves as competing experts. Repeatedly, they’ll confuse their fellow audience members by contradicting what I’m trying to teach them.

For the price of a cheap seminar admission, these blowhards believe that they can farm the people that I’ve so arduously (and often expensively) assembled, and it’s outrageous.

While there are some aversive communication techniques for discouraging them within the sessions, some of these souls are such committed thieves that they won’t take hints and shut up, so they must be dealt with more severity and finality.

I suggest, no matter where you’re working, that you take precautions and retain certain privileges so you can control your sessions.

(1) Always negotiate the right to boot out anyone who is overtly hostile towards you or anyone in the group, or who interferes with the learning process. This means, if you have a hijacker on your hands, you would say, “I’d like to discuss this with you at the break, so let’s hold your comment until then, ok?” Then, five or so minutes later, call a quick break, a short one, if necessary, and tell the person his excessive participation is hurting the session or is unduly self-serving. If he fails to be contrite and take a vow of silence, inquire: “May I ask you to leave with a full refund?” If he declines, say, “I insist,” with a smile.

(2) Contact “Security,” whether it’s the university police or the staff at the hotel that serve as bouncers. Of course, you want to cue them in advance that only RARELY will you have to invoke their services, but it can and does happen, so please be alert and be accessible.

(3) Make sure to make friends with others in the group that will come to your aid, if necessary, until Security arrives. Select one or two individuals before your sessions begin to chat with for a few minutes. Later, they’ll step up to help you if you’ve connected with them, and they’ll be less likely to join an all-out “mutiny.”

(4) Don’t take the threats to your sessions personally. As a faculty member at various universities I have received occasional notices from the counseling folks that remind teachers that at any given time, at least five percent of our classes would consist of people on the edge, undergoing huge life stresses, and these folks could become disruptive, or worse. We were asked to proactively identify them, under promise of anonymity.

(5) Know your limitations. I’ve been trained by the Navy in techniques for defusing hostile participants, and they’re useful, but I’m not Superman. It is better to act swiftly to get participants back on course when they veer off, and if you cannot, then make the decision to temporarily steer your program to the next port, where they can be disengaged.

There’s no way you’re going to act heroically in this sorry circumstance, and no matter what you do, your evaluations and “after-market” will probably be torpedoed.

All you can hope for is to retain a certain amount of decorum and salvage time so you can do what you’re supposed to do: instruct those that are there to learn.