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And sometimes a few words are enough. One careless remark lingers. A question throws you off balance. A reply online makes you doubt something you were certain of five minutes earlier.

Social media has turned all of us into commentators, and rewards us for it. We react, we judge, we correct, we add our opinion — asked for or not.

But comment culture cuts both ways. While we are constantly invited to give an opinion or a reaction, we are just as constantly exposed to what others give to us.

What this workshop does

This workshop builds on the work of three disciplines: cognitive psychology (Daniel Kahneman, Roy Baumeister), social psychology (Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, John Suler) and rhetoric — the centuries-old study of how language persuades, including when it is not meant to. Their insights are not treated here as theory but as a working instrument.

On that basis ianka fleerackers developed SHIELD™: six steps that turn a reflex into a considered insight, with a deliberate action following. You learn the model and practise it on real comments.

The framework has its limit too. Where there is a threat, intimidation or doxing it stops and an emergency protocol applies — covered explicitly in every format.

What you take away

Insight

You know why a comment lands harder than it deserves, and that this is wiring and not character. That insight alone takes away the weight you give yourself when something gets to you.

Language

You can name what is happening. An ad hominem is called an ad hominem from then on, a strawman a strawman. What has a name loses its grip — and that works in the comment section just as well as in a meeting.

Skill

You apply SHIELD™ to a real comment, under time pressure, and know where the model stops and the emergency protocol begins.

Material

The pocket-sized SHIELD™ card and the one-page emergency protocol, both meant to lie on a desk and not in a folder.

Who it is for

This workshop is worth doing from the moment you assert something in public.

That is broader than a LinkedIn profile. It is the question from the room after your presentation that is not really a question. The remark in the steering committee that sharpens your position further than you put it. The customer review, the journalist quoting you, the colleague who summarises your proposal in a version nobody would support. Wherever you take a position, comment follows — and that comment uses the same handful of techniques every time.

Particularly relevant in government and policy, healthcare and hospitals, research and higher education, media and publishing, communications and marketing agencies, federations and membership organisations, and NGOs and civil society — organisations where people take a public position on behalf of more than themselves.

About the trainer

ianka fleerackers has led hundreds of debates and panel discussions — live, with the disagreement in the room and an audience watching. As an actor she dissected hundreds of scripts on exactly the question this workshop asks: what language does, apart from what it says. She wrote eight books without a ghostwriter or guidance and conducted hundreds of interviews.

In that same first career she stood on the other side. Reviewers discussing her work where everyone could read it, comments online, remarks on the street from people who recognised her. She knows what a judgement does when it is about you and you cannot answer it — and what the difference is between a judgement that holds and a judgement that is mainly loud.

Reading, weighing and dissecting language is not an additional skill. It is her craft.

Book this workshop

Practical

Format

Workshop (3 hours)

Price

On request

Participants

Min. 6, max. 14

Language

Dutch or English

Dates

By arrangement

Material

The pocket-sized SHIELD™ card and the one-page emergency protocol