The last couple days I've been traveling out of NYC for work; short trips but still tiresome nonetheless. The running joke among my coworkers is that all you have to do is just pull the chord, like on a Tickle Me Elmo doll because I'm automatic. So yesterday I was in a meeting with 10 people and I had to begin the talk. I hadn't prepared because I was so busy with work since it's the first week of the year. When I'm in trouble or I'm on shaky ground, the biggest tell is that I talk fast because I try to bull rush through things. I also knew I was in trouble because I got away from the data points and started to opine on tangential things, which is my verbal clutch. After a long winded speech, I sat down and handed it over to my coworker. I thought to myself, I just said a bunch of crap. What a way to start the New Year! So today I had another meeting outside of NYC and I was given the PowerPoint slides last night with no notes. I looked it over in the car ride to the meeting. You know it's not good when I'm asking my coworker if it's possible to delete slides right before the presentation because I just didn't know how to present it. So after a brief discussion, I said to them, "I'm going to bull rush this because I'm not comfortable with it." So I was the third one to present our 80 slide presentation -- that's called PowerPoint diarrhea. No presentation should ever be over 20 slides. I was impressed by my coworkers presentation skills: very well paced and articulate. Then I stepped up for the big finale and I was transformed into Speedy Gonzalez. So as I was presenting, I was thinking to myself, "quick, think of a relevant story" because you're losing them. My best presentation attribute is my ability to tell stories, so I thought of a couple and laced it in to further elongate the presentation. Afterwards in the postmortem, my coworkers complimented me because I'm "endearing" when I speak. In a recent speech feedback form, someone wrote I'm a "charmer." So does this mean I'm all fluff?
2 comments:
You could be fluff or...I would say that they found your honesty endearing. You told them right in the beginning how you felt and I think that comes across as genuine and relatable.
Muchas Gracias! I feel better now.
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