One Minute Pause no 19

I am writing this OMP sitting on a train on the way back from Manchester after meeting two lovely people from a company called SMRS, located in a place called The Triangle.

Two Mancunians told me, without provocation, that The Triangle was formerly the site that was bombed about 10 years ago. I wasn’t around to see it then, thank god, but it certainly looks great now - there’s even a massive telly showing live Wimbledon games to hundreds of seated lunchers. Nice one.

On the way back to London I overheard the following conversation on the
train:

“It was terrible, I just couldn’t get them to talk. I tried EVERYTHING, all the tricks in the book. In the end I just decided that it was a Monday morning and gave up.”

As it turned out, the woman on the phone was referring to some training that she had delivered that morning.

Which made me think of a question (and an OMP) in two parts:

How important is it that people visibly react during and after your presentation - and does it necessarily mean that you haven’t been a success if they don’t?

First bit first.

It probably makes sense to you that the greater the visible signs of reaction from the audience, the greater the sign of retention and interest they show - questions, chat, nice comments etc.

True.

But it’s also dangerous to generalise.

While we all like, and to a certain degree expect, interaction, it’s not such a bad thing sometimes to receive none.

In fact, I wouldn’t get hung up on getting a reaction.

Think about some of the really interesting presentations you have seen.

Just because you or anyone else didn’t ask a question, or have something to say, didn’t make it any worse a presentation, did it?

I have heard Jeff Taylor speak a few times. Taylor is the founder of Monster.com, and has made a lot of dough out of making a website with jobs on it.

One time he spoke for about 20 minutes and I’m pretty sure 90% of the 100+ people listening really enjoyed it.

Taylor gave us all an insight into his life - what he did at work, his plans for Monster and a bit of his personal stuff.

At the end, he invited questions.

And there was silence.

Everyone in the room was probably trying to think of a good question or comment, but we couldn’t.

Probably because the speech had been so good that we were absorbed in what he was saying, rather than developing an inner dialogue along the way.

After a few rather uncomfortable seconds, Jeff smiled confidently and said “Right, well I’ll be around for the rest of the day, and I’ll be happy to chat”, and bounced out of the room.

Jeff gave a great presentation, entertaining, witty and informative.

But when it was question time, there wasn’t a whimper from over 100 people, all standing around him in a semi-circle.

The point is, you can’t always judge a meeting by the reaction of your audience.

Everyone can be truly interested in what you are saying and agree without saying a word.

And it doesn’t mean you are uninspiring or boring.

It can mean you’re captivating, thought-provoking or the potential receiver of many questions in the days or weeks after - by which time the audience has digested what you were saying.

Maybe the woman sitting in seat 42 on the train really was a boring presenter - I don’t have a clue.

But maybe she would relax more if she judged success not necessarily by the reaction, but by making her content interesting and highly relevant for her audience.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 21st, 2005 at 5:05 pm and is filed under One Minute Pause. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.