Presenting with the best of them

I was asked recently to run a Presentation Skills session for a group of accountants. No problem I thought. Get a few of them in a room and run a few exercises and get them talking to each other to identify good and bad presentations that they had seen and heard in the past and what could they learn from them. Add a bit of theory, look at how not to use Powerpoint and all would be well.

The first thing that I found on arrival is that accountants apparently don't talk to each other much. We sat in the refectory of the local university and ate our sandwiches spread out on separate tables. A few people knew each other, but not many.

Now when you then get around 80 people in a room who don't really know each other, getting them to talk to each other is quite a task and a bit of a shock to their system. A few didn't like it, but others took to it like a duck to water. The evening went swimmingly, even when I asked them to massage the muscles on their faces to help relax the muscles before they had to do presentations for themselves.

Perhaps the best bit was the feedback where one gentlemen sent me an email saying: I have been going to those events for some 30 years and NEVER has a lecturer had such success in getting people to talk to one another.

Onwards and upwards!