Almost total self-indulgence, this post. The only thing I can say in my defence is that someone asked me what I did…. :)
This is a bit of an odd day for us. We specialise in training people (in voice and presentations) in medium sized groups but today was a series of one-to-ones.
First up was a museum manager who wanted to develop her ‘presence’. She’s lovely, good at her job, but finding she’s not being taken seriously by other museum managers when they meet at national conferences and so on. She’d attended a training day we’d done on something other than presentations and liked our style, so once the beaurocracy of who was going to pay for things was sorted out, we started working together to give her more emotional weight (that’s an awful phrase in many ways but we used it as a short-hand between us and knew what we meant).
Today’s session was in the atrium of a modern office building, with an indoor fountain playing in the background – as working environments go it was pretty cool! We spent time looking at when she melted into the background (and why!) and she left with ‘homework’ – a series of exercises to start her thinking in a different way. Next time we’ll concentrate on the physical elements – voice, posture and body language.
A working lunch in the bar of one of the local theatres was spent exploring how to give conference papers for an old friend of mine who works at one of the local Universities. Academics have a particular
challenge when it comes to presenting because – to put it crudely – the more you know about a particular topic, the harder it is to figure out what to tell people: experts often can’ see the wood for the trees.
Lunch over-ran, so I ended up running myself, getting to my next appointment only just in time… a charity worker making presentations finds that she hates being the centre of attention. Unfortunately, as her
job is about raising awareness of the charity and her work, that’s not tenable, so we spend an hour looking at ways of making presentations where the presenter isn’t the focus and agreeing a plan of action for next time,
when we’ll go back to looking at how to handle being the focus after all!
Coffee next – where they make the best cappuccinos in the city – before I’m joined by a performance poet who can’t perform! His work is great, but the performances aren’t working for him and he wants some help. This is a first-contact meeting to see how well we could work together, so we spend a long time looking at the problem and sorting out the logistics of how to work together.
By now it’s long after I should have headed home so I arrive with barely enough time to cook before my family arrive like the Biblical plague of locusts, eating bowls clean before I’ve finished serving everything!
I check emails, replying to the urgent ones (clients can follow-up on training days for free by email for ages afterwards) and updating my diary and so on. I check the timetable for tomorrow and remember that it’s
going to be one of our public training days in making business presentations, so it’s time to hit the ‘print’ button on the hand-outs and pack my bag of equipment for the day… projector, laptop, candles, books,
penny whistle, feedback forms, folders, lego and finally the handouts.
By now all I’m fit for is a shower and bed but it seems like I’ve been asleep for only five minutes before the alarm tells me it time to be up and moving again.
I stare at it with a look to curdle milk before I remember how much fun these days can be and roll out of bed, grinning…
