danorth1

An Invitation to a Meeting

I received an email at work that invited me to attend an overview on a new procedure.  Attached to the email was a copy of the PowerPoint file that would accompany the presentation.  Nice touch, thought I.  I can skim through it beforehand, to see if I have any questions.

Oh, God No!

Had I known that it was an invitation to a BAD presentation, I would have declined.  It wasn’t the first time this has happened, and I’m sure many of you have had the misfortune of being bored to tears as part of a captive audience.

Welcome to My Nightmare!

What was supposed to be a briefing on a new procedure turned into a mind-numbing two-hour marathon of PowerPoint charts, accompanied by the nasal droning of the speaker.  Now, I don’t possess a particularly nice speaking voice, but I can do enough to keep my audience from falling asleep.

Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z

What made it worse was that it was a NetMeeting, and the speaker wasn’t in the room.  We had to listen to his disembodied voice over the speakerphone, while he read us the charts.  I kid you not.  He lost the room in the first five minutes.  The only good thing that he did do, emailing the PowerPoint file to us the day before, made his reading all the more unbearable, as I had already skimmed through them.

Adding Insult to Injury

The procedure that he presented wasn’t well thought out, either, leaving questions that he couldn’t answer.  There was a lot of eye-rolling as he gave the standard “I’ll have to get back to you on that” answer.  I mean, I felt for the guy, at least until Hour 2 rolled around.  Fresh out of cyanide pills, I was convinced that training in public speaking should be mandatory for anyone who was in a position to torture an audience.

What He SHOULD Have Done

He should have used the charts as backup for his thoughts - What’s the point of presenting something that we could have read on our own time?  What is this, First Grade?  Be interesting!

He should have required us to read his pitch before the meeting, and then answered our questions - This would have cut the meeting time down considerably, and cut to the more important stuff.

He should have kept the meeting brief - Brevity keeps your audience interested, and wanting more.  They can always contact the speaker for more information.  One place where I worked had an ironclad rule: Meetings shall last no longer than one hour. One of the best restrictions that has ever been imposed.

He should have taken some lessons - They have classes that teach you how to speak.  He should join Toastmasters to avoid torturing another unsuspecting audience.  At least drop the monotone!

Please don’t make the same mistake that this speaker made.  You’ll never know when you’ll be called upon to speak to an audience.  Brush up on your presentation techniques.  Or get ready to hand out toothpicks for their eyelids.

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