I recently met a potential client at a networking party. He was a Human Resources Director for the Japanese branch of a multinational corporation and he was concerned about the rudimentary presentation skills of his local staff.
He had seen me speak before, and wanted to know how long it had taken me to become a good speaker and presenter. My answer was that it had taken me 20,000 hours of teaching, hundreds of hours of reading, writing and rewriting scripts and practicing my delivery, many more hours of watching speeches and presentations, both live and on the internet, and the delivery of more than a hundred speeches to get to my current level of skill.
My answered clearly discouraged him a bit. He was toying with the idea of bringing me in to do some seminars on effective presentation, but he was looking for a quick and cost effective fix for his problem.
We had earlier been discussing his fanatical love of golf, so before he wiggled off the hook, I asked him how many hours he had spent working on his golf game. He grinned and said, “Probably about as many hours as you’ve worked on speaking”.
“So is it pointless,” I asked, “for a hacker like me to work on my game, if I’m not willing to commit as much time you have?”
“Not at all,” he said. “Most people can make huge improvements, if they just learn to keep their head still, shift their weight as they swing and follow through.”
“Well, that’s what I can do for your staff,” I told him, “Teach them the fundamentals that will make a huge difference in how effectively they present.”
In fact, it doesn’t take that much to take people from cringe-inducing to competent. If we can just get people to talk to their audiences, instead of presenting at them, we’re halfway there. Teach them to slow down, look people in the eye and think about what they are saying and they’re already better than the majority of speakers in the business world, especially in Japan.
Obviously, a few hours of instruction isn’t going to send anyone to the PGA tour, but it can give them the skills they need to enjoy a round of golf without embarrassing themselves.
A few hours of training in presentation skills isn’t going to create the next Steve Jobs either, but it can be the difference between a corporate or personal embarrassment and a competent professional performance.
That seems well worth the small investment.
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