It was more difficult than I'd like to admit. One of the most difficult days of my professional career if we're being honest. But, as my colleague wisely pointed out - building new skills isn't typically easy to do. So I swallowed whatever was holding me back and I did it. I turned my back on my fear/inability/distrust of playing make-believe, locked myself in a training room, and delivered a presentation to a room full of empty chairs about 27 times until I got it pretty close to perfect.
And it was damn hard to do.
What I learned was that this style of presentation - a very scripted or prescribed style - is not what I would choose or look forward to. My natural style is one that includes a lot of interaction (which I believe will be the topic of my next post), playing off the audience, talking with them rather than to them. Sharing what I know and learning what they know is what makes any presentation fun for me. And I believe that's the key - fun. I want to be having fun when I'm standing in front of a group of people. I can't help but feel that if I'm not having fun then how or why could they be having fun and if they're not having fun then why the hell would they want to spend their time with me?
Deep breath.
So I continue to learn. It's not always about fun. Sometimes, as was the case as I presented the results of a survey to some very senior folks, it's just about the information. I know the data, they need to know the data, my 30 minutes in front of them is dedicated to taking what's in my brain and putting it in theirs. Not much fun but critical to the organization. Did I try to inject levity and personality into the conversation? Of course, not to do that would be asking too much. But I'm learning that balance and in my new, non-academic, environment the balance is much different than I've ever been used to.
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