Learning from Others

There is so much we can learn from observing other people when they facilitate.  In meetings, presentations, lectures and facilitated workshops I am sometimes distracted.  This may be due to daydreaming, but is more likely to be because my brain is operating on another plane.  On that plane I am asking questions like:

• What did they just do?
• Why did they do that?
• What will they say in response to that interjection?
• Will they address this obvious problem with their statement?
• What will they do next?
• Could or would I do what they just did?
• When would it be appropriate to do what they just did?
• What could they have done differently then?

I am not completely somewhere else when I am doing this, but I couldn't say I am strictly attending to the topic in hand either.

I recently came across some notes I took at a seminar a couple of years ago - I was not writing this blog at the time, but I had been developing a Presentation Skills workshop. I wrote down:

• Use the names of people in the audience, lots of people.
• Don't stand in front of the screen.
• Don't look at the screen.
• Don't just acknowledge VIPs, have something to say that is relevant to their portfolio/interests.
• Start the session with a question or a confrontational statement.
• DON'T read from the slide.
• Check the size of the text on your slides (at the venue, on the venue's equipment)!

Pay attention, there is a lot to learn from other people's performance.

...Geoff
www.performancepeople.com.au