Breathe
This last week, I got to give a presentation in the office. Time to get the conference room set up was short, but the slides were ready and I had practiced ahead of time. It was one of those days where there were back-to-back meetings with other responsibilities keeping me running around.
It happens. It goes with the territory.
Well, when it came time for the presentation, I was scrambling to get the laptop set up, the virtual machine launched, and everything else that needed to be hooked up hooked up. Desptie all this, there was a good reason to not abandon the slides. There were some key visuals in there, that if not used, would have made comprehension of the material much, much more difficult.
After I got everything all set up and configured, I was already 5 or so minutes late in getting started. As soon as I was sure that everything was set to go, I started with my presentation.
Big mistake.
With the adrenaline pumping from the effort to get set up as quickly as possible, I dove right into the talk without giving myself a chance to catch a breath. I was a few words per minute slower than John Moschitta in the famous FedEx commercials. OK, that’s a bit of an exageration, but you get the idea. If I had taken just ten seconds to catch my breath, my pace would have been more measured and would have conveyed the confidence and authority that I needed.
Ten seconds out of a twenty minute presentation in a fourty-five minute meeting.
If circumstances out of your control force you to rush to get set up, invest in a brief pause to catch your breath and relax. You don’t have to look like you’re doing it. You can also use it as a moment to get your audience to get quiet to listen to you.
Image credit: dlemieux, used under a Creative Commons license.
