Leadership Development - Leading and Presenting

by Mark Evenden @ Developing People Limited

Being a leader requires you to be able stand on your feet, command attention and deliver your message to small or large groups of people. While it sounds straight forward enough, presenting is often cited as one the most dreaded tasks leader has to undertake and it can often provide many challenges, one of which I can vividly remember!

I was taught that it is important to remember that when presenting you are giving a ‘performance’. You need to capture your audience’s attention and hold it – audiences can be easily distracted by things that are outside of your control and so you need to be aware of them and manage them as best as you can.

I was asked to present at a company conference to an audience of consisting 35 senior managers and directors. While the presentation itself was fairly straight forward, the room that had been hired was not. The room was in a local hotel that was used as a bar/club by the hotel in the evenings, it didn’t have any natural daylight and had various shelves placed around the edges of the room, presumably for people to place their drinks on.

One of the shelves proved to be my undoing. The room was long but quite narrow. As I was sat at the back of the room, I had to walk up a narrow gap between the seated audience and a number of these shelves. As I got to the front I turned slightly and inadvertently caught my trousers on one of the shelves. I immediately heard a loud rip as a hole the size of a large orange appeared at the back of my left trouser leg.

No one really noticed what happened but I was now in a dilemma – do I admit to the designer tear in my trousers or do I just carry on as if nothing had happened?

If I simply carried on, people would have noticed that I had a hole in my trousers. They wouldn’t have been interested in what I was saying, instead they would be thinking about how it had happened, and possibly why I hadn’t changed my trousers before I did my presentation.

However, I needed people to listen to what I had to say so I decided to them about my embarrassing mishap. It caused a real stir, most people found it hugely amusing but by telling everyone achieved two things. Firstly, as I had dealt with the unfortunate incident I had their attention, and secondly I had a good deal of empathy from many of them, both of which led to the presentation being a great success.

As I stated above, when presenting you need to capture your audience’s attention and hold it. Audiences can be easily distracted by events that are outside of your control, and in my experience it best to deal with the incident upfront, as this will keep the audience’s attention focused on you and what you have to say.

Developing People Limited offer bespoke Training Courses on Presentation Skills. For more information, please telephone 0845 409 2346, or send an email to enquiries@developingpeople.co.uk.