Alright, you start your internship/first job and you’re told that you have to do a presentation. That presentation is going to be done in front of the company management, and anyone else who happens to be free at the time. It also includes people being video conferences in…
Scary business right? This was the situation that I came up against this summer. Considering that most of the people who work at the McChrystal Group are incredibly impressive people, it was absolutely terrifying in the scheme of things.
The two hours before I was to give my presentation, I wanted to crawl into the corner in a fetal position or have a hole in the ground swallow me up. For the record, these feelings are all okay. Most people have them, even my father who is “Mr. Presentation”, gets nervous before public speaking engagements. If people in the company are having you present, it’s for your own development. They are not expecting some A+ stellar presentation.
Fast forward, and it is fifteen minutes before the presentation. Step one, get presentation onto big screen and have people who are video conferencing in confirm that they can actually see the presentation. Sounds easy right, but not quite. There is a reason why you always set up your presentation well in advance. Because there is some form of universal law that states: When you try to use technology for some big important work event, something will go wrong.
If you’re lucky (like I was) you won’t actually have to deal with solving the problem of technology. If you’re lucky you just get to sit there, freaking out, and quickly going through your presentation eight more times. Eventually, given that there is no catastrophic failure with your technology, you are probably ready to go. If you’re like me, five minutes into your presentation everything has to stop because the people video conferencing in couldn’t see the presentation.
Throughout the ordeal, I realized that, giving presentations, especially on topics that you know a lot about, is really not that bad. More importantly, the questions the various people asked were not as difficult as I thought they might be. Admittedly, there were some questions that I just could not answer. This is where I found that telling someone you do not know the answer is always the right option. It’s scary, admitting that you don’t actually know the answers, especially when it seems like you should. It really is okay to say that you don’t know something. However, you can’t just say you don’t know , either make sure that someone follows up on it (if you’re me and leaving the next day) or follow up on it yourself. Important to note though, if you offer to find the answer, be prepared to actually find the answer and respond to the person. Not doing so is bad form.
Twenty minutes later I was finished. I felt a wash of relief as I realized that a) I didn’t faint halfway through or get swallowed up by the ground, b) the question and answerr sections were really OK and maybe fun, c) I had just given my first real adult presentation, and it actually went exceedingly well.