Public Speaking - The need of the hour!(Part One)
Mayur Kalbag is a Leadership Coach, Corporate Trainer & Author who regulalry does corporate training in Fiji. This will be his regular column in our Jobs section on Saturdays providing readers some useful tips. He can be contacted via email: mayurkalbag@ hotmail.com
I remember that day very well! I was at my desk when my Manager walked up to me with a big smile.“Hey Mayur, I have been asked to attend an international sales conference in Australia and due to this I will not be able to make the next week’s presentation to our Malaysian clients who will be here to visit our factory. I therefore would like the presentation to be done and delivered by you. I thought of a few other guys for making the presentation but then you are, according to me, better than the others. I will be flying to Sydney tomorrow as I want to also meet up with ourAustralian customers” Saying this he walked away towards his desk. I was completely taken aback and also a bit upset. “Why me?” I wondered.The presentation was a very important one especially since it was to be done for a special group of clients from Malaysia and although it was a week later I had already started to become fearful and nervous about it. Some of my colleagues even made fun of me and expressed their relief at not being chosen for making the presentation. I felt like as though the Manager had some grudge against me and hence had asked me to make the presentation.
On the day of the presentation I was experiencing extreme nervousness and fear. “What If I fail; What if I forget and go blank during my presentation;Will they ask me too many questions;What will happen if I make a bad presentation and leave a bad impression upon the Malaysian clients!” My mind was completely flooded with all these questions and I did not know what to do about it. I somehow managed to create Power Point Slides and also jotted a few pertinent points on my note pad, but honestly, I was really mad at my Manager for selecting me for it. The time to make the presentation had come and I walked into the conference room a bit sluggishly. I prepared the LCD Projector and connected my Laptop to it only to realize that I had mistakenly deleted three of my important slides from the entire set of ‘presentation slides’. “Oh my God!” I exclaimed in shock. By now most of the Malaysian clients had arrived in the room and were excitedly waiting to see and listen to my presentation. I was sweating despite the aircon in the room.The indication was given to me by one of my colleagues to begin. I took a deep breath and began my presentation with a warm greeting to everyone present in the conference room.