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BE KIND AND REWIND

I nominated myself for this training called 'Presentation Skills' thinking it would help improve my skills and to be honest it did indeed. I am not going to get into much detail about what this training had to offer or my learnings from it. Let me just take you to the fun part of it.

We were full house on time. The trainer gave her introduction and asked ours. Then, out of the blue, she started an activity for which we had to form a group of five each. And one from each group should go up to the stage and speak about any issues of their group’s choice for 2 minutes and the other 4 members from the group should help their speaker on his/her content and delivery. So there we were. Some surprised, some scared and expressionless some. 5 minutes were given to us to prepare ourselves. Our heads went down to form smaller circles and that is when started the whole fun part.

“START” (The trainer announced)

There was silence for about 20 seconds in our group. “Great brains are at work. I need not do anything”, I thought. “Corruption!” suddenly GUY1 from our group suggested. “OK good, so you want to speak about Corruption. Let us work on your content and delivery”, I said. He smiled at us mischievously and said “I was just suggesting an issue for our group. I am not going”. Since, I was not comfortable speaking about corruption, “anyone would like to talk about this all-time favorite issue, Corruption?” I asked. There was silence for 10 seconds here. Then GUY2 chipped in and said “Let us keep it simple, OK. Why do we need such a bigger issue”, and started thinking. We all waited in an anticipation of a good and simple topic to discuss from him. There was silence again for about 20 seconds. It was right then it occurred to me that I should take initiative because it was apparent that GUY2 was just pretending as if he is thinking something big. While all these things were happening our GUY3 was still in confusion if he actually knew what is to be done for this activity.

“OK. I can talk about corruption. I need inputs from you guys. Tell me what you want me to speak about it”, I inquired. “Can we talk about Population?” that is Guy2, entered with a superb timing. There was silence for about 10 seconds yet again. Now it was GUY4 all the way who took control and started talking that made some sense for few seconds. She said, “Guys, our trainer is not expecting us to come up with an excellent issue or something. She wants us to be confident and look good when we speak about anything for those 2 minutes on that stage. So, be it Corruption or Population don’t worry about the content. We just have to concentrate on the delivery part”. Bingo! GUY3 was in his senses and started participating in the discussion. Because he was now clear about what the activity was. He denied being a silent spectator and scratched his creative head a bit and got started. “Guys, 2 minutes is a lot more time to spend on that stage with everyone staring at you. So, let us jot down some of the points we are going to deliver.” GUY3 said. “Corruption or Population?” GUY4 and I inquired together. Then there was something like a miracle happened. Our group came together and decided it is going to be Corruption. OK! There we go; we had our little silence moment again which lasted for about 15 seconds this time.

“STOP” (The trainer announced)

“Not so soon!” I said to myself. Because the last person to admit to be the speaker was me. I looked up and saw other groups. They looked well-prepared and still discussing. Whereas, our team was so obedient that as soon as we heard ‘STOP’ we stopped thinking about everything. Luckily, ours was the second in the queue. That means we had about 3 more minutes to think of something good or write down a few points on Corruption.

“Let us start with team A”, trainer said. A guy dressed in formals with both hands in his pockets turned in. In the mean time my savior GUY4 handed me a small paper with something written on it. Those points were about Corruption I could guess intelligently. But the hand-writing of hers made me so dumb that at first instance I thought it had to be some Chinese or Urdu words. I could even imagine her as a doctor giving me a prescription.

“Good afternoon everyone. I am speaking about the most talked about issue, ‘Corruption’.” guy from team A started. The moment our GUY4 heard that she pulled her small paper back very quietly. I felt like a person who is suffering from an unknown disease and without that doctor’s prescription I was very less likely to survive. Very soon teamA’s performance was done. They did pretty well and were well appreciated. Now it was our team’s turn. In-fact it was my turn.

I tried to muster confidence in me and slowly started walking towards the stage. My team backed me up with ‘all the best’, ‘have fun’, ‘be cool’ liners. ‘Yeah, OK!’, ‘Whatever!’ were my feelings. Standing in front of the audience without a good preparation and without actually a topic to speak about, I guess makes any speaker nervous. Well, at-least I was very much controlled by nervousness then. “All right Sukhveer, please start”, trainer requested. I took a deep breath and looking at my team members I started…

“Good afternoon everybody! Thank you (pointing to the 1st speaker) for your wonderful speech but you know what, you left me in tight spot now. Corruption was my topic too. Anyway, since it is already taken let me speak about something else that I feel is very important for achieving success. Without which there is no easy way to accomplish things. Before I start, any guesses what it could be?”

Audience kept their silence.

“All right, I want to speak about ‘Team Work’. The moment you (pointing to the trainer) said ‘your 5 minutes for preparations starts now’ our team kick started to put different issues on the table. GUY1 said ‘Corruption’, GUY2 said something else, GUY4 chipped in and suggested ‘Population’ and so on. Then I realized that nobody was giving an ear to the other person. That is probably because we were different people from different background with a different mind-set and from different projects altogether. So, the first couple of minutes we had difficulties understanding each others. We could not actually gel together as a team. Instead we were challenging one another. Then, slowly we came back to the point and understanding the need of hour we finally concluded who is going to speak and about what. By the time we came out good and started working as a team towards the common goal, the time 5 minutes were up for us. Basically, we could not prepare well because we were lacking team spirit. Well, this is just the tip of the ice berg. We can relate these scenarios with many other bigger national and international problems. So what I really wanted to put forward is”

Stop (the trainer interrupted).

“Ok! I am open to any question” I said. Because that is what you are suppose to say after your 2 minutes are up so that the other teams get a chance to shoot questions about the content you have delivered. While I was there still standing and anticipating few questions everyone started laughing their heart out and following were some of their comments.

Someguy1: What can I ask? He has not even started his topic.
Someguy2: He was going Gol-Gol and Gol-Gol.
Someguy3: I have one question. What is that you wanted to talk about?
Someguy4: His topic was already taken and he was not sure of talking anything else at that moment. No questions.
Someguy5: He was confused and wanted to confuse us too. And he was successful.

Nobody was ready to hear my explanation or my answers. And everyone just clapped for my speech about ‘Team Work’. Well at-least that is what I thought I spoke about for those 2 minutes. If you do not think so, please be kind and rewind.