Page 103 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

94 DELIVERY

with overheads, transparencies, and slide projectors. Only now we

can do it with a little more color, flair, and style. Take the not uncom-
mon case of the expert who cratered.

THE EXPERT WHO CRATERED

I attended a corporate conference that featured an author and expert
on “geoeconomics” who teaches at a well-known business school.
Bad luck for him: he gets the slot right after lunch. But he loses no
time making a bad situation even worse. First, he has the house
lights turned off. Now we are in near total darkness. Right away,
half the people in the audience can hardly keep their eyes open.
With 400 well-fed attendees comfortably seated, endorphins are on
a rampage and drowsiness is rapidly kicking in.
But rather than wake us up, our expert has hidden himself from
view behind the lectern on the stage and buried his face in his script.

On the screen is a PowerPoint slide filled almost entirely with words.
Our expert is now reading these words, one by one. Three minutes

later, he is still talking to the first word slide, but now he seems to
be on a tangent. I’ve read the slide five times. I think he might be on

the fifth of eight paragraphs. But I’m not so sure. I’m already bored,
and at the moment I have no idea what he is talking about. I wonder
how many others are in the same boat.
Another few agonizing minutes go by. We are all locked in a
large room with the sandman, realizing too late how unproductive
this is going to be. Those who are not nodding off are eyeing the
exits. Several people have already slipped out. We are not even fi ve
minutes into this disaster.
Now appears a slide with four separate schematics and hundreds
of numbers and words, just small enough that they can’t be read,
even from the front row. The good professor is droning on, but half
the room is asleep, or just numb and keeping their eyes closed to shut
out the pain and meditate on other things. More incomprehensible