Empathy and Presentations

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“We’ve got to feel the audience,” he said and with a warm smile on his craggy face as he gently rubbed his coarse hands together.

“What? Feel the audience! How exactly do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, you see most all of us when we stand to make a presentation, we are concerned with two things; one, we are concerned with the thought of how exactly will impress the audience and the second, we are concerned about how exactly will the audience perceive and accept us. These two concerns are the manifestations of either self-importance and/or of self-consciousness. Both these manifestations are born in the ego, a self image of us that is skewed away from our true self,” he said.

“And then?” I urged him on.

“And,” he went on “when we are skewed away from our true self, we are pretending, we are putting on act to impress others. When we are pretending to be who we are not then we are standing on shaky ground, and we are unsure of how to appear steady, calm and self confident while scores of eyes are watching our every move, every gesture and every expression. Under such scrutiny the veneer of pretension will crack and, usually, does crack.”

“Uh, hmm, I see what you mean;” I said “how then does empathy become the solution to this malady?”

Presentation Skills by Raju Mandhyan

Presentation Skills by Raju Mandhyan

“Pretty simple,” he said “when we care, respect and view the audience to be human, to be frail of ego just as we are then we are, naturally, overcome by a sense of camaraderie and brotherhood. If I may push the idea a bit more, we begin to empathize with them and for them. It’s a great feeling and it diffuses all the hot air that is pent up inside of us as would be presenters. We come down to earth and our focus moves towards the mission at hand. The mission at hand is, always, of adding value, building something new, something that carries High Impact.”

“Gotcha!” I said to ‘Craggy Face,’ “I understand you want us all to turn into monks at heart. Ok!”

‘Craggy Face’ smiled warmly and rubbed his coarse hands gently and happily.

He was pretty cool that way!

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