They don’t teach you this in business school. But they’ll still give you an “A” for it.

The textbook teaches you how to draft a presentation. It doesn’t teach you how to deliver it. Here’s what happened in real life:

The MBA course focused on communications. It wasn’t a marketing course; it was a corporate governance course. The professor assigned a final project requiring us to form teams, with each team offering their presentation to the class.

We had a week to complete the presentation. It was the week I was away attending my company’s annual strategic planning meeting. I couldn’t help craft the presentation. This was OK. I was the only one on the team willing to give the presentation. I’d be back in time for that, but not back in time to rehearse.

One of my teammates didn’t like that. She was nervous about the grade. The other teammates apparently trusted me and let me go in front of the class.

I gave the performance you’d expect from a former AM disc jockey. It mentioned all the facts, but it was animated, entertaining, and completely different from what the class expected. My nervous teammate fumed.

The professor gave us an “A.”

Here’s the funny thing. I may have hit it out of the park in front of the large group, but if the Continue Reading “Are You A Promoter Or A Closer?”