‘…if it’s your first boat ride don’t look into the water and never sit at the edge. Prepare yourself and your mind for a worst-case scenario, not a God forbid. If you know what that means’
MY first attempt at presentation was a disaster. Absolute disaster. This happened earlier on in my career at the first agency I worked at. We had spent days developing a yearly marketing plan for one of the brands we were managing and were scheduled to present it to the brand’s marketing team.
We analyze the current year’s performance and propose ideas and strategies for the next business year and have been doing that since I joined the agency, but I never had to lead the presentation to the client. That was my boss’s job, or so I thought.
The D-day came and halfway through to the client’s office, my boss said “Teju, you will handle the presentation today”. My heart stopped. It literarily stopped beating and I thought I was going to faint. At that moment my brain was clogged up and I forgot everything that was on the proposal. We were in his Prado SUV and I was seated at the front by the driver but I struggled to keep a straight face as if he was staring at me. After 5 minutes, I was able to come to terms with my reality and flipped open my laptop to read the presentation before we get to the client’s office. This is not a joke – I couldn’t comprehend it. It seemed as if I was reading Mandarin or Latin and, in my mind, I was trying to convince myself that I actually put the slides together.
The clients were ready and in the conference room when we arrived. I was still trying to keep a straight smiling face while saying hello to the General Manager and the brand team when the MD and Chairman walked in. That was when I lost my tongue and my head started throbbing.
I was so gone in my dismay that when my boss started talking, the only thing I heard was “Teju will take us through the slides”. You guess right, I didn’t. I couldn’t. It was so bad that I called in sick the next day because of the embarrassment.
That day I realized the boy’s scout motto ‘Be Prepared’ is something we need to live by every day of our lives. If you want to be productive and be a good leader or be good at what you do, then it is important to prepare yourself for worst-case scenarios in the office or business. What if a client rejects all the designs or ideas you have been working on for days? What if a printer delivers a bad job that was due for delivery, and you don’t have the luxury of time for a reprint? What if the team lead falls ill and couldn’t show up to lead a pitch presentation for an account that will make the business? What if…
Presenting ideas, especially business ideas, or talking to a large group of people can be nerve-racking but I realized that the problem was not the people I was talking to but my mind playing tricks on me. I was always guessing what people were thinking about my presentation or speech from the looks on their faces or the level of their concentration. If half of the people in the room are engrossed with their phone, I lose focus and starts to panic.
My strategy later in my career was not to look at people’s faces when presenting, make light jokes, or use analogies or real scenarios that best explain my idea in layman’s English to buttress my point. And it has been working for me.
The good thing was that at Ogilvy, it was teamwork all the way. We rehearsed our presentation and critic it before the D-day. Junior colleagues were allowed to learn the art of presentation by delivering the section they worked on with little or no interjection from the superior. This helped them build courage and improved their can-do spirit.
I know some people are very good at presentations even if they weren’t too sure of what they are saying while people like me had to learn how to be confident along the way, but I realized everyone gets insecure and nervous in different situations. For some, it is something as little as a spider, or a career-changing situation like a job interview, meeting your crush for the first time, or presenting an idea that took you many sleepless nights to develop. Stop beating yourself too hard because we’ve all had experiences that make us feel insecure or puts us on the edge. All of us.
So, if it’s your first boat ride don’t look into the water and never sit at the edge. Prepare yourself and your mind for a worst-case scenario, not a God forbid. If you know what that means.
*Olateju Ogunyomi is a Marcoms professional and behavioral analyst. She left Ogilvy Nigeria in 2020 to start her own agency. She is an APCON member and was a member of the AAAN women in Advertising committee, and the AAAN Event committee. She is currently the CEO of Aspora Nigeria Limited, a Digital Marketing, Strategy, and Consultancy agency.
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