A client and I were working on her presentation. As often happens, as soon as she started to “present,” her personality flattened out, her voice contracted to a monotone, and her eye contact vanished. The content she was delivering was good, but it was hard for me to know what was important and what wasn’t, since her inflection and pace gave everything the same weight.
“Hang on,” I said. “Let’s try something. I’d like you to give this presentation to a class of kindergartners. Just imagine that’s who you’re talking to—a room full of 5-year-olds.”
She smiled, leaned in, made eye contact, and began. Her talk was slower and had much more expression. I understood more clearly what the most important ideas in her presentation were. I felt connected to her. Most importantly, she felt the difference.
I asked, “How did it feel for you when you were talking to the kindergartners?”
She said, “I wanted to make sure they understood the story.”
“And when you were giving the presentation before?”
“I…was just saying what I’ve said so many times before.”
Right. Imagining that little kids were her audience gave her a fresh perspective on the material, so she needed to do something different to make it work. That new intention, to make sure they understood the story, shifted all the behavior I would have spent most of the session changing bit by bit.
I could have gone through each sentence of her presentation and asked her to do this or that differently, to hit this word instead of that one, to pause here and there. But instead I helped her pull the most valuable lever—intention.
