TJ Walker showed up late to a training in Trenton with no room for his equipment. He ditched the slideshow, ran live interviews instead, and delivered anyway. The lesson: have a backup plan, serve your audience, never complain.
Chapters
What is your backup plan? I don't care how well you plan, how well you prepare. At some point, if you're giving a speech, a presentation, a training, something is going to go wrong and there's nothing you can do about it. Now, I like to think I'm a person who plans well. I've got a little checklist of everything I do. If I'm going to a place to give a speech or a presentation or a training, I always go the night before. I try to get to the room a couple hours in advance. I've got my checklist of all the equipment, what I need to do. But sometimes things happen. You've got to be prepared. One day I was giving a training in Trenton, New Jersey, and I thought, well, that's only 60 miles away. It shouldn't take that long to get there from Manhattan. Do I really need to go the night before? I'll just go the day of. Normally, that's an hour trip by car. Well, the problem was on this particular day, all of the tunnels were closed. So I'm sitting in traffic. An hour goes by, I'm still in Manhattan. An hour and a half goes by, I'm still in Manhattan. It took two and a half hours to get to Trenton. By this time, I'm pulling into the parking lot of the training and it's way past our start time. Steam is coming out of my ears. For people who know me, they know few things make me annoyed as much as myself. Being late. I like to be on time. I hate keeping people late. So this rattles me a little. I get to the room where we're doing the training and guess what? It's 10 people for the training and the room is the size of a shoebox. I'm thinking, how in the world are we even going to get people in? It's way too small. Plus, there's a table that's taking up so much room, I'm able to work with someone pushing the table aside. And I think, okay, where am I going to set up my computer, my screen, the laptop, the projector? There's no room for any of that. What do I do? Well, there is enough room to set up my camera and there is a TV there. So I just have to make a snap decision. We're not going to have the computer and the laptop and the PowerPoint and all the usual things. I'm just going to have to wing it. Now, by winging it, I don't mean that I'm making things up or I'm doing things in an unprepared way. Instead, we're just going to have to go right into the training. So in this case, I started off with sample interviews of each person I was training and then a critique. In the critique, I was able to weave in the substance, the bullet points of the PowerPoint presentation. But without the PowerPoint, what was the result for the client? For the trainees, they said it was the best training they'd ever had. They were incredibly positive. They thought it was a great experience. So here's the lesson. Am I perfect? No. Does my planning permit prevent mess up scripts? No. It's how you react to these things. Now, inwardly, steam was coming out of my head. I was so annoyed at myself for not going the night before. I was annoyed the room wasn't just right. But here's the one thing I did well. I never told the trainees that they don't need to know about my problems. They're there to get the most they can out of the day. So I didn't bore them with my problems. Instead, I focused on them. That's what you need to do when the room isn't met and set up to your expectations. So what's the lesson here for you? The lesson is don't complain to your trainees. Don't say, well, if I had this, this would have gone well. Nobody cares about that. Instead, just focus on creating the best experience you can for your audience. The best day possible for the people you're training, focus on them and give it your very best. If it's not your ideal, don't let them realize that. Make them think this is the best day or the best speech you've ever had and you'll find they give back to you. They respond to you. They'll get a lot out of it. We can't control problems. Problems with rooms or equipment. Sometimes we can control how we feel about it. So even if inwardly you're upset about things, don't show it to your audience. Give them your very best and they'll give back to you.
