Sam was about to enter the room to give his 3rd quarterly presentation to the Board of Directors of a $50 billion multinational corporation.
The presenter before him had 45 minutes and came in with 79 slides. No surprise, they ran over their time. By the time Sam walked in they said, “Hurry up, come on in, we’re running late, let’s get started.”
Sam walked in thinking he’d find the same room he’d experienced in his two previous Board meeting presentations. He was completely unprepared to find four times as many people in the room.
The person ushering Sam in was trying to move him to his seat very quickly. Sam started to ask a question, someone cut him off and said, “Let’s just get started, we’re running late.”
Sam felt off kilter, but started anyway, rushing, going a little too fast, talking too much, trying to get it all in, looking around, trying to find faces he knew to connect with in the crowd, feeling totally off.
A CEO of a major corporation, new on the Board, interrupted Sam and said, “I want to challenge one of the points you just made.” and asked Sam a somewhat hostile question. Sam knew the answer, but he stumbled and was awkward. The CEO said, “That’s not a good enough answer, I need more specifics.” Sam recovered somewhat and answered with more specifics. The CEO didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look satisfied either.
A week later Sam showed up for Executive Coaching with me and asked, “How should I have handled this? It was dreadful!”