This one guy HATED my training 😬

It's not often in my training that I get someone who just super isn't into it.

But, when you do as much training as I do, it's going to happen sometimes. MATHS.

I was training about 45 leaders from one of the biggest and most famous companies in the world. I was nervous, I wanted to do a really good job for them.

And there he was, sitting right at the back. Arms crossed. Disengaged. Frowny knobhead. (Henceforth FKH, for short).

From the moment I started I could feel him glaring at me. When I got the group to do a writing exercise he just sat there, slumped in his chair, refusing to even attempt to engage. This was about 15 minutes in.

"I'll win you round, FKH, don't you worry" I muttered super, like, menacingly, in my head. 🤣 I am good (really f*cking good actually) at crowd control. I know how to get a room of people on my side. If I can warm a Saturday night comedy club with Gaz's hammered stag do from Wigan in the room, I can warm a group of bloody executives doing communication training on a Tuesday morning. I genuinely (not exaggerating) made an entire quite drunk awards crowd fall into silence last Thursday with a stare. If my mum taught me one thing, it was how to control a room of rowdy teenagers with a single look. That, and how to run a good sit-in protest.

Not frowny knobhead though. Not him. He was as cold as a Tory dinner party.

And he was increasingly throwing me off my game. You know when you're presenting and one person is clearly disengaged and it disrupts your whole psyche? I was trying to gently calm my "oh God this is awful everyone hates me" little mental narrative that can so easily engage in all of us (I see you, friends) when we're public speaking. I tried to engage him directly, asking him questions. He seemed genuinely pissed off. I ignored him. But I kept drawing my mind back to his frowning face.

During lunch, I decided to tackle FKH head on:

I strode up to him, pasting on the biggest, kindest, warmest and l east menacing smile I could muster.

"Hi! I am feeling like you're not really enjoying or engaging today. I'd love that to be different - is there anything I can do?"

He looked at me dismayed. His once frowning eyes opened as wide as saucers, he covered his clearly mortified mouth with his hand and I saw the deep kindness in him. He replied:

"Oh my God! No! I am so sorry! I forgot my bloody glasses so I am frowning to try and read. I can't see for shit so writing is kind of...impossible. I am so sorry"

"No! I am sorry! OK! Let me go through everything with you now so you're not struggling."

What a presumptive knobhead I am. I thought. PKH. Here she is.

Later on that day he wrote a post on Linkedin about how much he loved the training. I still feel, genuinely, a little ashamed at my initial assumptions.

It is so easy, so easy, for us to automatically think the worst of ourselves through the lens of others.

It's so easy for us to assume the client who just looked at his watch is bored. Or that the boss who yawned during your presentation is disengaged. Maybe he's trying to make his daughters choir concert. Maybe she didn't sleep well because of her new puppy. Who bloody knows.

This email is just a compassionate reminder that we don't know, we never know, what's going on for other people.

So let's all try and do a better job of not being PKH's next time we see someone frowning at us in a crowd. 💛


OK! Reminders from me!

In September I am VERY EXCITED to be running an IN PERSON OPEN PRESENTATION TRAINING: https://roar.training/events/way-better-business-presentations-bootcamp/

There's only a few spots left. It's going to be really really great, if you, someone on your team, or your kindly neighbour wants to deliver genuinely engaging presentations that they ACTUALLY enjoy presenting do join us.

Secondly! Confidence Live! We've got our round 2 BOOKED. I am going to be launching in the next few weeks so if you want to throw your hat in the ring to speak, do so here.

Have a bloody wonderful weekend, and as ever, thank you for being here.

Kirsty x

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