I don’t do a lot of presentations.  I have always imagined that when the need came up I could whip something up in PowerPoint.  It looks pretty easy - the few times I’ve used it things came fairly intuitively.

But I was recently offered to attend an in-house class on how to give presentations.  At first I was puzzled and amused by the title of the class.  It seems like a pretty straight forward thing to do and I wasn’t sure I needed a WHOLE class on the topic.  But in a very general way I want people to see me as being a capable person, and specifically I want them to start thinking of me as a leader.  If people know I took a WHOLE class on how to give presentations this will lend me credibility and leadership-cred.  When I agreed to take the class I didn’t really think I would get anything out of it.

I was there all day yesterday and I have to say that I learned a lot that will improve the way I present all kinds of things.  That is, I may not give a lot of presentations to the board of directors or anything, but I talk a fair amount about the status of my projects and I lead some workshops from time to time.  And the class so far has done me a world of good.  The instructor filmed us and gave us suggestions for improvement and had the rest of the class (gently) critique us.  Its worked out well but I can see how someone with a thin skin might have a hard time with it.

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