Not what we wanted – A Personal Impact Seminar à la Impact Factory
Setting the Scene
As the 48 delegates filed into the room, I sat on a chair behind a small table in front of them, looking like nervous prey as the hunters gathered.Some people threw me an encouraging smile, but I was careful not to return it but looked away awkwardly instead. My colleague sat behind me, leaning against the wall absentmindedly doodling. The HR contact, who had booked Impact Factory for this Personal Impact Seminar, looked increasingly uncomfortable.
After what seemed like an awfully long time, I got the nod from the client to begin.
Still seated, I began, "Err, Good Morning, err, and err welcome to this seminar on... Personal Impact". My voice was slightly too quiet and monotone, my shoulders slumped a little and my eye contact mostly went to the floor or back to my highly disinterested colleague behind me. I continued in this vein for about 30 more seconds, same tone, same manner.
When I sensed most of the audience was starting to disengage, a couple of others starting to look at bit cross or puzzled and my poor client's face utterly dismayed, I made my move.
The Impact
With big mischievous grins on our faces, my colleague and I stood up and came around from behind the table right in front of the audience. We scanned everyone, making eye contact and I smiled reassuringly at my client. "Now – what kind of impact were we making there?" I asked them.What followed next was a 20 minute conversation between us and the audience on what had just happened. As the audience realised that we had been pretending they felt confident to talk to us. Some said they had actually been to a seminar that had started like that (heavens!).
All the areas we had wanted them to notice were mentioned. The voice, the body language, where we sat in the room, the table between us and them, looking disinterested and the assumptions they then would make, etc.
I was then able to easily get volunteers from the audience to try out a few exercises "goldfish bowl" style that addressed a couple of specific things they had brought up. At one point my co presenter ran a technique that involved all 48 of them, with great results.
All too soon the 2 hour seminar was over. The audience were buzzing, many people stayed behind for a bit of a chat, some people left with a couple of techniques they actually wanted to try out immediately and above all my relieved client was really pleased. Of course I apologised for not letting her in on the secret from the start but she said she didn't mind at all.
Impact Factory Seminars
So this is Impact factory. Our seminars are designed to be engaging. Of course they don't all start like this; that was our choice for that day. We believe audiences should be involved in a variety of different ways so that they enjoy the experience, talk about what happened to others and ideally become just a little bit more aware of their communications style.If you are interested in talking to us about our seminars, on Personal Impact or any other topic, please do give us a ring. We like talking about our seminars and will be happy to help:
Call us 0207 226 1877
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