Are We All on the Same Page?
I was consulting to a company where the Head of Product had flown in from California the day before to, among other things, present the Product Roadmap and describe the priorities for the upcoming year.
I came into the meeting and asked ‘so, what’s your strategy?’ He said ‘oh, well I explained all that yesterday.’ I got the feeling he didn’t want to repeat himself, just for my benefit, so I said ‘OK, well is there somebody else in the room, who was here yesterday who can stand up and give the presentation from what they remember?’
One guy put up his hand and got up to the whiteboard, and preceeding to give his version of the presentation from the day before. The Head of Product sat in his chair and watched his presentation being given back to him.
The volunteer started well. He drew the diagram on the whiteboard, that was similiar to the one from the day before. Then he stumbled as he realized he wasn’t sure about one or two points. So, he asked the Head of Product if he was right, or to correct him if he’d got it wrong. A discussion followed.
It occured to me that when I give a presentation, I take some time to craft my message, and at the end ask if there any questions. Oft times people appear reluctant to ask questions, even if I’m pretty sure there are faces looking back at me that don’t appear to completely get the points I’m hoping to make.
It seems that we stumbled upon a simple technique to check for understanding. It is very frustrating to get the feeling that we’re talking, or presenting something, but that it has not really ‘landed’ with the audience. So, here’s a suggestion.
- make the presentation
- wait a day
- ask somebody else to make the same presentation
- notice where the second person stumbles or needs clarification
- provide clarification
It’s simple. It works. It gets a real conversation going amongst the group. It takes a bit of bravery on the part of the first presenter, but given that person has invested some considerable effort in putting the presentation together in the first place, and given that the content of the presentation is going to be important to people in the months to come, it’s worth the effort. And, yes, getting a volunteer to give the presentation back the second time, might also take a brave soul. But having experienced the power of this simple exercise, I can recommend it to anybody who’s had the experience of feeling that somehow their presentation isn’t having the impact they’d hoped for. It could be simply because there were questions the audience didn’t feel brave enough to ask at the time. Perhaps for fear of feeling like they were the only one in the room who didn’t understand.
I was the kind of kid who asked questions in school. I was often nervous about doing it, but I didn’t want to go away from the class without knowing and without asking. I didn’t want to look stupid in front of the other students. But I did it anyway. The only feedback I ever got was from other people coming up to me afterwards and saying ‘I’m glad you asked that, because I was wondering the same thing myself.’
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Peter Merrick Ph.D
I help build teams
https://medium.com/agile-storytelling/agile-storytelling-an-overview-of-blog-posts-171cf06037d7
And I established this method for the end of decision making meetings and conversations after dealing a lot with the Asian culture : I no longer just ask "are there any more questions or concerns ?". No, I ask now every participant to quickly summarize what action items and results they take with them out of the meeting.
This is used for the Fagan or Intensive Inspection. Somebody of the team, who is NOT the author of the reviewed element, presents the element, "reads it" to the others by explaining specific lines or whole paragraphs or segments in his/her own words.
Reminds me of the one-minute test Jared Spool wrote about on Medium: The One-Minute Test 1. What was the big idea? (What was the most important thing you heard at the meeting?) 2. What was your big surprise? (What was the thing you saw or heard that surprised you the most?) 3. What’s your big question? (What’s the biggest unanswered question you have at this time?)