BELOW IS AN UNSOLICITED, “REAL- WORLD”, TESTIMONIAL FROM A PARTICIPANT IN A RECENT WORKSHOP.  WE MAKE THE POINT THAT FOR OUR TRAINING TO BE REALIZED, IT MUST BE UTILIZED!  THESE ARE SKILLS THAT ARE NOW PERMANENT.

Hello,

Just wanted to give you all some “real-world” feedback after our first

Professional Development session recently.

I had a GA Restaurant Association function which we were sponsoring.  The

function was called “On the Menu” Best Practices Forum and it was the first event of it’s kind being tailored for restaurant members of the GRA and

hosted by a successful, local chef.  As Chair of the GRA’s Membership

Committee, I am often asked to present “a slide or two” from a powerpoint

presentation that either the GRA and/or myself put together for the

Quarterly membership meetings.  What that means is that I usually stand up

in front of 100 to 150 people and read bullet points off the screen – not

much of a challenge, and the powerpoint is an easy crutch, but pretty good

experience none the less.

The “On the Menu” event was much smaller and there was no projector or

Powerpoint presentation to read from.  I knew ahead of time as one of the

event sponsors that I would be asked to present a minute or two about Royal

Cup and what we do.  What I did not know was that I had also been put on the

agenda as Membership Chair to give a testimonial about the GRA to the group

(about 40 people.)  I found this out about (30) minutes or so before I had

to deliver the testimonial while I happened to be rushing around the

restaurant brewing coffee and setting up our display as meeting sponsors.

In addition, the added stress of having to give two talks with no supporting

notes made keeping my nerves at bay a bit more challenging.

I did not have too much trouble coming up with my testimonial thoughts on

the fly, but the thought of having no prep-time to organize my thoughts was

a bit disconcerting and in the past might have translated into nerves before

and during my talk.

I immediately thought back to Moe and Nancy’s session

and told myself to try and remember just a few things from it:

- the spontaneous and “no prep time” manner in which Moe and Nancy asked us

to come up with our one minute talks during the sessions gave me the

confidence to relax and do it in this situation with relative ease.

-  holding eye contact with individuals around the room for five seconds at

a time, controlling my hand movements, posture, and speaking so that

everyone could hear me (we had no microphone.)

I can tell you that focusing on these simple things kept me from being

nervous (or at least greatly reduced my nerves) and greatly improved my

overall delivery.  I was focused on the topic and effectively delivering the

message and I believe that thanks to the session on “Effective

Presentations” I was able to do so.

Looking forward to more good stuff in

future sessions.  Thanks!

Jason

Jason Howell

Atlanta District Manager

Royal Cup Coffee, Inc.

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