Is the “elephant in the room” or is the elephant “in your head?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If the elephant is in your head, you SHOULD NOT say anything.\u00a0If the elephant is in the room, you MUST\u00a0say something!<\/p>\n
An elephant has entered the\u00a0ROOM<\/h3>\n
It was a typical workshop. I was standing at the front of the room with all eyes focused on me. Then suddenly, without warning, I involuntarily stopped mid-sentence.\u00a0Let’s call it a spontaneous intestinal emergency. Enough said.<\/p>\n
Pardon the example, but you and I both know that it happens to everybody. What’s proper presentation skills etiquette? Do you say something?<\/p>\n
Let’s apply the rule: was the elephant “in the room” or was the elephant “in my head?”<\/p>\n The elephant was definitely “in the room,” because everybody saw it. Everybody saw me run away. I had to give an explanation when I returned.<\/p>\n “I apologize for leaving, I suddenly felt very sick and thought it best to leave for a few minutes. Now where were we …”<\/p>\n When the elephant is in the room you MUST say something. If I didn’t acknowledge the elephant, nobody would be able to listen to me. Instead\u00a0of thinking about what I was saying they would have been trying to understand what just happened.<\/p>\n It’s not really about public speaking skills, it’s about respecting what’s on the mind of the listener.<\/p>\n How about a harder example?<\/p>\n I was in the room with a small committee who were preparing to present a “new plan” with new annual goals at a high-profile convention. Sorry if I’m a little vague, but I can’t name names. The presenters and audience included politicians and community leaders.<\/p>\n To broach, or not to broach? To address the news story, or not?<\/p>\n I asked the whole group, one simple question, “Are you just worried, or are\u00a0most the listeners really going to be thinking about this news?”<\/p>\n In unison, everybody in the room spontaneously, and vocally confirmed that this would be a real concern on the minds of everyone. It was a REAL elephant, not an imaginary one.<\/p>\n “Then, you have to address it before you say anything else,”\u00a0I said, “If you can’t resolve this concern up front, they won’t listen to anything else you say.”<\/p>\n In other words, when you spill something on yourself, when you trip and fall,\u00a0when somebody in the audience says something outrageous loud enough for everybody to hear, if you have a body cast, you wear an eye patch, or if you weigh 400 pounds and you’re selling weight loss supplements–that is an elephant IN THE ROOM.<\/p>\n Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with any of those things–but you better say something! If you don’t\u00a0say something, you might as well say nothing, because nobody is listening to you. They are thinking about the elephant.<\/p>\n I was barely over thirty years old, and hired to teach workshops to senior citizens. Other than myself, the youngest person in the room was over 55. Much of the class was into their sixties or seventies.<\/p>\n To broach or not to broach?<\/p>\n As you can all see, I’m barely 30!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It turns out that was a really stupid thing to say!<\/p>\n When\u00a0everybody isn’t already thinking about it–it’s not an elephant. My bringing it up does nothing but prime the listener’s mind with negative ideas. If they’re not already thinking something negative, don’t help them!<\/p>\n If I were leading a group discussion on “stories about our grandchildren,” then yes, I would say something, because a\u00a030 year old sharing grandchildren stories is an elephant.<\/p>\n In this case, because I was teaching a workshop on “organizational\u00a0policies,” my age was irrelevant, and nobody actually cared. They only cared whether I was a real expert on the subject matter, not if I was an young expert or an old expert.<\/p>\n![\"Symptoms-stomach-pain\"](\"http:\/\/michaelspeaks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Symptoms-stomach-pain-e1461004115995.jpg\")
<\/a>Without saying a word I ran out of the room as fast as I could to prevent said “emergency” from becoming a public embarrassment.<\/p>\n<\/a>One of the participants told me that a news story was going to break the day before the convention that would reveal surprisingly bad numbers.<\/p>\nAn elephant has entered your HEAD<\/h3>\n