Situation
While participating in a group course, one participant received a promotion within his company. As a result, he would no longer just be participating in regional meetings with colleagues from neighboring countries, but would now be leading them, requiring not only presentation skills in English, but the vocabulary and grammar to summarize past challenges, failures, accomplishments, and future goals.
Solution
We first began by adapting the needed elements of this client’s new position into the group course, introducing more presentation language and presentation skills. As a group, we worked on being comfortable with this new language and terminology and used it to describe past sales periods in various industries, and in various countries. We further analyzed what made the presentations given in our own companies successful, then brainstormed ideas to improve them.
We reviewed info-graphics, tables, and statistics, working on the grammar required to show change and progress made, as well as to explain the reasoning behind past actions and their result, such as
“…since last quarter, we have…” “
“…because of this, we were able to…”
“…as a result, we did not…”
“….due to these complications, we had to…”
We made presentations as a group, including a Q&A portion. We worked on responding to questions we knew would arrive, as well as those that might be unexpected. The focus of this segment of the class was to be able to give detailed, supported answers when required (citing specific outcomes or actions) and to give more general, vague replies when the answers were more difficult to come by.
When and how to take responsibility, and when to leave something unanswered is a vital skill, and one that required much practice, but the group supported each other well, and their improvement was evident.
Benefit
As a result of this practice, our student felt more confident, and more capable in his new position, and his presentations were welcomed for being well-planned, well-executed, and highly professional. Additionally, those participants in the group were able to add to their skill-set with these presentations, and found strengths previously unknown to them.
