On tough presentations….

We have all been in situations when we are preparing for a presentation and we already know that it’s gonna be a tough one. There might be times when you are not fully prepared, when the audience is demanding or when you simply don’t have a good day.

Most of the times (at least that’s my experience) the presentations still run very smooth and afterwards you probably think “wow, why have I been worrying so much about it”.

One great example of this is the a presentation of Apple’s Steve Jobs from 1997 announcing they Microsoft bought a big share in Apple stock and that the both companies will be working together more closely in the future.

Just imagine beeing Steve Jobs, lying in bed the night before and already knowing that the audience will not be cheering with this announcement. And if that’s not enough imagine Bill Gates the night before already thinking about the reaction of the audience when he appears on the main screen talking to a fanatic Apple crowd. I think I would not be able to sleep the night before…

But after the initial boo of this hostile crowd and after hearing the crowd laughing when Bill Gates appears on the screen, Steve Jobs manages to get them back in the boat and convices them, that this is the right move.

And after his presentation, what does he get? Standing ovations and he was probably thinking: “Wow, that was actually better than I expected”.