Professor Adam Grant of Wharton University recalls in an article on this university's website how he was once standing backstage prior to making a speech and his heart started fluttering. But why?
He had already given so many speeches in the past, hundreds of them. Here he was faced by a particularly demanding audience – the TED talks staff. These people dealt with outstanding talks and presentations for a living ... and now, at their team meeting, Grant was expected to amaze them.
It’s all about the audience, not you
He recalled what Mohamed El-Erian, a brilliant economist, once taught him. El-Erian was regarded as the king of humility among executives – and he had recently given a speech about the global economy.
His audience, made up of traders, were notorious for having a very short attention span. They were already sipping cocktails and at such a get-together were not particularly used to treating speakers with much respect. So when El-Erian went on stage, he said he was scared. He told the audience he had been informed they wouldn’t be really interested in his speech and may become rowdy (at the previous conference they had thrown food at the speaker). He added that he would use his table as a shield and then send them to sleep with his 60 slides.
Here came the magic moment: his audience laughed. He assured them that he was just kidding, then started to speak about economic issues he thought they would find interesting and useful. The result? His audience paid close attention to his speech, which lasted over 30 minutes. Even after an additional 20 minutes devoted to Q&A, many of the traders were still keen to continue.
Adam Grant
Adam Grant is the youngest professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he focuses on organisational and managerial psychology. He regularly publishes articles in professional journals and has won numerous awards for research in his field. He became world famous with Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, which was on the bestseller lists in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and rated one of the best books on management and business by the prestigious magazines Fortune and Harvard Business Review. The book has appeared in 32 languages, including Czech (Dávat a brát, BizBooks, 2013). In February 2016, Grant published his second book, entitled Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World.
Books
GRANT ADAM: Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success. New York: Penguin Books, 2013. 320 p.
GRANT ADAM: Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. New York: Penguin Books, 2016. 336 p.
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