This awkward request can transform a meeting

Author : Rob Ashton

Posted : 27 / 11 / 24

I faced a slightly awkward moment in a meeting recently.

Some consultants were presenting their ideas to me, but I stopped them five seconds into their first slide. It was incredibly complex, and I really wanted to understand it.

The trouble was that my mind kept being drawn to the separate, verbal commentary their leader was providing at the same time.

As I listened to what he was saying, the slide’s graphics seemed to morph into abstract symbols, dots and squiggles. Its words (and there were a lot of them) became equally meaningless. So I’d refocus on the slide, only to find that the consultant’s voice then became just as indecipherable.

As I explained recently, the brain can’t read one thing and listen to another at the same time. It starts processing and interpreting words as soon as we see them. But once it does so, it finds it incredibly difficult to do or understand anything else.

Yet most presenters start commenting on their slides as soon as they appear, just as that consultant did.

Stopped listening

The trouble was that I literally stopped listening to his words as soon as the first slide appeared on screen. And not because I wasn’t interested but because I simply couldn’t help it.

So what did I do? I politely asked him to allow me time to read what was on screen.

And that was the slightly awkward moment I mentioned at the start of this email.

Everyone else in the room seemed to do a double take. Then they all had to sit in silence while I processed the (actually quite fascinating) data that he and his colleagues had presumably spent ages compiling.

It felt like it took me forever to read that slide, even though it was probably less than a minute. As I did so, I sensed them shifting in their seats, waiting for the interminable pause to end.

Their noticeable surprise at my request spoke volumes: I suspect no-one had ever asked him to do that before.

Flitting, but failing

In fact, this is not something we tend to do. The standard practice is to struggle through, as our brain flits between reading and listening, largely failing at both.

Stopping to let your listener read a slide feels unnecessary. But this is just another example of how we underestimate our own expertise.

You know what’s on the slide, so you feel you need to add to it.

The audience, on the other hand, usually hasn’t seen it before. They need time to process it.

Giving them that time may feel unnatural, but failing to do so is just asking their brain to do the impossible.

Imagine how many ideas and how much vital research goes to waste when we do this.

But this story has a happy ending.

Once I’d had time to read the slide properly, in silence, I was able to engage with their ideas much more fully. From that point on, we had a truly worthwhile, meaningful discussion.

Unexpected benefit

And there was another, unexpected benefit too.

The next day, I emailed the consultant to explain why I’d interrupted him. His response really made me glad I had.

He replied that, yes, it had surprised him a little at first. But then the penny had dropped. He realised that my unusual request signalled that I must be interested in what he had to say.

Not just that, but he’d since found himself in the same position as me – in an important meeting, struggling to read a slide while the presenter talked over it. So he’d asked her to stop.

She did, and he read the slide.

And the rest of the meeting was again much more productive than it might have been, all thanks to that slightly awkward minute or so.

Sometimes, we really don’t need to change much to make real progress.

In fact, it may take less than 60 seconds.

Image credit: CookieLab/Shutterstock