by Steve Adubato, PhD

People talk about thinking "outside the box" all the time. Thinking "outside the box" means coming up with new, creative and different ways of doing things. It's about being imaginative and sometimes unorthodox. But for all the talk about how great it is supposed to be to think and act outside the box, rarely do we actually see it happen. But when it does, it can be pretty powerful.

I recently conducted a seminar at Paine Webber for a group of financial advisors. We were talking about the art of presentation and why so many professionals just don't seem to do it well. We explored the characteristics of a really great presentation and posted a list around the room. It's a standard approach to beginning a seminar. Pretty effective, right? Well, after the seminar, I got into a conversation Jay Pumphrey, one of the financial advisors at Paine Webber. Jay told me about a seminar on communication skills that he had attended years ago, in which the seminar leader got up in front of the room with a big stack of index cards.

The speaker, a "mousy-looking guy" ensconced behind a podium, started going through the cards, reading them verbatim with little or no enthusiasm or inflection. Jay said the seminar participants started looking at each other and rolling their eyes thinking, "This is going to be a long one." It only got worse from there. Within a few minutes, the seminar leader lost his place because the cards were out of order and started filling the void with lots of "umms" and "ahs." Finally, the speaker accidentally dropped the index cards and then scrambled to pick them up while apologizing profusely. Oh yeah, while picking up the cards, his glasses fell off. Jay said it was brutal. About a minute into the presentation, his colleagues were fighting the urge to laugh out loud. A few of them actually began heckling in the back of the room. Said Jay, "It was really embarrassing. We couldn't believe the company had paid for someone who was this bad to come in and speak to us about communication."

At this point, the speaker gained his composure, put the index cards aside, looked at his audience and said, "That was pretty bad, huh. Now the question is, would you buy anything from someone who made a presentation like that? Could you even take them seriously?" Jay said it became clear at that point that the seminar leader had put one over on his audience. He actually began the seminar in character, as a really terrible presenter, making all sorts of mistakes that were bound to turn off his audience. Talk about thinking and acting "outside the box." The speaker then asked the participants what they didn't like about the character. Dozens of hands went up. Comments included; reading off index cards, no eye contact with the audience, speaking in a monotone voice that was incredibly dull, and standing behind a podium that only served as an unnecessary barrier.

By seeing someone exaggerating the mistakes that many speakers are guilty of, it caused many participants to take a look at their own style of presenting. Jay said the evaluations of the seminar were extremely positive. They called it "creative," "imaginative," and, yes, "outside the box." Since that seminar, Jay has actually used this same technique in his own presentations. He says the audience reaction is always the same.

Bottom line... The purpose of a presentation's opening is to get your audience's attention. If you don't do that, forget it. Sometimes that means doing things that people don't expect. This particular speaker took a risk by going into character and intentionally presenting in a really bad way. But the payoff was big. That's what happens sometimes when you really do think and act outside the box. Write to me about the last time you or a colleague really acted outside the box at work.