A minute for your feedback please

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Why the social sector loses attention at hello

The title is a pun on I had you at hello, where the film showcases a salesman who hooks the attention of listeners at hello. Unfortunately, I had the occassion to sit through some talks/presentations of people from the non profit sector(more precisely social sector), who lost the interest of the audience from the word hello. Let me explain how the speakers achieve this
  • Using too much jargon without translating it to Plain English
  • Blaming the 'evil' corporate sector without offering solutions
  • Using too many weird frameworks
  • Preferring some vivid stories to citing hard empirical data
  • Taking a clearly one sided view without being fair/realistic
  • Cannot stop talking/too verbose
  • Belabouring a point once made, this losing audience goodwill
  • Not connecting their topic to business situations/
Maybe I'm expecting too much. But when someone addresses an audience comprising mostly Bschool students, then they are asking for trouble if they ignore the basics of effective communication by doing the cardinal sins mentioned above. I appreciate that people from all sectors may commit the above cardinal sins, but I've noticed this in abundance during my recent experience, and so the comments.

No comments:

Post a Comment