My inner Pickle

I dedicate this story to Carol Pickle, the woman you should call when you need to shake things up a bit.

Today we had an 8 hour seminar called "Strategic Communication." Our facilitators had a lot of fun with the topic and showed us a series of clips where we assessed verbal and nonverbal communication.

My group A was called to give a presentation after lunch. Our assignment: we were an oil company and we’d just distributed 2 million liters of contaminated oil to the public; we had to give a press conference to respond to a dilemma. We were going to have the “CEO, Chairman, IT Director and Production Director” act out this mock press meeting. My group got together and came up with our ideas for handling the communications. I would be the chairman and I would be a pseudo-BP-like chairman (who was absent during the 2010 Gulf Coast oil leakage).

Let me give you further context - I have a Latin classmate that is very tall, good looking with a gorgeous head of shoulder-length curls. One time he presented in a beautiful suite and left a few more shirt buttons unbuttoned and spent part of the presentation adjusting his shirt, touching his his matching pocket handkerchief, chewing gum and fluffing his hair. This has ammo written all over it.

My group rallied that the other part of my persona was to channel the attitude of my super styled classmate.

My group was called first thing after the break. We huddled outside the classroom and as the instructor tried to give us coaching advice I popped some gum, unbuttoned a button, put his trademark hairband on, sunglasses and got ready to schrunch my fabulous hair. We walked in.

It was immediate chaos. Laughter, clapping, screaming, confusion, cheering, catcalls... My teammates started. Later, Sandra told me that just before the presentation started, our classmate Rashed said they were looking for cheerleaders for the basketball team. Sandra told him that she was in and that she would bring me to cheer them on. When our group walked into the room Rashed yelled to Sandra two rows in front of him, "Sandra! She's in!"

Chikako, Aline and Andres were up there with me and thankfully they delivered our message without missing a beat. It was my job to say "nothing” which was great because general worry occupied my thoughts. For 15 minutes I remained composed while chomping gum, fluffing my hair and adjusting my shirt. Most of the crowd got that I was imitating that famous presentation but to my disappointment my inspiring classmate wasn’t in the room, he had a meeting so he didn’t get to appreciate the gesture.

Following the presentation, we opened for questions. My term 1 teammate Constantin said “I’d like to know what the chairman thinks about this diesel contamination…[something, something] and could the chairman please stand up to deliver her answer...” I had prepared nothing. My reply "I don't drive, I'm driven."

Classmate and teammate Filippo during the presentation

When it was over I got up to return to my seat and my neighbor Juli was exiting our row because her team was up next. Someone in the audience told her to “take off your bra!” I had eight phone messages sent during the presentation from classmates expressing words of pride, support and thanks.

I consider this afternoon an example of channeling a little boldness, bravery and a high threshold of embarrassment and feel I raised (or lowered) the bar for our class.


Update: My inspiring classmate "J" was filled in on the presentation and was impressed. "J" said that he'd one up me and present in shorts and flip-flops. Game on "J"...