Attended an information sharing session this morning.
One problem stood up. The person conducting the session is a bad presenter, not very fluent in English, and speaks with very heavy accent. Most of us are at a lost on what he tries to convey. Twenty minutes into his talk, half of the audiences already give up on trying to understand at all. Some play with their phone, some doodling on a paper, some just fall asleep.
The usual lessons learn here is presentation skill is really important. The thing strike me today is, how easily we give up even when those information is for our good. “They should present it better”, or “They should find someone with better English”, we often complain. It is not our fault that we don’t understand what he said, and we are fully entitled to turn off our attention. At the end we are the one wasting time pretending we are listening, but gain nothing at all at the end of the session.
Just as my mind about to wander around, I decided to stop it, and try, really try to figure out what he is trying to say. Looking at his slides, try to pick up the words he say, try to really pay attention. Then almost magically his words become slightly clearer, his talk becomes slightly more interesting, and instead of wasting two hours being mindless, I actually learn something from it.
If you decide to make the best out of a situation, then you can learn something from almost everyone. My thought.
