“I’ll make peace with the fact you couldn’t hear the video and move on…O.K. moving on,” said Hitendra Wadhwa recently working with the inaugural districts of The Holdsworth Center. His time with us focused on personal leadership, not around presentation skills, but that statement resonated with me as much as anything else.
How often are we thrown off course by some unforeseen hiccup or unavoidable obstacle? To set the scene, there was an audio issue with a video which was part of his presentation. Who hasn’t been there?
Upon realizing that a portion of us couldn’t hear the video and quickly realizing that replaying it would interrupt his flow, he verbally made peace with it and moved on. He didn’t apologize to the audience, he forgave himself. And we won because he was his most-present self for the rest of the workshop. There was no looking back. No lamenting on some technical snafu.
Authenticity and presence are so rare that we talk about it long after the encounter.
Here’s a video to learn more from Dr. Wadwha:
Everything else he shared was incredible, but that honest moment of self-awareness and self-forgiveness resonated with me the most.
Thanks for listening.
Ryan Smith 