I love talking in a professional setting, and people love to hear me too :)

Well, today I had an important presentation in one of my courses 'Corporate Information Planning'. We (a team of 4) were given a case and we had to present/propose a solution as IT consultants to the company in the case. We had worked pretty hard over the weekend to prepare for today, having prepared reports, powerpoint presentations (which was awesome too).
And now was the time for us to actually present it to an audience. 3 team-mates did their part and I took over from approx. 70% of the presentation till the conclusion.
Being born in a family of good speakers certainly helps a lot (I think I had mentioned this in some earlier post too, don't remember which one). And I am always confident of leaving a mark on the audience whenever I speak. There have been a number of occasions where audiences have been amazed by my presentations.

Public speaking is not all about talking, it has a number of other things attached to it. No one likes to just listen to somebody blabbering in the same monotone, looking tensed, stammering, fiddling around while talking, looking only to 1 person, leaning against something, etc. (Hehehe...I haven't attending any public speaking course though, so don't think I am trying to teach something). I always put myself in the audience before I speak - Would I like to listen to presenters having the above characteristics for 30 minutes at a stretch? Certainly not.

The presentation concluded smoothly and I was happy that I did a good job. But my elation was doubled when after the second group presented, the professor called me to the center of the classroom and told the audience "This is how a presentation should be given. Chintan was so calm, composed, clear and had a good posture, professional dress-up and he was not 'caulky' (wonder what that means though!)". I was happy that I was recognized in front of the whole class. Especially by a professor so senior as him.

Well, this just reasserts my belief that I can talk really well with people - I just wan't people who are close to me, to understand that. Because in my diurnal life, I don't talk a lot with everybody. I only talk openly to people with whom I share a particular comfort zone. Hence people misunderstand me saying things like "He is reserved, he is introvert" which is not true!!!. If that would have been the case, I wouldn't have made so many (yes a lot) good contacts in my school, diploma college, engineering college, work, etc. and everywhere people (young or old) have respected me for my ethics, my way of interacting and my nature. I can assure that in 99 out of a 100 times, nobody can talk anything bad about me behind my back.

Just to give another instance of the same, in my 1 year of work at Accenture, I shared a great professional relationship with all the teams in my project, even from other projects too. Also, until I worked there, I had hardly seen anybody being given a farewell like what was given to me. Being a new entrant in the industry, it is very difficult to shine bright so soon in the eyes of the pros. However, I can say that I achieved a lot in a short period of time - both due to my hard work/abilities and also due to my way of handling relationships with different people aptly.

This post is not a pompous song of all the good that I feel I am, but it's just something that I want my close-ones to understand, because it's no use to achieve a lot outside when you are not understood completely in the inside. Hence I am putting my feeling into words...