You know the scenario. Somebody (Mr. Bigwig) has to give a presentation and he decides that he needs help with his presentation, so he enlists you (Victim) to help him. However, he refuses to start on this project until 6 p.m. on the evening before it is due and he provides only the most narcissistic direction.
This man is a sociopath. And you will not be able to help him do good work. But you can survive the situation. Here is my recipe.
1. TAKE ONE WHITEBOARD AND GET THE SOCIOPATH IN PROXIMITY. You may have to do the writing, but the goal here is to make sure you find out all of the main points that have to be made. Don’t write it in outline form. Instead, do a mindmap or bunch of circles and blobs with arrows. (You can also use Mindjet software for this, but that is probably too much for this exercise.) The point is you need to get all of the key points out and chances are your persecutor cannot name them in order. That’s why you write them in this swirly non-linear way: this disarms the sociopath but still makes sure you’ll get what you need.
2. IDENTIFY WHERE THE DATA ARE. The sociopath may want to put up sales figures, market share reports, clinical trial results or other things, but you need to make him identify where he wants you to get the data. He will not get the data for you; he is a sociopath and they are not helpful by nature. However, you may be able to coerce him to revealing where you can find the data, particularly if you act like his figures won’t be there if you don’t get the directions to find them.
3. SET UP THE MASTER SLIDE. If your company has a standard template, this is a no-brainer. If it does not, try to get one or use something sort of like a template and tell the sociopath it is a template. The main thing is to keep the sociopath from trying to design the slides and pick colors.
4. USING THE WHITEBOARD MISH-MASH, START TO OUTLINE THE PRESENTATION. Think of the sections as “chapters.” You may have an intro chapter, a chapter on market data, another chapter on new products, and a final conclusion. Build slides that introduce each chapter.
5. BACKFILL THE CHAPTERS by adding slides for all of the points you want to make. For instance, if you want to talk about the global market for amphetamines in the chapter on Market Share, then put in a slide. If you do not have content yet, just put in: Global Market for Amphetamines. If you want to be old school, you can use the old proofer’s mark (or maybe it was a typesetter’s mark) and write: TK which meant “to come” (I know, I know). The point is you want to create the architecture for the presentation first.
6. KEEP THE SOCIOPATH BUSY. The sociopath may want to help you fix the line weights of the slide or find photos or other things. You need to get him out of your hair. The best way to do this is to have him search for important data (“I really need that third-quarter sales data. That would make this section really strong!”) or do inane tasks (“Can you fix the chair in the conference room? It wobbles.”)
7. PRINT OUT THE PRESENTATION, HOLES AND ALL. The holes are going to devastate the sociopath and a devastated sociopath can be persuaded to be helpful. Try to sit down with the sociopath (if your guy or gal has ADD, it helps to introduce snack foods at this point if those foods come in a bowl–put the bowl in the room where you want the sociopath and then start talking fast). When you get to an incomplete slide ask: “What should I put here?” If he tells you something vague, ask: “Where would I find that?” While the sociopath observes (or eats), write right on the slide printout what goes where.
8. KEEP THE PAPER PRESENTATION IN FRONT OF THE SOCIOPATH. Ideally, you’ll have a big table or large desk to work on. Spread the slides out. Write in your notes.
9. AVOID ANY TENDENCY TO TEACH THE SOCIOPATH. You may think his or her slides are too wordy or lack punch. The presentation may seem dry and lifeless. It may be too dense with information. Don’t worry. Your main goal in this exercise is living through the experience, not doing a good job. Besides, PowerPoint as these guys do it is just background noise or wallpaper to the real presentation which is a speech and question-and-answer session that usually is conducted like Friday Night Smackdown. Your sociopath is probably more worried about that then the actual presentation but he needs the presentation as a backdrop. So keep that in mind: you’re painting scenery.
10. DO GATHER FOOTNOTES. One thing that can happen during these presentations is that challenges will arise in terms of where data came from or what references were used. Make sure you reference everything you can think of. Most of the time, it works well to put them on the slide itself in a font slightly too small to read easily. The point is, you want the people seeing the presentation to realize there is a footnote more than what that footnote is. You should also do due diligence and put complete references and excruciatingly extensive notes in the Footnotes section of the PowerPoint. Then tell your boss that if he gets on thin ice, the notes are all there.
11. AVOID THE TEMPTATION TO MAKE THE SLIDES BEAUTIFUL. I know some people who work for sociopaths like to make their presentations pretty with artful illustrations or stock photography. This is not only not necessary, it will annoy the sociopath. Only include art and illustrations if directed specifically.
12. IF THE SOCIOPATH PERIODICALLY DISAPPEARS SO THAT YOU’RE NOT ONLY WORKING LATE, YOU’RE JUST WASTING TIME then disappear yourself. Go drive to the nearest pizza place and grab some dinner. Or go to a big box store and pick up some household items. Then come back. After about an hour, your sociopath will be more frantic than you are and will probably start to pay greater attention. If he or she wants to know where you are say something like, “Oh, I just stepped out for a second. I couldn’t find you and I thought I’d take a little break.” This will make him nuts, but, hey, you have to have some fun.
13. DO NOT WORRY ABOUT THE SLIDES. The sociopath will never let you in on his or her real agenda, so you don’t know what the purpose of this presentation truly is. It might be to make a case; it might be just a boring requirement; it might be to play dumb in front of the other departments; it might be to camouflage some inconvenient truth about what’s going on. The point is, you don’t know what’s up. Sociopaths live very interesting lives, so you cannot assume the presentation’s purpose was actually to present something. I once saw a presentation by a very important man that offered tables and tables of financial data that was so small you couldn’t read it. Being a MarCom maven, I approached him afterward and said my group would be happy to assist him with his slides because I noticed, sitting in the back, that it was not possible to read the financial data he presented. He smiled at me, quite charmingly, and told me he did not need my help, the financial data were done exactly the way he wanted them. I repeated my concern that nobody could read them. He said pointedly, “I don’t want anybody to be able to read them and I don’t want anybody to say I did not present them.” So assume you don’t know what the true purpose of the presentation is. That ugly, disjointed, verbose presentation you just whipped up may be exactly what is desired.
Nowadays many sociopaths can create their own presentations, so this problem may be increasingly less common in the future. But it does still occur and it is important for brave MarCom workers and assistants to know how to manage the late-night, adrenalin-fueled PowerPoint frenzy.
