Continuing my series on the compassionate manager's role in helping colleagues who are bereaved and grieving ...

Grief comes in many forms

In my research into the impact of grief on productivity, many respondents told me that their grief was overlooked because it was a pet and not a person who had died. For example, Veronica told me, 'When my cat died, I was inconsolable. I called my manager to say I wouldn’t be coming into work that day, and she said, “pull yourself together, it was only an animal”. Her lack of understanding made it even harder for me to go back into work."

The perception of many people is that it’s not OK, or somehow weak or inappropriate to grieve when a pet dies. However, there are many clear reasons why grief can be profound after the death of a pet.

In our Presentation Skills training, we normally advise presenters to be wary of using slides. Even large and professional organisations too often use their slides simply as a place to write everything that the presenter is going to say. The audience is left peering at impossibly-small text and unable to really listen to or appreciate the presenter. We teach ways to present without slides at all, or to design slides that are punchy, visually appealing, and add to (rather than detract from) the presenter.

We enjoy keeping up with innovations in presentation styles which depart from this thinking, in a really exciting way. Have you heard of PechaKucha, for example?

A client recently showed me a list of top 10 tips she'd been given for delivering presentations. Number one on the list was "keep hold of the lectern".

This got me thinking that I don't ever recall seeing a charismatic or effective public speaker who was holding on to the lectern.

Effective speakers move around, make gestures and even abandon a lectern altogether. So why was she (and others) being given this advice?