Add a Karate Chop for a Showstopper Presentation

It was the end of a long program on sales at the ALA convention in Montreal. Then Alvidas Jasin – Director of Business Development for Thomson Hine, with 370 lawyers in Cleveland and 7 other offices, brought the audience to their feet with a karate chop -- literally.

He handed out sections of half-inch thick pine to about 100 audience members, young and old, strong and feeble. "You are going to go back to your firm and tell them you can break a board with your bare hand," he said. The stunt was to demonstrate how to overcome obstacles: don't focus on the obstruction, instead look past it to see the solution.

Attendees were shown a PowerPoint slide on how to make a fist properly, how to position your feet, and how to make the "hammer strike."

Similarly, he told the audience to whack the boards with their fists, yell out "Kia!" and aim for a point two inches beneath the board. Each person picked a partner to kneel and hold the board firmly. After a few practice swings, the room yelled "Kia!" and boards everywhere split in two.

As an emergency service person stood in the back of the room -- just in case -- each person switched places and let their partners shatter their board. It was a real confidence builder and it didn't hurt at all.

Jasin, whose career includes Ernst & Young, KPMG and CBIZ, has been staging this stunt at conference all over the country. It really jazzes up a presentation, and hammers his point home.

Comments

[Scott Rupp]

That's great! Martial arts is an amazing thing, not just physically, but most definitely pschycologically.

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