Anyone that knows me knows that I am not exactly a shrinking violet or a wallflower. But you know what, make me stand up in front of audience and I start shaking, clasping my own hands for dear life and can muster nothing more than the odd weird leg jiggle. In short, I don’t have enough Swagger.

One of the best things about the AQR (and there are many) is that they’re exceptionally encouraging of new ideas and given the merest whiff of gumption, they’re more than happy to help us run new courses. So Swagger: Panache, Poise and How to own the Room – was born.

I called it Swagger because I didn’t want it to be the run of the mill ‘how to present’ course that many others have done before. We all know we’re not supposed to look at the screen or scratch. I assume. I wanted to coerce some friends of mine from other disciplines to come together and lead a bunch of us through some new ways of thinking about how to own the room.

It’s a mistake to think that qual researchers need Swagger just to present debriefs. We walk into new business meetings, we attend and speak at conferences, we run workshops. Heck, in my view, we need Swagger just to moderate viewed groups – adapting our style either side of the mirror.

We held the session at good old WallaceSpace – seamlessly proving yet again that a great venue knows that the small details are as crucial as the big ones. It was on April 11th and we had 35 delegates from Spring, Firefish, Edcoms, The Nursery, Relish, TNS, Nunwood to name a few. The day was divided into 3 completely different chunks and here’s what I learnt:

Charlotte Austin, a vocal coach and producer, lead us through a number of activities designed to remind us that enthusiasm and sincerity counts for a lot. Anyone reading this who was ON the course will never forget the Toy Factory. Those that weren’t just need to know that getting 35 nervous people to swivel up a spiral staircase is no mean feat. She also MADE us EACH present a 2 minute, pretty much impromptu, speech to the whole group. Fair do’s, that’s a lot of 2 minutes but actually – it was a fabulous exercise. Not only was it pretty amazing hearing everyone’s stories (about moments at work they were proud of) but the reality came home when it your own turn. Sure enough – I shook, I sweated, I stumbled. I hated it. And I’ve GOT to sort it out. Charlotte is awesome and generous – we took a group vote and a winner was picked to receive some one on one coaching.

Jonathan Wakeham is an old friend who I try to hang out with as much as possible because he’s utterly brilliant. As usual, he rose to the challenge above and beyond my expectations. He deconstructed Swagger through the medium of Jay-Z and Henry VIII (yes, it’s obvious when you think about it). And he taught us to remind the 3 S’s of the Art of Swagger. Secrets are what we have that our clients want to know…we should be proud of them and proud to share them. Suspense is the way we can own the room as we unfold our stories…and it’s infinitely better than surprise which is just mean if you’re a brand manager being told bad news. Status reminds us that we ARE in control when we present, even if for a short time and that we should milk it and drink it.

Danny Robins is another old friend (see a pattern here – if you can’t Swagger yourself – hang out with people who can). Danny is a writer and comedian, often heard on R4 and whose best known act is DJ Danny. He gave us the benefit of 15 minutes of his DJ routine and then deconstructed how humour can help us leverage our role in a room and that it’s not about being funny for money but about finding just 1 or 2 moments that humour can be more than appropriate. I think he’s more shocked than we were – he keeps calling his first ‘corporate gig’ and I KEEP saying that if he think qual research is corporate – he should try banking.

In my opinion, entirely biased, it was a fabulous day. It served as a great adjunct to last years ‘Pimp up your Qual’ creative writing course and if there’s enough interest – we might run both again.

But essentially it confirmed what I already thought. Qualitative researchers MUST learn to be as confident on stage as we are, we really are in person. Why should we let the ad planners, the guru’s, the mavericks get away with being the only ones to keep the audience spellbound. Come on guys, let’s get a bit more down with it. No. A lot more down with it.

Chloe