International Meetings - a recipe for embarrassment

Just back home from another week's slog, slaving away at the coalface of Business Process Improvement. Once more was able to continue the recent trend of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, on this occasion almost sparking an International incident as well along the line.

I was leading a workshop on account prioritisation, fairly dry stuff you might imagine but I was soaring like an eagle, using rhethoric, allegory, puns, metaphors - you know "making it live". The trouble was that my delegates were seated in a huge 'U' shape before me. It was a cosmopolitan, pan-European group of senior managers from a majot vehicle group who had absconded to Sweden for a little R&R (thinly) disguised as a 'Strategic Marketing Retreat'.

So there I was, a colussus in my field, straddling my subject with flair, panache and not a little style (think of a younger, not dead Errol Flynn and you will not be far off) when I noticed that the two French guys were whispering to one another for the entirety of my presentation. I know the French have a reputation for this sort of thing - I realise that the Hundred years war was never officially ended (and therefore we can conclude that it ain't over yet) but this, I felt, was pretty poor form, even for those schooled in the Gallic method of presentation skills.

Drawing upon the skills and technique of Mrs Thackeray my Junior School teacher I paused, mid sentence and stared at the two offenders, at which point they promptly broke off their muttering s and, for perhaps the first time, looked directly at me. Good, I had their attention at last, I thought "what would Mrs Thackeray have done next?" - quick as a flash I got my answer and I went for it, I raised an eyebrow!!

Satisfied in my calm, quiet yet clearly supreme authority, I continued whence I had left off, only to find that, almost immediately, my Gallic interruptors were at it again, muttering and now even glancing at me whilst continuing to talk away behind their hands.

I paused again, and again - this process went on for some time until fuming now, I reached for the final, most potent club in Mrs Thackeray's bag "If you have something to say, I think it only fair that you should share it with the whole group", I smiled benignly and raised BOTH eyebrows this time - hah, THAT ought to do it. There was a baffled pause from my French colleagues so I entreated them some more, "Please, tell everyone what it is that you two are chatting about" - Wow, Mrs Thackeray would be proud, she taught me well. Finally, one of them broke the deadlock, "Well Monsieur Tom" he started "I am translating your words for 'im, I am 'is interpretor". We broke for coffee then, it almost choked me.