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Are you ready to sparkle with inspir-tainment?

Published on in Deliver with Style. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

Being a subject matter expert is often why you are called upon to deliver a speech. However, your content is not enough. You need the secret sauce of inspirtainment; an ability to both inspire and entertain your audience while delivering great content. This requires a deep source of inspirational stories and anecdotes that relate to your big idea or speech topic.

Moving people to action requires inspiration

One way to find inspiring examples is through other people. While visiting Holland, I was inspired by Richard Bottram. To raise awareness for cancer charities after he lost his wife to cancer, Richard conceived the idea of the Wheel of Energy situated next to Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. This huge wheel turned 24 hours a day for one year with people running in it at all times. Richard committed to run a marathon every single day for a year – 365 marathons. This amazing effort kept his worthy cause in the public’s mind and also engaged people around the world to come and run in the Wheel of Energy. As I listened to Richard’s story, I thought “Wow. This is amazing.” I now call this the “wow” test. Whenever I find something inspiring that makes me go “wow”, I write it down as a story for a future talk.

Use your own experience to inspire

Another way to make even deeper connections is to share your own inspirational stories. This helps you become a more authentic speaker. Your story could come from your hobby. In 2010, I completed an Ironman triathlon in 36C (97F) heat which included a 3.8km swim (2.4miles), 180km bike ride (112 miles) and finished with a marathon. It was by far the hardest physical challenge I ever faced. When I told a friend about the race, he said, “So what does triathlon mean? Tri-not-to-die?!” Although the Ironman is a tough race, I learned from the experience of training consistently for over a year and pushing through the heat and physical discomfort during the race.

Such an experience could reinforce a point in a talk. For example, I could use my 12-month training regime to illustrate the message that small consistent steps can overcome seemingly huge obstacles. Or I could use the heat as a metaphor for the challenges we all face along the way to achieving something worthwhile. Look for ways to connect your inspirational story to your big idea. Practice delivering your story in under five minutes clearly stating how it links to your big idea.

Find your “wows”. What are you doing that you take for granted but other people think is amazing? A single mother bringing up four children has a wealth of insights, experiences and wisdom that could benefit many people. Your work, family, hobbies, achievements, failures, where you spend most of your time, where you would like to spend most of your time are all sources for inspirational insights.

Be open to finding your stories.If you carry around a phone with a camera, take pictures of newspaper clippings that inspire you or capture scenes from your life that you can use in your next presentation. Use your phone’s recorder to capture ideas and re-listen to them so that you remember to work them into a talk or develop them into five minute modules.

The power of five minute modules

Published on in executive presence and produce your message. Closed Tags: , , , .

The content of your speech is like a diamond necklace. Imagine a string of stones on this necklace. Every diamond on your necklace is five minutes of content. Rather than delivering a data dump, these shorter modules help the audience digest your material and stay on track during your talk. Working your ideas into strong five-minute modules is the start of a great presentation.

Practice delivering these modules with different speech objectives from the Toastmasters manuals. I recently delivered five manual talks to identify five minutes of good content that I used as part of a 40 minute presentation. This polishing of content is the process that stand-up comedians use to refine their act. In the documentary Comedian, Jerry Seinfeld creates a new stand-up act. He went from comedy club to comedy club trying out new material and then reflecting on what worked and what didn’t. You can use a similar process.

Refine your content with these three steps: test-edit-test. Don’t just deliver a speech once. Instead, record every speech you deliver and listen to it. Observe when people laugh or react to parts of your speech. Extract those parts and try them again with a different audience. When different audiences react positively, you know you have good content. But what if your material flops? Try it on another audience. If it still doesn’t go over well, refine it and try it on a third audience. If after three times of re-working a story and it flops every time, drop it! Becoming more aware of how your audience reacts to your content is essential to being a better speaker.

Flexibility is the hallmark of all great presenters. You can ‘string’ your talk with different ‘stones’ of content depending on your speech message and audience. Each module could be delivered independently or as part of a longer presentation.

Express the big picture with your big idea

Published on in executive presence and produce your message. Closed Tags: , , , , .

Crowns are used to represent power and convey legitimacy to the person wearing them. But crowns are not only for kings. You can ‘wear’ one to represent your expertise. Your crown of expertise is your big idea and frames everything you speak on. It provides the context for your talk and helps the audience understand the big picture before you go deeper into detailed content. Let’s illustrate with four examples:

1. Rory Vaden in a recent talk in China explained his big idea as “take the stairs”. He used it as a metaphor to mean literally stay in shape and also symbolically as the pathway to success. It’s easy to understand, remember and pass along.

2. Simon Sinek, a professional speaker, has a big idea called “start with why”. Simon believes that before you decide on a career, you should first understand what drives you by clarifying your passions in life. All his talks are hooked back to this main theme.

3. Educator Sir Ken Robinson’s big idea is to “increase creativity in schools”. He delivered two famous talks to TED Talks (www.ted.com) on this topic. His humorous delivery was effective because it reinforced his core message.

4. Zappo’s, an online retailer, big idea is to deliver “wow through customer service”. Their customer-friendly service allows goods to be returned up to one year after purchase and offers free shipping both ways.

Your big idea is your crown of expertise. It is expressed in three to five words, and can be applied to your job, your experience, your background or just a topic you like to speak on with passion. Create a big idea for your next presentation to help the audience remember your main message. With a big idea, you can also better filter ideas and decide how relevant they are for your speech

Lessons when communicating to senior managers: Find common ground

Published on in Connection, executive presence and Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , .

Overcoming objections and challenges is essential to gaining acceptance for your proposal. While many presenters know their audiences well, they miss out on possibilities to connect their message with their manager’s interests. We call this “Create your Connection”, step 4 in the 8 step journey of  The One Minute Presenter.

Finding common ground is the landing pad for your presentation’s message. Making it clear to the audience will improve your chances in gaining agreement.

Find common ground. This is your preparation and research part. First think about the outcome for your presentation. How receptive will your manager be to your conclusion? Find areas that they will buy-into most easily. Connect your presentation flow and message to the things that you know your manager is motivated by

Example:

Your manager firmly believes in capturing market share through exceptional high-touch client engagement. Your proposal includes a section that proposes training all client-facing staff to resolve problems within 24-hours.

Your manager always wants to see the detailed numbers behind any major decision. Although you do not want to go into the spreadsheets in your short presentation, you print our and include the financial modelling as a handout.

Be explicit in showing the audience  your common ground. Be clear and lead the audience through the presentation. Show your manager that you know what he likes to hear. This is all part of connecting with your manager. When you see the nods, you know you have made that connection. A good presenter keeps making small connections through-out their presentation.

Samples:

“A major risk in fast expansion is lowering customer service consistency. We don’t want that to happen. In fact, we can’t let it happen. So here is our solution to deliver consistently high customer touches while we are aggressively growing into new markets”

“I know that you are interested in the financial modelling behind these projections. Although, in the short time we have available in this meeting, I don’t have time to get into the details, I have included a handout with our spreadsheet calculations and would be happy to share a soft copy with you after the meeting.”

Use common ground to overcome objections. Being challenged by a senior manager is a fact of life. Be ready for these challenges by starting your answer in a position that you can both agree on. This helps you get agreement in the starting position and then state your case in a logical fashion from there. Although this will not guarantee that your manager will always agree with your point-of-view, it does improve the chance of buy-in as it eliminates all confusion in the rationale behind your proposal.

Example:

Manager: “Why are you predicting a 12% increase when we have calculations of a 15% gain over the same time period.

Your answer: “As we confirmed earlier, customer retention is our most important priority. Our premium clients require a very hands-on service so rather than risk burning them as we expand too rapidly into new areas, we are recommending a slightly more conservative projection that will allow us time to re-train client facing staff while gaining exposure to attractive opportunities in second tier cities.”

Finding, sharing and returning to common ground is a great way to stay connected and aligned to the motivations, values and concerns of your senior manager.


How Business Speakers Can Engage Their Audience

Published on in executive presence. Closed Tags: , , , .

The British Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai wrote a brief summary of my recent talk with their members. See the synopsis here.

Lessons when communicating to senior managers: Get to the Point

Published on in executive presence, Master the Q&A and produce your message. Closed Tags: , , , , .

A key skill to master when delivering your message is getting to the point. This is especially important when your audience are senior managers who are short on time and need to make decisions effectively before moving onto the next issue on their agendas. This is part of “Produce your Message”, step 3 in the 8 step journey of  The One Minute Presenter.

It’s a challenging skill to acquire as it often requires a different approach.

Start with the outcome. Most busy executives need to know the range of possible outcomes before they can make a decision. Don’t hold back on the possible consequences of your proposal or a plan. If you wait until the end of your presentation, you are likely to get interrupted with abrupt questions.

Samples:

“In today’s presentation I will outline the new project X which has the potential to increase our market share between 3% and 25% I will explain why that range is so wide and ask for your decision on getting stage one moving at the end of the presentation.”

“The main reason we are having issues in our quality control is due to our change in supplier. I will outline the implications and make some recommendations on how we can reduce defects immediately.”

Know what your message is. Spend time to think about the key point or message of your presentation. In workshops we help managers acquire this skill by taking a longer explanation and gradually boiling it down to it’s most salient point. This will give you clarity on what the core point you wish to convey is and importantly will help you deliver it concisely to your audience.

Samples:

“In a nutshell, the main message from today’s presentation has been the urgent need to align project controllers with the current priorities of the project managers. After lunch we will discuss how we will implement this in the next quarter.”

“In today’s presentation, I will explain our plans for 2011-12. The takeaway message is ‘maintain premium clients, expand into business parks’. Let’s start with our existing client base…”

Don’t be afraid to emphasis your message. Just because you said your message once, doesn’t mean the audience understood or remembered  it. Think about different ways of conveying the same point.

Samples:

“Executive presence is the key to building up an effective leadership team.”

“Our senior managers need to become more influential. Executive presence should be part of their development plan.”


Be brief and then be gone is the best advice you can have when delivering to senior managers. Spend time to craft yoru message and then refine it so that you can say it in the fewest possible words.


Lessons when communicating to senior managers: Don’t assume

Published on in rapport and treasure your audience. Closed Tags: , , , , .

One of the most important steps in preparing for any type of communication is understanding the motivations and burning issues for your audience. We call this “Treasure your Audience” and it’s step 2 in the 8 step journey of  The One Minute Presenter.

Two words that should be burned into your memory when it comes to communication is “don’t assume”.

Don’t assume that the audience has the same motivations this week as last week. Regular meetings can get into a rut – most people don’t bother to prepare in advance for them –  and if you don’t check what is top-of-mind for your senior manager this week, you may be missing opportunities to align your message with his interests. Or you may annoy or irritate him by focusing on the wrong topics. Ask checking questions before your presentation.

Samples:

“I am planning to cover A, B and C. Which area would you like me to cover in most depth?”

“Has anything changed from the last time we spoke? Would you like me to focus on any particular area first?”

Don’t assume that you know the motivation behind a question. Have the confidence to check-back and narrow the focus of a question.This will prevent you from answering the wrong question (from your manager’s perspective) and help you to only answer the question with the appropriate level of detail.  Don’t attempt to download everything you know on the topic of the question. Give shorter answers and allow your manager to make a follow up question.

Samples:

“Thank you for your question. Could I just clarify whether you would like me to go into A or B in more depth?”

“That could be covered from different perspectives. Which perspective would you like me to address first? X or Y”

Don’t assume that every audience can be handled in the same way. In many regards, every time you speak is an unique occasion. Even if you are speaking to the same audience at regular periodic meetings, they are in a different state of mind. They have different things on their mind, different current pressures and different immediate motivations.

Samples:

“We covered this issue in great detail last time, what extra insight would we like to cover this time?”

“What is your most burnign question at this moment in time.”


Always keep these two words close at hand when you are presenting and communicating. Assumptions are the root of most misunderstandings. The most confident communicators can push-back and check what exactly their manager or audience would like to get from the presentation.