Legacy Foundation Business and Leadership

Archive for July, 2011

Most roles in business require good presentation skills. Not only is proficient communication essential to convey information, an exciting or entertaining delivery is an integral ingredient for keeping an audience’s attention and ultimately getting the response you want. A successful presentation will have energy from beginning to end, engage the audience, use dynamic body language and include innovative and creative ways of bringing facts to life and making them memorable. All the while, ‘death by PowerPoint’ should be avoided at all costs. Competent presentation skills can be used in many aspects of working life, from winning pitches, to getting a pay raise. Getting your messages across with impact will give you the best possible results.

Preparation is synonymous with success. A poorly planned presentation, lecture or pitch will leave you nervous, easily distracted and vulnerable to a feisty audience if you haven’t got your facts straight. You will need to identify your target audience, pin-point the purpose of the delivery, and be clear about what your key messages are. After that you need plenty of practice to ensure you stay within the allotted time, get over any potential tongue twisters and fine tune the content. There are so many tangents that an inadequately planned presentation can go down; the more you rehearse, the more of these winding paths you will discover, along with dead-end statements that you can choose to avoid. More importantly you can ensure you can bring your content to life and make if highly impactful. If you can practise in front of someone who will give you feedback, or video yourself, so that you can see how you come across, that will be highly beneficial. Ideally, for a big and important presentation you might like to have some individual presentation skills training or coaching for some expert and tailored advice.

First of all it’s necessary to understand your audience. Knowing who the audience are their roles, objectives and interests should inform the way you plan and deliver a presentation. Right from the start, all your key messages should you be tailored to meet your objectives and theirs. Make sure that all references, anecdotes and metaphors relate to the topical issues and interests of your audience, ensuring sure that you keep it relevant to the ideas under discussion.

It’s very important to open your presentation with a bang. It’s far easier to present to an audience who’s attention you’ve grabbed and which is engaged. There are several ways to do this: you might like to start with a striking or surprising fact, ask them a question, introduce an analogy or crack a joke. These are just a few ideas – there are many more ways to open with impact.

Using PowerPoint, or another form of media display can bring a presentation to life, clarify points and help them stick in people’s minds. However, it can also have the opposite effect, so it’s crucial to get it right. Any slides used in a presentation should be kept to a minimum and include only the key points. As a guide, you should include no more than 6 words per line and 6 lines per slide. This keeps the slides clear and easy to read and avoids overload. It can also be helpful to reveal each point separately as you talk about it, to avoid the audience jumping ahead and not concentrating on what you’re saying. If you do this though, ensure your reveals are consistent and that they’re not whizzing in from all sides with crazy sound effects for each – this will just distract your audience and make you look amateur. Instead, it should be the words you use, the anecdotes and stories you tell and the relevant imagery you use that engage, amuse and inspire the audience.

Pictures, diagrams and graphs can help bring facts and figures to life and help them stick in people’s minds. A carefully chosen image or chart can drive a point home far more successfully than a whole slide of words. Sometimes it can also be useful to use video clips to change the pace and add interest. They should be kept short though, to avoid the audience’s attention drifting.

Finally, be prepared for questions. A well planned and informative speech will inspire listeners to respond with ideas you may not have considered, or inadvertently overlooked in research. It’s a good idea to flag up from the beginning when you will be responding to questions, to avoid disruptive questions throughout. Once again, knowing the topic inside out will prepare you for questions from any angle. Give yourself time to respond, repeat the question back for the audience, try not to waffle when you reply and don’t get emotional! If you don’t know the answer, it’s ok to admit that, but tell them you’ll find out and get back to them. Or give them an answer to the best of your ability, but explain that you’re not 100% sure.

There are many more tips to creating the perfect presentation, but these should get you started and help you to make your presentation clear, impressive and engaging. Presentation skills training will take you through many areas of tips and advice, give you the opportunity to practise and offer personalised feedback and advice.

“We will never know how really good we are as leaders unless we are leading people to be better than they think they are.”

“Poor performance is less harmful to a leader than mediocre performance disguised as good performance.”

“Most leaders are striving to get the wrong results or the right results in the wrong ways.”

“The lowest forms of leadership involve rewards and punishments.”

“Getting along is not necessarily getting results.”

“If you can’t feel it, you can’t lead it, and they won’t do it.”

“Leadership is the trim tab of all careers.”

“Leadership is seeing hope in any adversity.”

“To make a difference, be the difference.”

“In leadership, you don’t have to expect the worse, you just have to make the most of it when it happens.”

“The best leaders make use of the simplest of ideas.”

“If you are always right, you are usually wrong.”

“The best way for a leader to communicate an idea is to bundle it in a human being.”

“The most persuasive art of leadership is to hide your leadership.”

“Refraining from action is sometimes the best action.”

“It’s not so much what you say as a leader that’s important; it’s the action the people take after you have had your say.”

“In leadership, the value of every need is in its use.”

“Leadership is not about living a easy life for ourselves but a hard life for others.”

“We ourselves are our own biggest obstacles to becoming better leaders.”

“Leadership is showing people not that they must take a certain action but that they GET TO take that action.”

“Half the art of listening is waiting.”

“To get the best out of people, embrace the best in them.”

“People are often unaware of the best that’s in them.  When you show it to them, you are half way down the road to motivating them to be your cause leaders.”

“Achievement needs three things, the leader, the cause leader, and the moment.”

“In the long run, the most important results of leadership are not what we achieve but what we become in that achieving.”

“Find a job you like and you add five days to every week.”
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Sometimes it’s an easy choice to leave a company. However, one of the most important choices that you can make in your career is to leave your current employer in the right way. Like any other relationship, there are faults and virtues with every company. At the end of a relationship, people tend to focus on the faults.

BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO
When you leave a company, it is like breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend. Regardless of how you do it, there will still be emotions. The longer the relationship, the deeper the feelings. Keep this in mind during the separation. People express their emotions in different ways so be prepared to respond with compassion.

IT’S A SMALL WORLD
I’ve learned first hand not to burn bridges. In fact, I was hired by my former boss within two years of leaving the company. He had moved onto a bigger job with another company and thought of me when a position came open in his department. Since we already had a great relationship, the interview process was both short and painless. Also, the job was a significant step up for me both professionally and financially.

TO DO OR NOT TO DO?
Here are a few do’s and don’ts that may help make the transition a little easier for everyone.

DO write and give a simple resignation letter to your immediate boss and, perhaps, your Human Resources Director, if appropriate. By putting a few key items in writing, it memorializes your intention to leave the company. It also gives you a chance to pre-play the discussion with your boss. The letter should include the following: your last day on the job, open items that you need to complete prior to leaving, and any work that you will need to pass off to someone else.

DON’T say anything negative about the company or anyone working for the company. While this is a good policy to employ at all times, it is even more critical when you are leaving. Disgruntled employees may seek you out during this time to air their negative feelings about the company or people working for the company. Resist the temptation to entertain these conversations. It is likely that your comments will be shared with others.

DO give as much advance notice as possible to allow for a smooth transition. Typically, this is two to four weeks. Use your best judgment to decide how long you will need to give keeping in mind what’s best for the company. Be aware that is also possible that the company will ask you to leave immediately, especially if you’re going to work for a competitor. This is nothing personal and should not be considered an insult.

DO work hard until you leave. It’s perfectly natural to get “short-timer’s disease” as you have already mentally moved onto the new position. Whether discussing movies, books, or relationships; people generally remember the beginning and end more than the middle.

DON’T take anything that is not yours. Whether it’s a stapler, a book that belongs to the company, copy paper, or paper clips; leave them behind. While you’re at it, tidy up a bit.

DO make yourself available for your replacement. If the company hires your replacement before you leave, offer to train them. Even after you have departed, it’s a good idea to leave a phone number where you can be reach with times that it is acceptable to call.

DON’T abuse e-mail, the telephone, or the internet during your last days. Be sure to keep your communication as professional as you have during your tenure.

There’s no reason that you still can’t be friends when it’s over. If you are careful to maintain a good reputation with the company, their suppliers, their customers, and employees; it will pay off considerably. It may not happen right away, but your paths will cross again.