When we need someone’s help or cooperation, most of us will adapt our style to the audience and environment. For example, we might communicate differently with a colleague depending on their level of motivation, or whether there’s a severe time crunch or not. While you want to keep that same flexibility when managing staff, default to an influencing and delegating leadership style unless there’s a good reason not to. Here’s why:More
Bring the element of surprise into your presentation to make it memorable and powerful. Humans evolved to remember the unusual and the shocking; use this knowledge to your benefit!
For example, I coached one client to begin his presentation (to an executive audience at a Fortune 500 company) with a slide that had one single large number on it. Then he said:
I once went to a seminar where the presenter was sharing some leadership development ideas with the audience. At the end of the presentation, we were all left with the same question— What do we do with this information? In fact, someone asked this very question (“what is our next step…”), and the presenter’s response was “That’s a good question, I’m not sure.” BIG mistake, and it was the key reason his presentation was a fail.
The number one question any audience member has is “how does this help me?” For your presentation to have any chance of achieving greatness (or even goodness), you must answer this question.More
How you present yourself or your work can determine a potential promotion, sale, or job offer. These three simple ideas, from my new book, Peak Presentations, can go a long way towards helping you achieve the outcomes you want.
PowerPoint Slides: Don’t Compete!
When using PowerPoint slides to support a presentation, make sure the slide content doesn’t compete with what you are saying. More
When you are giving a presentation, look to actively engage your audience right from the start. Don’t assume they are paying attention; they may be thinking about their last meeting or the next one! So go beyond the dry and conventional; Capture their imagination, make them part of the show. Use any of these six approaches to hook your audience, so you can then reel them in with a memorable, powerful presentation.More
Whether your goal is to sell, inform, or land a job offer, telling engaging, relevant stories can turn even a so-so presentation into a great one. Illustrating your points with the right stories will have a far stronger impact than many other things you can do, including slide design, body language, eye contact, and so forth.More
Note: This post originally appeared on the MENG website
Having an effective contact management system can save you a lot of time and missed opportunities, whether you are in business for yourself, in a job search, or on the job. It’s just too easy to let your inbox grow to unmanageable proportions, miss an important follow-up, waste time with things like “filing” or looking for that one email, or lose touch with potential clients. The key to solving all these problems and more, for me and for my clients, is to have a desktop-based or cloud-based system where all communication elements for a contact are associated with the contact, together in one place. These elements include:More
This post first appeared on the Five O’Clock Club’s website
Performance reviews are widely used in organizations, yet are implemented inconsistently and are often controversial: Do they work? What’s the best way to implement them? Don’t unfair grudges or favoritism, or other forms of bias, fatally compromise them? I’ll begin to share with you a few thoughts on each of these questions in this first of a two part blog post.More
I’ve created a podcast from the mini-talk that I gave on January 17th as part of my weekly Monday seminar series, “Ask A Career Coach“. You can access the podcast HERE. FYI, the Six Keys are: 1) The New Goal is Marketability, 2) Manage Up, Down and Across, 3) Develop a vision for your Career, then a Plan, 4) Build and Maintain a Network, 5) Know when it’s Time to Move-on, and 6) Demonstrate Leadership.
Leadership vs. Management: A Client’s Story (Part 1)
by Robert Hellmann • On-the-job Success, Org. Effectiveness