It’s all in the preparation
I’ve been speaking, training and consulting for over twenty years and one of the things that still surprises me is the comments I get from participants about my presentations. I’m regularly told “gee you make everything seem so easy”, or “how do you remember all that?”. There is no real secret to presenting, making things look easy or remembering things. It just takes practice. I recently presented a program for a client to educate their organisation on some new software. I was familiar with the programs and whilst I could have just turned up and spoken about the programs to the audience, I …
What do your colleagues know?
I recently worked with a digital marketing manager and one of her team. They were reviewing two sets of data that needed to be compared and decisions made to determine if the data was up to date. They were both quite skilled with Excel…..and that was the problem. They were exploring creating a complicated formula that would check one to the other when I was asked for feedback. A few clarifying questions and some simple suggestions that didn’t require formulas of any kind, enabled them to have a short discussion and support each other in finding a simplistic solution that …
Don’t you get nervous?
It’s a question I’m often asked after I present at a conference or conduct an in-house professional development program for a client. Whilst I’ve been presenting or training for over 20 years, I still get butterflies in my stomach before I present. I’ve grown to understand that this Is a good thing. It means I’m excited and keen to give all that I can to my audiences to help them get more productive! What I also recognise is this it is not the same for everyone, especially if you only present once every now and then. So what I do …
Communicating Change
I once worked with an organisation who had spent several million dollars implementing a new video conferencing system. They came to me to discuss training for their staff and wanted to know how much it would cost. I asked the question I always ask and that was what was their budget? You see if you don’t have some framework to work within, the options are almost unlimited. You could go from giving them a link to a website to download some free resources through to a 12 month program of providing them with tools and resources to engage, knowledge share …
I can’t read your mind!
As a child, I loved super heroes and their super powers as much as anyone my age. One of the super powers I always wanted was the ability to read minds. Unfortunately, today in business, we often make the assumption that everyone knows what we know….and reality is, we should assume they often don’t! When you have skills or knowledge one of the challenges you face is the assumption that everyone knows as much (or as little) as you do. We assume others know what we know. It’s like we expect them to read our minds and know automatically what …
Interruptions
One of the challenges associated with presenting to your colleagues, clients or even at a conference is the interruption of late arrivals. For some it may be a matter of course or culture, ie everyone is always late to meetings, it could be they went to the wrong venue, lost track of time or were caught in traffic. It’s safe to assume in almost all instances it has NOTHING to do with you. When people are late to my programs, I am always welcoming and if there is any participation coming up, I use that time to check in that …
Optimisation
Optimisation Nelson Mandela once said “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” At the start of the week, it often seems like we have so much to do, but often it just “feels” that way. One easy way to get what needs to be done out of your head is to do a simple brain dump. Take a blank piece of paper (or utilise the task feature in your email program) and simply jot down all the things you need to do. It doesn’t matter if they are business or personal, just get it all out! Once you’ve got it …
Brain Dump
With so many tasks, expectations and deadlines it is easy for things to fall through the proverbial gaps if you don’t have a strategy for collecting, sorting and categorising the importance of tasks to be done. When you don’t have a strategy, or it is very loose, the results can vary, from missing important deadlines, being unprepared for meetings or worse, feeling anxious and stress resulting in grumpiness when you get home or trouble sleeping. Whilst working with a global brand we explored the concept of a brain dump. A brain dump is simply an allocated block of time where …
Is It Really Necessary?
Even though I have been a speaker and trainer in the area of productivity with technology for over twenty years, I’m still surprised by the volume of people who overuse technology just because that can or because it’s “easy”. It’s easy to send of an email and feel like it’s ticking and item off your to do list, but the question I encourage all organisations to discuss is, “Is it really necessary?” Before working with a team within an organisation, I conduct a pre-session survey. I ask a question relating to the percentage of the emails they received daily that …
Less is More
Don’t be tempted to put every single word you plan to say on the slide or a sheet of paper. When presenting to your colleagues, a board or at a conference, the audience want to hear what YOU have to say not read a screen or document. Too often because we know too much about our subject we A Overwhelm our audience with too much information so they remember very little B Sensory overload them with data or images in on screen presentations that distract or do not support what you are saying C Talk too fast Sometimes less is …
