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“Creating Successful Leaders”

Tag Archives: Tips for Motivation People

June 27, 2013 How To Give A Presentation People Will Actually Remember

I talked about the importance of telling a story with your presentation a few weeks back.

This week I came across a book that adds more insight to this topic: Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds. Using the principles of Zen, Reynolds calls for an approach that covers the entire process of making a presentation, from preparation to delivery.

Most presentations are neither exciting nor inspiring. “The dull, text-filled slide approach is common and normal, but it is not effective,” says Reynolds. And I think he’s right. I can’t tell you how many presentations I’ve sat through where I had no idea what the main points were even a few days after the fact.

Presentation Zen is a more basic approach to giving presentations, i.e., less is more. Your slides aren’t giving the presentation for you, but serve as a visual reference for you to keep the talk in context and to entice the audience. The moment you begin relying on your slides to inform the audience with content is the moment you can be sure you’ve put your audience to sleep.

Reynolds thinks we should take on a minimal design for our presentation slides. Don’t clutter your slides with colors and pictures and “fun” moving images. All of this just makes visual noise and takes away from the main points. Instead, slides should point back to you, the speaker, for insight and clarification.

Sure, there are some cases where you’ll need to put statistics and data on your slides. But do so in a way that points back to you, the story-teller, the informer, otherwise the audience isn’t bound to remember why your pie chart was that important.

Reynolds three main points in the book are:

Restraint in preparation 

We tend to go overboard in the research and scope of our presentations. Hold back, focus the discussion, and trust the process.

Simplicity in design

Pictures and text are suggestions and visual cues to the main point of the presentation: what you have to say.

Naturalness in delivery

This part takes practice. It has to do with public speaking, with teaching, with telling a story. None of these things come naturally. Yet with practice, you can become comfortable being yourself before others.

Reynolds, Garr. “Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery.” Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2012.

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May 21, 2013 Ways To Boost Collaboration

You probably know that successful businesses are built around good collaboration, but you may not know that sometimes collaboration can actually be a negative force in an organization. Author Morten T. Hansen addresses the issue with an example in his book, Collaboration:

“When oil giant British Petroleum (BP) started to promote cross-unit collaboration,” writes Hansen, “leaders encouraged the formation of cross-unit networks focused on areas of shared interest. Over time, this idea flowered into an unforeseen number of networks and subnetworks…which consumed increasing amounts of managers’ time.”

This tendency toward overdoing it stems from the notion that more structure equals better results. But this often backfires, costing time and money. In reality, collaboration is the result of good chemistry between individuals united behind a single cause. Instead of implementing rules for how to collaborate, or “forcing it,” we should promote an environment that allows individuals to collaborate naturally.

I came across a YouTube video by Angela Fernandez Orviz that does a good job of illustrating how collaboration sparks creativity and innovation.

After watching the video, I arrived at a few points:

1. Seek out diverse strengths and personality types

As Orviz states, we must utilize a large network of disciplines in order to address issues in a global world. Most groups must diversify their business to stay relevant. This means integrating all sorts of professions, be they doctors, scientists,  journalists or salespeople.

2. Keep an open mind and embrace Divergent Thinking

Set your own ego aside and keep your mind open to many different ways of solving a problem. Each member of the team brings a specialized skill and viewpoint to the table, and it is up to the group as a whole to be open to everyone’s take on the matter. The brainstorming process may take longer as a result, as you’ll see ideas come from every angle possible, and you may face some frustrating road blocks. Hence, I strongly recommend that you…

3. Agree On The Objectives Early On

Before you even begin brainstorming, draft a written document that all members of the team agree on that specifically states the aims of the project at hand. This will act as a road map that keeps the collaborative process within a workable framework. In this way, you’ll be able to allow for divergent thinking and creative meandering, resting assured that you’ll eventually find your way to real solutions. Solutions which could not have been reached without many minds and strengths working in unison.

Hansen, Morten T. “Collaboration: How leaders avoid the traps,  create unity, and reap the big results.” Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009, page 12.

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April 17, 2013 Is It The Job, Or Your Attitude?

We spend at least 40 hours a week at our job. That’s almost one third of our waking lives. So we better darn well get satisfaction from all that time and effort.

To recap on last week, Cal Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You highlights three components that result in job satisfaction:

Autonomy – feeling like you have some control of your job, and that your actions make a difference

Competence – knowing that you are good at what you do

Relatedness – being able to connect with your coworkers

Newport contrasts these “ingredients,” as he calls them, with the pervasive belief that passions lead to success. Instead of following your passions, Newport argues that becoming very good at what you do, and knowing that it makes a difference, transforms a droll job into a rewarding career.

But let’s narrow the focus today to you and your job. Do you feel you have control of your own work? Does it make a difference? Are you valued? And can you relate with your coworkers?

Answering these honestly will give you a clue as to why you may feel dissatisfied with your work.

From here, the first thing to do is to take ownership of your skills. You can blame your job and your circumstances all you like, and you may have good reasons to do so. But this won’t change a thing. Become determined, if only for your own satisfaction, to master the skills needed to excel in your field.

There is no excuse not to work toward mastery, because no one has ever mastered anything completely. Take Jiro Ono, for instance. Widely considered the best sushi chef in the world, 85 year old Ono tirelessly pursues perfection in his craft, as depicted in the award-winning documentary, “Jiro Dreams Of Sushi.” His age and position in the culinary world don’t deter him from chasing after perfection.

So, you can always get better. While at work, take a personal inventory of areas in which you need to improve, and occupy your day with trying to master the skills your job requires. You feel better when you know that your work is valued and desired. Aim to be sought after.

Second, look at your past to boost your confidence about your present situation. Leadership coaches Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins write: “To strengthen your confidence, first face the facts. When you look to your past, you’ll realize that successes often outweigh failures. And more importantly, that you survived through the failures and gleaned priceless lessons along the way.”

Looking back puts things in perspective. You may just realize that although your present job may not be ideal (and no job is), you have it now because of your accomplishments, qualifications and perseverance leading up to where you are now. This should give you some confidence and reassurance of your decisions.

References

Newport, Cal. So Good They Can’t Ignore You. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2012.

Su, Amy Jen, and Muriel Maignan Wilkins. “To Strengthen Your Confidence, Look to Your Past.” Harvard Business Review, April 11, 2013. Accessed April 17, 2013. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/to_strengthen_your_confidence.html

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