My Leadership Solutions

lead·er·ship: not only for those with a fancy title. High doses can lead to success. Side effects include courage and confidence

ABC Model for Successful Presentations – Step 1 Assess

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ABC Model for Successful Presetations

As I wrote in my previous article, I’m going to write a separate article for each step of the ABC Model for building your presentation skills.  The first step in the model is “Assess.”  It refers to assessing your feelings about the presentation.

Many people jump write into writing the content and preparing what they’re going to say.  Then the night before or right before they have to speak or worse yet, when they’re in front of the audience, they experience a rush of the negative feelings and fears that they haven’t dealt with and they panic.

Before you jump into the presentation, you want to do an assessment of your feelings around giving the presentation including any fears, anxieties, negative thoughts, or excitement you are experiencing.  The reason that the first step is about assessing the feelings you have around giving presentations is because by doing so, you’ll have the maximum amount of time to deal with these feelings and any obstacles they may bring about.

It’s much better to acknowledge these feelings early on so that you don’t go into panic mode right before the presentation.  It’s normal to still feel nervous no matter how much you have prepared, but you’ll have strategies to deal with the nerves so that they don’t leave you paralyzed.

Examine fears and anxieties, negative thoughts and labels you’ve given yourself that relate to giving presentations or speaking in public.

Fears and Anxieties

  • Write down fears and anxieties you have about giving the presentation.
  • Break down the reasons that you’re feeling the fear and put together a plan to help you overcome it.
  • Visualize the presentation being very successful.
  • Turn your fear into energy.  Take that adrenaline that you’re experiencing from the fear and use it to energize your presentation.
  • Anticipate what may (realistically) go wrong so that you can better prepare for it.
  • Find ways to relax before the presentation.  Tactics such as deep breathing, exercise, or meditation may help.

Negative Thoughts

You may be experiencing negative thoughts that don’t have anything to do with fears or anxiety.  Maybe, your manager is making you do the presentation or your teacher assigned it for homework.  Perhaps you don’t care about the topic or feel pressed for time in preparing for it.  Now is the time to let go of these negative thoughts, because they will affect the way that you prepare and deliver the presentation.  Then, you’ll give a less than stellar presentation, which may hurt your reputation, your grade, or your view of public speaking.

  • First write down the negative thought(s).
  • Ask yourself “Why am I experiencing these thoughts?”  If there is a valid reason why you are experiencing the thought and there’s something you can do about it, write down the action you can take.  For example, if you don’t have enough information about the topic, the action you can take is to conduct research on (blank).
  • Write one to three benefits you’ll gain by giving the presentation.  It could be as simple as “I’ll improve my speaking abilities” or “I’ll get face time with the employees in XYZ department, which is the department I eventually want to work in.”  You can use those benefits as your “positive thoughts.”
  • Start focusing on the positive thought as you begin to prepare.  The negative thought may creep up and that’s okay.  When you see it coming, replace it with the positive thought.

Labeling

  • By labeling yourself as “shy” or a “bad public speaker” or telling yourself you’ll never be a great speaker, you’re holding yourself back.  Labeling yourself a “great speaker who doesn’t need practice” can also hurt you by holding you back from putting valuable time into preparing for the presentation.
  • In order to rid yourself of these labels, you first need to write them down.
  • Write down specific examples of why you’ve given yourself that label.  If you have no examples, then that should tell you that the label is false.  Cross it out.
  • If you do have examples, look at each example separately.  Ask yourself if the example is related to public speaking and if it is not related, cross it out.  If it is related, ask yourself what you are going to do differently this time so that this presentation is more successful.

Here’s an example:

Label:  Bad public speaker

Reason for giving myself that label:  I turned red and forgot my lines in the school play in the 6th grade.

Is it related to public speaking?  Yes, I was speaking in front of an audience.

What is different this time?  15 years have passed.  I wasn’t aware of my fears before going on stage during that time.  Now I’m dealing with it before hand and will have strategies for overcoming stage fright before my presentation. Also, I’m not memorizing lines.  I know and understand the topic I’ll be speaking about.

Next Step

Now that you are finished with the first step, Assess, you can move on to the next step, Brainstorm.  Stay tuned for details in my next article!

 

Improve Your Presentation Skills using the ABC Model

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Public-speaking is consistently ranked as one of the top fears in the country, outranking the fear of death and spiders.  Yet, more than ever, people must give presentations at work, in school, and at job interviews.

There are many books and articles on the topic, but they seem to each tackle certain aspects of giving a successful presentation.  I understand that you don’t have all the time in the world to prepare for this presentation, so you need a simple and efficient method that helps you prepare.

I hated public speaking while growing up and would do anything to avoid it. I even remember giving a speech in front of my high school English class and having my mind go blank and getting very embarrassed.  However, I became deeply interested in training and had to overcome my fears in order to follow my dream.  It didn’t happen overnight, but with a lot of preparation, practice, and determination, I gained more confidence in my speaking abilities.  I became a corporate leadership trainer for a Fortune 500 company, presented workshops at a women’s foundation, and eventually started my own corporate training and human resources business.

I realized that I wanted to help others improve their presentation skills, so I developed a simple model that helps you learn presentation skills.  It starts with dealing with fears and anxieties and ends with an evaluation of the training.  It’s called the ABCs of Successful Presentations, because it’s easy to use and anyone can learn to become a better presenter by following the step-by-step process.

ABCs of Successful Presentations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each of these steps of the model is important for becoming a better presenter.  I’ll write a separate article on each step and how to use it.  Stay tuned!

 

Bored, Bitter, and Bound at Work?

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How to Untie Yourself from a Bad Work Situation

I’ve noticed there a lot of people complaining about their jobs lately.   At work, they’re disengaged and unhappy but try to fake happiness so they can get through the day.  Some don’t even try to fake it and wear bitter scowls on their faces most of the day.  In order to avoid the same fate, you almost want to shake them and ask them, “What’s wrong?  How did you turn into this person?”

Yet, they refuse to move on.  It’s as if their hands and feet are tied and they can’t move.  The job has become routine to them or their managers are tyrants or there’s some other reason that they’ve become disengaged.  The job has turned into an unpleasant necessity less pleasurable than taking out the trash.  Boredom and monotony envelop their days and they see no way out.

Sure, boredom has a way of seeping into almost everyone’s life at some point.  We all do things that we don’t enjoy doing and we realize that those things are a part of being grown-up professionals.  However, once that boredom turns into bitterness, then there’s a problem.

Do you experience any of the following symptoms?

  1. You find your job boring and monotonous the majority of the time.
  2. You would rather do household chores or any of the activities that you find unpleasant than go to work.
  3. You feel as if you have no other options.
  4. You give one-word answers or snap at people.
  5. You’ve been at this company/job for so long that you don’t know what else you would do.
  6. You feel as if you’re getting less intelligent by being in your job or work environment.
  7. You just don’t care about what you’re doing anymore.
  8. You have nightmares about your manager.
  9. You are intrigued by almost any other opportunity; however, you have lost the motivation to even put effort into finding and getting another job.
  10. You feel as if your skills are being underutilized and, therefore, wasting away.

If you find that you’re showing symptoms of turning into one of the bored, bitter, and bound employees, don’t panic.  There are steps that you can take in order to get out of the black hole of regain control of your career.

  1. Think back to what you used to find enjoyable about this job or about a previous job.  Try to find projects at work or side projects outside of work that have those characteristics.
  2. Set short-term and long-term goals for yourself and your career.  Evaluate how your current job helps you achieve these goals.
  3. Choose a skill that you want to improve in order to reach your goals.  Find a way to work on that skill in your current job or find a volunteer opportunity or mentor to help you improve that skill.
  4. Evaluate why you feel as if you’re stuck in your current situation.  What obstacles are standing in your way of making a change?  Then brainstorm as many different ideas that you can think of about what you would want to do if you lost this job tomorrow.  Talk to people you know if you can’t come up with anything.  After brainstorming the list, go through it and circle the ideas that are realistic for you.
  5. Make a list of your strengths and how you can use them in your current role.  Share this information with your manager and peers.
  6. Mix up the order of things that you do during the day if you can or add a new behavior to your day.  It can be something simple such as greeting a person you don’t know every day or finding one article a day that helps you with your goals or showing appreciation every day to at least one person.  Be creative.
  7. Find professional organizations and groups in your area that specialize in your area of expertise and network with them.
  8. Have an updated resume just in case.
  9. Talk to people about what they do and their goals.  Let them know about what your skills are and what you want your next career move to be.  It shouldn’t be a desperate I-hate-my-job-and-need-a-new-one complaint or a sales pitch, but a two-way dialogue that allows people to keep you in mind for opportunities they may come across.

Employee Recognition is Worth It

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 Recognize employees while sticking to your budget

Employee recognition is one of the keys to improving employee motivation.  But you can’t just build an employee recognition program in a vacuum.  You first need to know what behaviors you want to recognize and reward people for.

Keep in mind that the reason for these programs are not to make everyone feel happy (although it is a nice side-effect), but to encourage certain behaviors that lead to higher employee engagement.

Spending extra money in a down economy for something that doesn’t add value is not smart for anyone.  This is why you need to assess your current organizational climate and implement the employee recognition program that works best for your company.

Where’s the Proof? 

The proof is in the numbers.  A study by Watson Wyatt found that organizations with high levels of employee engagement performed better than organizations with low levels of engagement by 47 percent.

An employee can go from being “highly engaged” in the organization to being “highly disengaged” in only a year and a half.  Since recognition is an important tool for employee engagement, you need to look at ways to recognize your employees from the onset.

Employee Engagement Assessment Tools

In order to gauge where your organization is at in terms of employee engagement, conduct a survey.  Certain survey tool companies charge $100,000 in order to do a full-scale assessment of your workforce by designing and monitor employee engagement surveys, but these are not necessary.

There are cheaper options to consider.  Zoomerang is a company that conducts online surveys for businesses, including employee satisfaction surveys.  The price is as low as $500, depending on how many employees you want to survey.  If you’re fairly in tune with the temperament of your employees and need to just figure out recognition ideas, you can even design your own survey.  The Survey System run by Creative Research Systems  gives you the tools to tailor surveys for your organization and also gives free advice.

Employee Recognition Ideas  

There are many different types of recognition programs that you can put into place.  I’ve given you different options ranging from low-cost (one $) to high-cost (three $) so that you can use whichever one best fits into your budget.

1.  Manager feedback to Employees:

Put a program in place where managers and employees can send out online positive feedback cards to people who want to recognize someone for going above and beyond.  Turn it into a contest.  The person who collects the most cards will win a prize at the end of the month.

You would be surprised by how excited people get about a mention in the company newsletter for their achievements.

2.  Personal Recognition: $

Get creative with the different types of rewards and tailor them to the individual if possible.  It doesn’t have to be an expensive camera or a trip to theBahamas.  Give someone a half day off to spend time with his or her kids or if you know someone’s hobby is making candles, give them a coupon to a candle-making class or a gift card to a store that has candle-making supplies.  Employees will be grateful for the personal touch.

3.  Employee of the Month or Competition: $$

It’s best that you only implement this type of program in cases where competition isn’t going to lead to behavior that is going to hurt your business practices.  In addition to this, you should also give recognition to employees who did reach certain goals instead of just the one person who surpassed everyone.

4.  Outsource Recognition: $$ – $$$

Michael C. Fina has an employee recognition program that ranges from medium cost to high cost, depending on how you tailor it.  They help you set up a program based on the employee behaviors, anniversaries or special accomplishments that you want to recognize and reinforce.  Every behavior is worth points and once the individual collects a certain number of points, he or she can choose a prize from the catalog.  Because Michael C. Fina is a luxury gift retailer, you can guarantee that the prizes are all quality, name-brand products.  http://www.mcfawards.com/