When folks go through our presentation skills classes, they are often surprised at how simple we make designing and delivering fairly complex presentations. In fact, one of the things that we cover in the Fearless Presentations class is how to design an entire presentation, from start to finish, complete with a slide deck in fifteen minutes or less. Class members are often shocked at how fast they can design presentations that would have typically taken hours (or weeks) to complete. Below is a simple checklist that you can use when you design PowerPoint presentations in order to speed up the preparation time and reduce your fear of public speaking.

Presentation Skills Checklist

• Step One: Start with the Presentation (what you want to say) and finish with the slideshow. Most people start with the visual aids and, eventually, realize they have too many slides or too many points and start cutting content. So they end up with a Swiss-Cheese presentation. Start with the presentation first, then choose slides that help you better explain the content.
• Step Two: Choose a Compelling Topic (Title). Pretend that you are an audience member, and ask yourself what you’d what to hear about related to the topic. This is more difficult than you might think, because, since we know so much about the topic, we tend to want to tell the audience EVERYTHING that we know. However, that is not practical, so you have to give the audience only what they need, right now. For instance, if you are giving a financial report to the board, they are going to want to know about profit, but if you are giving a report to the sales team, they will be more interested in revenue compared to prior years. think of your audience when you choose your topic.
• Step Three: Choose three to five key points to expand upon. Literally… three, four, or five points… TOTAL. Thinking about your topic, choose your key points by determining what are the three to five most important concepts related to the topic that the audience needs to know about. If you cover more points, the audience won’t remember them anyway, so focus on the most important points.
• Step Four: Insert Proof for each Point. Insert a few stories, examples, facts, analogies, demonstrations, or samples that prove that your key point is true. If you prove each point along the way, then the group will very easily agree with your conclusion at the end of the presentation.
• Step Five: Now Create Your Slides: Once you have the speech designed, now go back and choose visual aids to better explain your content.

Follow this checklist, and you will be able to create any presentation very quickly.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-skills-checklist/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/japanese-team-building-proverbs http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/japanese-team-building-proverbs#comments Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:51:04 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=7395

Team Building Quotes: Below is a list of Japanese proverbs related to Team Building and People Skills. Some are funny. Some are wise. All will make you think a little…

• One kind word can warm three winter months.
• The reverse side also has a reverse side.
• When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.
• A good sword is the one left in its scabbard.
• A single arrow is easily broken, but not ten in a bundle.
• Adversity is the foundation of virtue.
• If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.
• Laughter cannot bring back what anger has driven away.
• One who smiles rather than rages is always the stronger.
• The inarticulate speak longest.
• The tongue is but three inches long, yet it can kill a man six feet high.
• The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention.
• Vision with action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare.
• We learn little from victory, much from defeat.
• We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
• We’ve arrived, and to prove it we’re here.
]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/japanese-team-building-proverbs/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-tip-video-use-pictures-properly-to-better-explain-your-presentation http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-tip-video-use-pictures-properly-to-better-explain-your-presentation#comments Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:33:29 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=7207

PowerPoint Tip Video: Use Pictures Properly to Better Explain Your Presentation

This is PowerPoint Tip #6 of Ten in the PowerPoint Tip Video Series. Pictures can add a lot of clarity to your presentation, but only when we use them properly. Pictures just for decoration sake can add confusion, but remember that a picture is “worth a thousand words,” so an appropriate picture at the correct time can make your words even more clear. This video gives a number of tips related to adding pictures and other visual aids to your PowerPoint Slideshows to make the presentations easier to understand and easier to deliver.

For additional PowerPoint Tips, access our online Video Seminar, How to Do a PowerPoint which gives you all ten videos as well as written tips that will help you design and deliver better presentations.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-tip-video-use-pictures-properly-to-better-explain-your-presentation/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/women-in-the-workplace-how-we-present-ourselves-in-the-workplace http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/women-in-the-workplace-how-we-present-ourselves-in-the-workplace#comments Fri, 23 Mar 2012 18:42:49 +0000 ellenpatnaude http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=7035

Walk the Talk: How we present ourselves in the workplace

Women in leadership are still something of a rarity today. There have been a couple of articles recently in the Wall Street Journal looking at women in the workforce and analyzing our collective progress. While there are no concrete conclusions about why it’s happening, the data is unambiguous. Women are being overlooked at promotion time.

Hmmmm.

This got us thinking about our own successes and failures in various industries within the working world. We have come to the conclusion that there are five key ways to “Walk the Talk” when it comes to how we present ourselves out there. Here they are, for your pondering –

1. Speak how you want others to speak – both TO you and ABOUT you. Think for a moment about how others would describe you. What would they say? Is that who you want to be? The way to change it is to give them something better. The old adage is true – you get what you give.
2. Be authentic. No one likes to deal with someone who is two-faced, to be blunt. Be true to your values, and don’t be afraid to disagree with someone else, even if you work for them. If you find ways to do so respectfully and sincerely, you might be surprised at how well received your opinions will be.
3. Go out of your way for others. It seems that in many workplace environments, we’ve come to expect the worst of each other. There is a clear “every (wo)man for her/himself” attitude out there. When you extend simple courtesies to someone else, you show that person that you are considerate. Nothing helps with rapport like a small act of unexpected kindness.
4. Focus on your work ethic. If you don’t deliver, you don’t have credibility. It’s as simple as that.
5. Take responsibility for your actions and words. Lose the victim mentality. If you mess up, opt for a simple “excuse me” or apologize rather than offering excuses or reasons as to why something happened. This covers everything from being late to a meeting to not making a deadline. You write your own story, and life is not happening to you – you are not a puppet.

The bottom line is this – women have historically had a tough time out there. Many of the barriers that have stood in our way in the past have come down, and many others are still there. Nothing will change overnight. However, recognizing that you are the main character in your own story and that you can control your actions and behavior just might give you the courage you need. Stand up and lead like a woman and excel in team building and leadership.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/women-in-the-workplace-how-we-present-ourselves-in-the-workplace/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/juggling-the-five-balls-in-the-game-of-life http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/juggling-the-five-balls-in-the-game-of-life#comments Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:50:05 +0000 ellenpatnaude http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=6924

Leadership Tips/Team Building Tips: Set Your Priorities

Author James Patterson once said that in the game of life, there are five balls that must constantly be kept in the air – work, family, friends, health, and integrity. He said that work is a rubber ball – it can be dropped and it will bounce back. The rest of the balls are made of glass. If you drop one of them, it can be scuffed, scratched, or shattered.

I myself must admit that I have sacrificed (on more than one occasion, if I am being honest) each of the other four things at one point or another, to varying degrees. When my first son was a baby, I can remember mindlessly setting the baby swing for another round of music just so that I could get one more phone call made for work. I have rearranged dates with friends on more occasions than I can count because ‘something’ came up for work. Before I had children, I routinely put in 70-80 hours as a young community organizer, once working even after being diagnosed with pneumonia. And I’ve been guilty of going along with a decision that I knew was a compromise of my integrity at work, out of fear that I would look stupid or lose my job. All of this was done in the name of ‘getting ahead’, or ‘taking care of my family’, or ‘keeping my priorities straight’.

I felt that work was the ball made of glass.

How many of us have that confused? In our experience working with clients, leaders and business people over the years, many of us do.

So how do you remedy this way of thinking before you ‘shatter’ your family, friends, health or integrity?

The first step lies in an honest assessment of your priorities. Your calendar can be a great mirror for you (if not a little painful) of where you spend your time. After all, time is the most precious resource we have, so taking a hard look at where you spend yours can be revealing.

After you have come to terms with the reality of where your time is spent, you must reconcile whether or not this is an accurate reflection of your priorities and values. In other words, if you consider those five balls – work, family, friends, health and integrity – in what order of importance do you place them?

Finally, taking some time to reflect can be a useful tool for helping you figure out how to spend your time in a way that more accurately reflects your priorities. It is a discipline – it takes time, and it is not always easy to do, but worth it in the long run.

And if you choose to make no change at all, that, too, is a valid choice. But if you make no changes, you can expect no changes. Zig Ziglar said it well:

“One definition of insanity is to believe that you can keep on doing what you’ve been doing and get different results.”

What results do you want to have?

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/juggling-the-five-balls-in-the-game-of-life/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/classroom-training-does-not-equal-boring-training http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/classroom-training-does-not-equal-boring-training#comments Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:09:57 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=6870

“Classroom Training” does not equal “Boring Training”!

It is an unfortunate truth that there are a lot of  “Leadership Training” or “Team Building” workshops or seminars out there that are… well… boring. It has become common to hear groans of distress and expressions of angst from people who have had, shall we say, “less-than-stellar” experience in these sessions.  However, that doesn’t have to be the case. Leadership training and team building events can be a very powerful way to add energy and enthusiasm to your team while passing along time-tested skill sets that in high demand in the business world.

However, it is important to understand the semantics of the industry so that you end up with an exceptional activity or workshop versus a boring one. The more focused you are on the results that you are looking for, the more likely you will be to pick the perfect solution for your team.

Consider the following criteria when evaluating your next training workshop.

1. Look and listen for key words such as ‘interactive’ or ‘experiential’ in the description of the training session you are considering. And ask for an example of what is meant by using those terms. Usually, these terms mean that the class participants will actually participate in the session somehow. This is absolutely essential because we don’t learn stuff just by listening to it. We learn by interacting with the material. In short, we learn by doing. The more active the workshop, the more enjoyable it will be for the participants.  The more passive the workshop, the more droopy eyes you will see from the participants.
2. If the person trying to interest you in the training is not asking a lot of questions about you, your company and your expectations, shop somewhere else. This is a sure sign that they have no intention of trying to meet or exceed those expectations, and could risk wasting your time and your money by delivering a training session that is not appropriate for your team’s needs.  The facilitator doesn’t necessarily have to customize, or even tailor, the material to the group, but with a few simple questions up front, the facilitator should be able to match content with the needs of the group.
3. Understand that not all training is created equally. The more you know about what you want to get out of the training experience, the better able a training consultant will be in a position to help you find the right match for your needs. Sometimes a team in conflict really shouldn’t spend their time and money on a training session that is designed to really just let a team play together. Sometimes that team in conflict needs something a little more in depth. However, that doesn’t mean the session won’t be fun for the participants – it just means that the laughs will come from different experiences.
4. Do your legwork ahead of time with your team. Once you’ve chosen a training workshop, talk to your colleagues about it before they get there. Ask your training consultant or instructor to give you suggestions about how to do this. If there are negative feelings and/or experiences from the past, consider letting people air their concerns so that you and/or the trainer can dispel them prior to the workshop day. There’s nothing worse for a training consultant than to walk into a classroom prepared to facilitate a great session only to be met by enormous resistance before they’ve even had a chance to speak!

Regardless of your experiences with classroom training thus far, studies show in increasing numbers how incredibly valuable it is to the entire workforce to invest in some type of leadership development training. Whether you are looking to improve your communication skills, polish your presentation skills, or develop overall better leadership capacity, there is a training out there for you.

Just keep the concepts above in mind when you choose a workshop or facilitator, and your team will be enthused by your activity and love the experience.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/classroom-training-does-not-equal-boring-training/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/gain-cooperation-encourage-and-facilitate-two-way-conversation http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/gain-cooperation-encourage-and-facilitate-two-way-conversation#comments Sun, 26 Feb 2012 21:43:40 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=6816

Education is a kind of continuing dialogue, and a dialogue assumes, in the nature of the case, different points of view. -Robert Hutchins

 

Oprah Winfrey was the most successful daytime TV star of all time and is still one of the most influential people in America.  When she promoted a book on her television show, it would typically be on the bestseller list within a week.  However, I’d wager that Ms. Winfrey’s success would have been far less dramatic if she had spent all those years lecturing her audience for an hour a day.   One of the characteristics of her show that has made her so influential is the fact that she created a one-on-one dialogue with her guests as well as with her audience.  Her audience, and her influence, grew year after year.

We can learn from her success.  We too can have more influence over others if we create two-way communication.  One of the most common complaints I hear from front-line employees is that top management does not take their ideas seriously and does not address their concerns.  Many companies today have a top-down communication in place that can stifle creativity and build resentment in front-line employees.

Many of these employees have ideas that could revolutionize the company, but far too often, the ideas are overlooked because the people at the top are too focused on the status quo.

Herb Peterson was a McDonald’s franchise holder in 1972 when he had an idea to add breakfast to the menu.  At that time, McDonald’s was just a hamburger place without a lot of additional items, and no one would want to go to a hamburger place for breakfast.  Herb went ahead and crafted a Teflon circle in his garage in order to be able to easily cook eggs Benedict on a hamburger grill, and he took the idea to the McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago.  Today, it’s estimated that McDonald’s sells about $4 billion worth of breakfast per year.

Those dialogues that we create with the people who work for us can provide us with valuable information – both good and bad.  This information is critical in helping us make solid decisions in the marketplace.

If you want to influence others in a positive way, take a lesson from Oprah and McDonald’s and create dialogues rather than monologues. Practice good listening skills and communication skills, and create two-way communication to build a good team.

 

 

Gain Enthusiastic Cooperation:  Encourage and Facilitate Two-Way Communication

 

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/gain-cooperation-encourage-and-facilitate-two-way-conversation/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/avoid-overuse-of-animation-in-powerpoint-presentations-video http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/avoid-overuse-of-animation-in-powerpoint-presentations-video#comments Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:14:24 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=6802

Free PowerPoint Tip #4: Avoid Overuse of Animation in PowerPoint Slides

PowerPoint will do some really cool types of animation, but remember that if you animate something, it should help you clarify your point. Bullet points that fly in, spin around, make sounds, and blink are just a distraction from your message. For the most part, the animation called “appear” should be your most frequently used. If you want your audience to follow you step-by-step, you can reveal your bullets one at a time. However, you’ll have more energy as a presenter if you just make your slide appear and physically move to your screen and point to your bullet point when you talk about it. You become the animation versus using the slideshow.

Don’t Eliminate Animation Entirely

Keep in mind that we are not suggesting that you eliminate animation entirely. If you do, you’ll be missing out on a great advantage of PowerPoint. A good graphic that is short and eye-catching (and that helps clarify your point) at the appropriate time can be very helpful and add some fun to the presentation. But if you rely heavily on animation to make your point for you, the PowerPoint Presentation will become the presentation, not the presenter.

Avoid overuse of animation in your PowerPoint Presentations.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/avoid-overuse-of-animation-in-powerpoint-presentations-video/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/to-gain-cooperation-from-others-show-enthusiasm-and-energy http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/to-gain-cooperation-from-others-show-enthusiasm-and-energy#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:50:02 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=6759
Enthusiasm is by far the highest paid quality on earth,
probably because it is one of the rarest; yet it is one of
the most contagious. –Frank Bettger

 

Have you ever noticed that the most successful people in just about any industry are the early risers?  Ben Franklin called this group of people the “Six O’clock Club.”  Franklin spent the first hour of his day planning the events of his day (to do this he invented the Franklin Planner) and reading.  He often claimed that the first hour of his day was the most important.  How does this relate to raising your own energy level?  We have a choice every morning when we wake up.  Do I want to hit the snooze bar a few times, or do I want to put some energy and enthusiasm into my day?

Frank Bettger, in his book How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, said that if he had to narrow down to one thing why he has been so successful, it would be enthusiasm.  His enthusiasm was what moved him from a “second rate bush league making $25 a week” to the starting shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals.  His enthusiasm was also what transformed him from a washout in sales to the most successful insurance agent of his time.  Where did his enthusiasm come from?  He says that he didn’t have any enthusiasm in the beginning, but he faked it.  He acted like he was enthusiastic, and behold he was.  After a few successes, the enthusiasm came easy.

You have the same choice in your own life.  When a dirty job has to be done, jump in with lots of enthusiasm and gusto.  When you have a challenging project that no one else wants to do, you can use that project as an opportunity to get yourself noticed.

Everyone wants to be around people who are going somewhere.  The person who sets out to enthusiastically get to the next level will attract tons of followers.  Enthusiasm is contagious.

Take the advice of Franklin and Bettger and raise your energy level and the people around you will stop and take notice.

 

Week #3: Gain Enthusiastic Cooperation; Show Enthusiasm and Energy

 

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/to-gain-cooperation-from-others-show-enthusiasm-and-energy/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/acknowledge-the-importance-of-other-people http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/acknowledge-the-importance-of-other-people#comments Mon, 20 Feb 2012 03:09:45 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=6685

 

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. –William James

 

Most people have one defining need that very rarely gets satisfied.  Many of us will move Heaven and Earth to satisfy this need.  This one attribute is the single most motivating factor that leads to success.  It is the need, the want, to feel important.  The person who can satisfy this need in others, the person who can sincerely make other people feel important, can be very influential and is typically regarded by others as a good leader. In fact, you can tell a lot about an individual by what makes him feel important.  My dad builds houses, and one of the most satisfying things to him is to complete a building and have others admire his work.  Al Capone got his feeling of being important from power and control.  Mother Teresa got her feeling of importance by helping the helpless.  There are usually two reasons why people do things.  The reason we tell others… and the real reason.  When we give money to charity, do we really do it to help others or do we do it because of the satisfaction we get from helping others.  We feel important because we feel like we made a difference in someone else’s life.

We you look around your office, you will see people from all walks of life who crave this feeling of importance.  If any one of those people all of the sudden stopped doing their job, it would cause a lot of challenges for your company.  Every single job that they do is important to the success of the company – to your success, because without them you couldn’t do your job effectively.

When was the last time that you told them how important they were to you?

One of my class members about ten years ago decided to use this principle with his sales assistant.  She was the assistant for five different salespeople, and her job was to put together marketing materials and, ultimately, their contracts when they sold a big deal.  During the class, this salesman decided that the work that this woman did for him was critical to him closing deals, so on his way into the office, he bought her a big container of popcorn and just put a sticky note on it saying how important she was to him and to his success.

When he gave it to her, she was shocked and surprised, but awfully grateful as well since he was the first person in years to treat her like an equal in the office.  When he came back to class the next week, he told us that she had taken the sticky note off the can and stuck it under the plastic protector that covered her desk so that she could see it every day.

I saw this man a couple of years later and asked him about the sales assistant.  He told me that she is still there and still doing a fabulous job.  He said, though, that she now has over a dozen of the sticky notes on her desk.  She keeps every one.

Great leaders use this aspect of human nature to make people feel important.  One way to be a great leader is to find some way every day to make the people around you feel important.

 

Team Building Principle #15: Acknowledge the Importance of Other People

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/acknowledge-the-importance-of-other-people/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/reduce-the-data-on-your-powerpoint-slides-video-powerpoint-tip http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/reduce-the-data-on-your-powerpoint-slides-video-powerpoint-tip#comments Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:25:48 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=6600

Reduce the Data on Your PowerPoint Slides-Video PowerPoint Tip

Too Much Data on Your PowerPoint Slides: Your PowerPoint slide deck should be a visual aid to help you explain your point, so if you put too much data on a slide (too much text, too many numbers, or charts and graphs – gasp – Is he saying we can’t use charts and graphs?) you will overwhelm you audience and cause them to attempt to draw their own conclusions about the data.

Your PowerPoint slide should convey a simple concept at a glance.


A good rule is what we call 6X6, which means to limit your number of words per line to six and limit your number of lines to about six as well. That way, no matter how big or small your room is, your audience will be able to read your data, and it will be easy for the audience to instantly understand the concept you are communicating.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/reduce-the-data-on-your-powerpoint-slides-video-powerpoint-tip/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/eliminate-death-by-powerpoint-public-speaking-tip-video http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/eliminate-death-by-powerpoint-public-speaking-tip-video#comments Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:23:10 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=6539

New PowerPoint Tip Video

Eliminate Death by PowerPoint is a new public speaking tip video in our PowerPoint Tip series. This is video #2.

Too many PowerPoint slides cause the audience to be bored and lose interest, so remember that in public speaking visual aids, less is more. Reduce the number of slides in your slide deck and create more of a conversation with your audience. Give more examples and analogies, and better explain the content of your main bullet points for a better presentation.

Creating too many slides and using them as a crutch to make sure that we don’t forget anything in our presentation sounds like a good idea when we start designing, our presentation, but in reality, it is a really, really big mistake. Oddly enough, this mistake most often occurs because we make the first mistake. (See PowerPoint Mistake #1 Designing the Slideshow First) Slide… Click… Slide… Click… Slide… Click… is a very boring way to deliver a presentation and makes the presenter look unprepared and uninformed about his/her topic. Only add a slide if the slide helps you better clarify your point.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/eliminate-death-by-powerpoint-public-speaking-tip-video/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/what-is-the-most-embarrassing-thing-that-has-ever-happened-to-you-or-someone-else-in-a-presentation http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/what-is-the-most-embarrassing-thing-that-has-ever-happened-to-you-or-someone-else-in-a-presentation#comments Sat, 28 Jan 2012 22:27:51 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=6376

What is the Most Embarrassing Thing that has Ever Happened to You or Someone Else in a Presentation? We’ve ll had those hiccups in presentation delivery where we either just freeze, or a visual aid malfunctions, or we prepare an hour-long speech and are told just before we start that our available time has dropped to 25 minutes. These glitches can cause embarrassment, but they are also fantastic opportunities to shine. What was your most embarrassing presentation moment, and if you recovered… how did you do it?

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/what-is-the-most-embarrassing-thing-that-has-ever-happened-to-you-or-someone-else-in-a-presentation/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-is-a-visual-aid-not-the-presentation http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-is-a-visual-aid-not-the-presentation#comments Sun, 15 Jan 2012 22:55:31 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=6229

This video is a first in a series of PowerPoint Tips to help viewers more quickly and easily design and deliver PowerPoint Presentations. Tip #1 is that PowerPoint is a Visual Aid, Not the Actual Presentation. Most people start designing their speech by creating their slideshow, but that is backwards. If you design your presentation first, it is more easy now to design slides that help explain or prove the points in your presentation. If you design the slideshow first, you are likely to use Powerpoint as a crutch which increases nervousness and increases the chances that you will actually forget something or lose your audience along the way.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-is-a-visual-aid-not-the-presentation/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/can-team-building-increase-productivity-in-a-recession http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/can-team-building-increase-productivity-in-a-recession#comments Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:18:58 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=6110

When the economy is slow, company managers and leaders have to be very cautious with every expense. As a result, we will often put off hiring new employees until more certainty in the marketplace develops. Although natural efficiencies will develop in a downward economy, can team building activities help increase productivity so that we can avoid the expense of adding on new personnel? The answer to that question is… “Well… It depends…”

Don’t Confuse “Morale” with “Productivity”

Team Building is almost a generic term that is used for both “morale building” activities and “productivity building” activities interchangeable, but if you confuse the two activities, you can make some costly mistakes. Morale building activities can include anything from going out to a movie together to an office holiday party to entertainment style activities at annual meetings ans conventions. These activities provide a shared-experience that builds temporary camaraderie and provides a fun relief to the normal day-to-day rat-race. Productivity building activities are training events or innovations that help teams do more with less. Although people will often call both of these types of activities “Team Building”, the activities themselves get totally different results. Both are needed to create a team culture, but quite often, managers and leaders will schedule one type of activity hoping to get the needed result from the other type of activity and be sorely disappointed.

Although productivity will often improve (sometimes dramatically) when morale improves, an increase in morale doesn’t always cause a team to be more productive. For instance, if a manager came into the office and announced that the entire team would get the whole week off and still get paid, morale would skyrocket, but productivity would drop to zero for the week. Morale building activities like team outings and company parties are extremely important, but they can’t entirely replace productivity building events and activities.

Since the team atmosphere created by morale building activities can be temporary, you’ll want to schedule activities like this regularly so that the individual team members get to interact with each other in a more fun way to build camaraderie. Charity team building events at annual meetings or conventions can be a great way to insert a morale building activity. These team building functions are very economical, because the company can generate great public relations without increasing the cost of conducting a convention or annual meeting. For instance, most conventions are going to have some type of entertainment or at least a company outing of some kind. Many companies are replacing these activities with a charity bike build or a team scavenger hunt where team members build gift baskets for soldiers. The investment in each activity is fairly similar, but the results of the charity activities often provide impactful, lasting memories that build great camaraderie between team members.

Build Teams by Training Team Members Together

In addition to morale building activities, a team also needs to develop new skills in order to keep them productive. Many years ago, a mentor of mine told me that “You can’t build a team by training individuals, but you can build a team by training individuals together.” I didn’t really understand the power of this advice until I started my own business, but I understand it more and more as my company grows and grows. For instance, many big companies offer tuition assistance for higher level degrees for their employees, but what often happens is that a company will invest a ton of money into the development of an employee only to have the person leave the company and start working for a competitor. This happens because the individual employees is growing, but the team as a whole is stagnant.

Oddly enough, any skill development activities will work to build the team culture in an organization if the skills developed gives the team a competitive advantage in the marketplace. For instance, Apple decided to eliminate cash registers inside their Apple Stores and replace them with the ability for any employee in the store to be able to use their smartphones to ring-up items for purchases on their smartphones. Because Apple is doing something that no one else is doing, the employees who have been trained in this new technology feel like they are a part of an elite group that is different from other retail stores. Whether they are or not doesn’t really matter, because the team believe that they are ahead of the curve. Customers can find an Apple employee and within seconds create a purchase and have the receipt sent to the customer via email and be on their way. A dramatic increase in productivity and decrease in cost while creating more of a team atmosphere among employees.

“Soft-Skills” Team Building Training is Most Productive

The most effective team training to increase productivity comes from “soft-skills” training, though. While Hard-Skills are ones essential to doing individual jobs within a company — for example hard-skills for an engineer might be calculus and physics — soft-Skills are skills that improve productivity no matter what specific role that a person has within an organization. Soft-skills would include communication skills, presentation skills, the ability to persuade people, the ability to coach and mentor others, etc. If the engineer improves in any or all of these soft-skills, then he or she will likely improve their individual success as well as the overall success of the team.

When teams train together in these soft-skill areas, they automatically develop that same type of team culture that Apple developed with the technology change. Team members know that they are a part of a unique, elite group that is different from most organizations (because most organizations don’t train this way).

For example, a few years ago, I was hired by a commercial construction company to help them deliver high-level sales presentations better. Companies that build skyscrapers or have groups of construction projects often bid out these huge projects in one big contract, so they will often ask for huge proposals and have each qualified contractor come in and do a presentation to narrow down the field. The company that hired me was closing about one out of six of these presentations, but wanted to increase their numbers. So we conducted a series of presentation skills classes with the teams of presenters. Because they trained together, they developed a team culture that showed up when they conducted their presentations. Quite often, at the end of their presentations, the board members who were in the audience would say, “We chose this group because they just seemed to work very well together.” The team culture showed, because the individuals within the group had been trained in soft-skills together, so they saw themselves as having an advantage over other presenters (and they had one.)

Presentation skills, people skills, coaching, mentoring, and other soft-skills training can really help teams become more productive as long as the teams are going through the training as a team. I remember my college football coach telling us, “You don’t fight for records or awards, you fight for the guy who is next to you in the trenches.” When teams train together, they build a rapport that lasts.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/can-team-building-increase-productivity-in-a-recession/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/three-ways-to-spice-up-your-business-powerpoint-presentations http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/three-ways-to-spice-up-your-business-powerpoint-presentations#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:50:51 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=6050

Business PowerPoint Presentations have changed a lot in the last ten years, but some of the best presentation secrets have been around for a while. Almost 25 years ago I was given a little book published in the 1950’s. It was entitled, “Public Speaking as the Audience Likes It”. I don’t remember much of the contents, but I do remember the point- when you are preparing to make a presentation, consider the audience and think about the best way to present your material so they will enjoy the experience and remember the valuable material. So here 3 things you need to know to help you relate to your audience when you design a business PowerPoint presentation.

Consider Your Audience

Before you start to design a business presentation, spend some time thinking about those who are going to receive your message. What do they have in common? What do you know about who they are? What do they feel? What experiences have they had? Where are they coming from? Consider, from the audience’s perspective- what is so important about what I have to say? Why should they listen? How will they benefit? And how can I help them enjoy the experience?

Too often we begin our preparation thinking about what we want and need to say. We think about major point and what information we need them to assimilate or remember. We think about our responsibility, and if we have any fear or trepidation about being in front of people, we just wish it were over and prepare the message without much thought given to the audience.

That last line is too much too true. We prepare the message without much thought given to the audience. We think about the message, what we want to say and how we are best going to say it; we prepare our PowerPoint slides hoping that will “wow” the audience into valuing the material. We remember the KISS method of presentations and we keep is simple, stupid. Maybe we remember the old adage, stand up, speak up, shut up, sit down. Fun little sayings, but not much help.

First in your PowerPoint preparation is to consider the audience and the best way to communicate with them. Think about the specific people, the demographics, commonalities, idiosyncrasies; examine them from every angle you can. Also consider your venue- where you will be making your presentation. Will you be on a stage with people seated in front of you; will you be on the same level as your audience; will they be at tables, round or square; will you use a microphone- hand held, lapel, or stationary; what kind of interaction can I facilitate, and the list goes on based on your own experience and creativity. But always consider your audience; it will influence the rest of your presentation.

Second- Involve the Audience


The days of getting up and speaking and then sitting down have past. We live in an age of reality TV in which we get to vote on the results, interactive games on the computer and via game modems, we have unlimited accessibility through cell phones, email and texting. People are not used to sitting back and just listening, the presenter must get them involved. So you have considered your audience, and you know your message, now how do you get the audience involved?

It is more than asking questions and showing slides, it is putting something in their hands, it is incorporating movement, it is using as many of their senses as possible to get them and keep them involved.

Nearly every book on public speaking skills written within the last 15 years has a section on telling stories, but don’t just tell a story, show it. If you were riding a bike, then show it; if you were going over something, show it; if you were involved in a heated conversation, show it; if you were throwing a ball, show- never just tell a story, but show it, use gestures and plenty of them.

Are you talking about something, an object, show it, better yet, if possible give everyone a sample. If you are talking about something with an aroma, then work the smell into your presentation, use a candle, home baked cookies, incense, whatever it takes. Perhaps it is a sound, a firecracker, jet engine, ocean waves- find a way to duplicate it for your audience’s aural stimulation. Perhaps it is a taste, give them something to remind them of the taste, a candy bar; a drink; ice cream- be creative. Maybe it is a texture- then give them something to feel, sandpaper, a piece of cloth, a rock, use your imagination, but incorporate some type of extra sensory experience for your audience to participate with you in the presentation. Be creative and push the envelope. (Some things I have done- handed out ice cream, given latex gloves and pens so the audience could take notes on their hands (five points-five fingers), lit incense prior so the room would smell like pine trees, given out hotel size soaps; spoken in a Santa Claus suit and a guerrilla outfit; given the participants small craft packages to built a boat made out of wooden ice cream spoons a toothpick and a piece of cloth, given out colored pipe cleaners for participants to fashion antennas… the ideas are as limitless as your imagination. Do it- get your audience involved.

Third- Be Concise in Your Closing


Once you had delivered the main thrust of your PowerPoint presentation and have involved the audience, leave them wanting more. Be concise in your closing remarks. Highlight the high points and then be on your way. Too many speakers close with their main points but continue to drag on thinking that re and re-emphasizing will make the message stick. When it is time to end, then end. Don’t keep re-covering the topics and never introduce new material. If you have considered the audience, gotten them involved, then you can make a quick recap and let their involvement continue to speak after you have stopped.

Besides giving thoughtful consideration to your messages, these are three ideas to help your presentation be powerful and memorable- first, consider the audience; second, involve the audience; and third- make your closing concise.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/three-ways-to-spice-up-your-business-powerpoint-presentations/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/participants-of-presentations-skills-class-in-dallas-texas-deliver-concise-and-compelling-presentations http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/participants-of-presentations-skills-class-in-dallas-texas-deliver-concise-and-compelling-presentations#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:22:59 +0000 chrismcneany http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=5887

Presentation skills class in Dallas, Texas November 17-18 provided a great opportunity for participants to deliver concise, compelling presentations.

The Leader’s Institute® held its two-day presentation skills class in Dallas, Texas with a very energetic and enthusiastic group.  Participants were able to get rid of the fear of public speaking and deliver dynamic, engaging presentations.  By the end of the second day, each participant delivered their presentations with ease by learning how to use a clear, easy-to-follow structure.  They were able to design these presentations in 15 minutes or less!  Then they added more flavor to them, by incorporating stories, analogies, demonstrations, and audience participation questions.

The Leader’s Institute® offers more than just a presentation skills class.  It’s truly a life-changing experience!  Classes are offered approximately every 3 months in Dallas, Texas and across the U.S.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/participants-of-presentations-skills-class-in-dallas-texas-deliver-concise-and-compelling-presentations/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-design-your-presentation-based-on-your-audience http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-design-your-presentation-based-on-your-audience#comments Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:53:50 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=5883

When you write a presentation or design a PowerPoint slideshow, make sure and think of your audience first. This public speaking video gives tips on how to write a speech better by considering the wants and needs of your audience first. When your audience changes, your presentation should also change. When your audience changes, your PowerPoint slideshow also needs to change. Consider your audience, and you are much more likely to have a success delivering your presentation.

This presentation skills video is one part of a three-part video series that helps presenters design presentations more quickly and easily. Subscribe to our feed or LIKE us on Facebook to receive additional tips in this series.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-design-your-presentation-based-on-your-audience/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/ymca-of-the-usa-includes-adding-impact-to-presentations-breakout-session-at-their-annual-conference-in-chicago-il http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/ymca-of-the-usa-includes-adding-impact-to-presentations-breakout-session-at-their-annual-conference-in-chicago-il#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 04:55:37 +0000 ellenpatnaude http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=5758

I had a great time in Chicago recently with more than 60 staff from the YMCA of the USA offices from around the country as they held their annual conference, which included a breakout session workshop on Adding Impact to Presentations. The YMCA of the USA is the national organization that umbrellas the YMCA branches found in more than 10,000 communities across the US. This organization has been around for 160 years and serves millions of children and families every year. As one of our partner recipient organizations for our Build-A-Bike team building workshop, we were excited to have the opportunity to work with the Y in their staff’s development.

With only an hour together, it was a fast-paced workshop from the start! We talked about several powerful presentation skills tools for adding impact to any public speaking situation, and then did two exercises that gave everyone the opportunity to try them out. Storytelling is one of our most powerful tools, and the participants had a great time learning more about each other as they practiced our specific format.

“Everyone loved the presentation skills workshop! It was the first one to fill up when we offered it at registration, and it exceeded everyone’s expectations. Ellen was wonderful to work with before, during and after! We will definitely do this again in the future!” — Jackie Gordon, YMCA of the USA

Even hour-long breakout sessions can prove highly effective for enhancing your team’s presentation skills. The interactive style of workshop gives everyone the chance to try out what they are learning. If you want to give your next conference breakout sessions a boost, consider one of our many presentation skills or team building skills workshops!

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/ymca-of-the-usa-includes-adding-impact-to-presentations-breakout-session-at-their-annual-conference-in-chicago-il/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-tip-stories-and-examples-reduce-public-speaking-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-tip-stories-and-examples-reduce-public-speaking-fear#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:33:17 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=5531

Stories and Examples Reduce Public Speaking Fear

The fastest and easiest way to eliminate public speaking fear is to insert more examples and stories into your formal presentations or PowerPoint Slideshows. When participants in public speaking classes are first introduced to this technique, many of them will often resist the advice thinking, “My presentations are technical (or numbers oriented or academic) so my audience isn’t really into stories.” When a presenter has this attitude, he/she is missing out on a fantastic opportunity to make their presentations easier to follow and understand, more memorable, and easier to deliver. Your audience not only wants examples, but they also expect examples to help them better understand your content.

Stories Make Presentations Easier to Follow and Easier to Understand

The more technical a presentation, the more vital it is to include stories and examples. A technical presentation without examples is purely theoretical, whereas a technical presentation with examples is extremely practical.

For example, let’s say that I’m delivering a presentation on last quarter’s financials for my company. If I just give the audience the numbers… Last quarter, we had a 15% increase in revenue, but profit was down 1.2%, I’ve given the audience the technical aspects of the presentation, but the audience is likely to be unclear of exactly WHY the numbers came out the way that they did. So in order to give the audience a clearer understanding, I’d need to include the story behind the numbers. What happened to cause the increase in revenue and why did profit suffer?

The presenter could relay the explanation in a story by telling the audience how in the middle of the last quarter, the company invested in some new advertising that finally hit in the last month of the quarter. As a result, for the last few weeks, the phones have been ringing quite a bit more frequently, but not all of the new leads generated from the advertising have closed yet, so profit should return shortly. For example, Chris, one of our telephone sales reps got a lead two weeks ago from Microsoft in which he is in the process of negotiating a big $80,000 contract. He expects that contract to close in the next 10 days. We have another seven pending contracts that should close in the next 30 days as well.

The example clarifies the data and makes it easier for the audience to understand—even if they are unfamiliar with the technical side of the business. You don’t have to be an accountant to understand how the revenue can be up and profit down temporarily if you’ve just listened to the story above.

Stories Make Presentations Easier to Remember

When we give our audience a list of facts, figures, and numbers, most often, the audience will remember only a small percentage of the data that is presented to them. However, when we give the data in a story format, the data becomes much more memorable. For example, year to date, Joe’s closing ratio is 12.3%, Colette’s ratio is 21.7%, and Bill is at 7.5%. The average ratio is 13.83% which 3.8% higher than our 10% goal that we set in January. Many presenters will give lots of data in a format such as this (a list… a chart… a graph), but if we just recite the data and numbers without the context, the figures are very challenging to remember.

So let’s test the theory. Without looking back at the numbers above, who had the highest closing ratio, and what was that ratio? If you were able to remember the number, then congratulations. You are in a vast minority of people. Most people forget numbers the moment that they hear them. Now let’s deliver the numbers in a story format and see if it’s easier to remember.

At the beginning of the year, we set a goal of have a 10% closing ratio for our sales team. One of the ways that we wanted to accomplish this goal was to focus more on repeat business. Colette, who is one of our best sales reps, took this goal to heart, and she has really focused on working with her current customers. For example, last fall, she worked with Jet Blue on a series of contracts that brought in about $50,000 in business in their New York hub. Since they are such a good customer, she started working with them to do similar programs in one more of their hubs in Salt Lake City. As a result, she was able to generate an additional $50,000 on the West Coast last quarter. She increased her personal closing ratio to 21.7% because she is getting multiple contracts off of the same lead.

After reading that story, who is our best sales rep? What was her closing ratio? How much total revenue was she able to generate from Jet Blue? If you were able to correctly answer these questions, you’re now seeing the power of stories.

Stories Reduce Public Speaking Fear

Just as a long list of numbers and statistics is hard for an audience member to remember, it’s equally hard for the presenter to remember. As a result, when we stand up to recite a list of facts, we put tremendous pressure on ourselves in increase nervousness dramatically. However, when we deliver the facts and figures in a story format, the delivery is much easier.

Basically, when we tell a story from our own first-person experience, all we really have to do is play the video tape in our head of what actually happened and just recite it as we remember it. This takes away a lot of the pressure. One of the most dramatic changes that class participants receive when they learn this secret is a dramatic reduction in public speaking fear. In fact, if you can use stories or example to prove or verify your bullet points, you’ll wow your audience and pretty much eliminate your fear of public speaking. It’s a win-win solution to public speaking nervousness.

This is an embarrassing example, but it really shows how this works. I was hired to deliver a keynote speech for an association in Chicago, so on the plane trip into ORD, I wrote out the speech that I’d be delivering a couple hours later. (Since I teach people how to write presentations pretty quickly, this is kind of a normal habit for me.) Well, about three or four minutes before I was introduced, the director of the organization introduced me to the president of the organization and let me know that the meeting would be called to order shortly. He said that he would start with a few points of order, but that I would be introduced shortly after the start of the meeting. As I sat down in my seat, I looked over at the seat next to me, and it had a meeting agenda sitting on it. As I looked down at the agenda, I noticed that it had my name listed as the keynote speaker, but the topic of my speech was total different than the one that I had designed on the plane. My heart dropped, and I started to feel a little dizzy. Panic was just about to hit me, and I paused, thought about the topic, came up with a few tips, and basically wrote the whole speech as I was walking up to the front of the room to deliver it. When the speech was over, I got a standing ovation. What made the speech work, though, was that I reinforced each of the tips with a simple real-life story of how to use it. Every time I completed another story, my nervousness dropped. It worked perfectly, and the audience loved it.
So give examples and stories, and you’ll feel more comfortable and your audience will love you.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-tip-stories-and-examples-reduce-public-speaking-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-stories-make-your-presentations-more-memorable http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-stories-make-your-presentations-more-memorable#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:12:27 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=5527

In this public speaking tips video, Rob Jackson, instructor for the Fearless Presentations® Public Speaking Class, shows how when you add stories to your presentations, you make your speeches much more memorable. Audience members will remember statistics and data much easier in your PowerPoint slideshows if you relay the stories behind the numbers. Give your audience the examples that explain the data, and they will remember a lot more of your presentation. Adding stories to your presentation is one of the most important public speaking tip that you’ll ever come across.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-stories-make-your-presentations-more-memorable/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-stories-make-your-presentations-more-understandable http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-stories-make-your-presentations-more-understandable#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 15:55:46 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=5524

This public speaking skills video helps presenters make their presentations more understandable and easier to follow by adding stories and examples into the structure of their PowerPoint presentation or slideshow. In addition to reducing public speaking fear, stories allow the audience to better picture in their minds exactly what the presenter is trying to communicate. So if you want to improve your public speaking, add stories and examples into your presentations.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-stories-make-your-presentations-more-understandable/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-stories-reduce-public-speaking-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-stories-reduce-public-speaking-fear#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:05:44 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=5439

Public Speaking Tips Video: Stories Reduce Public Speaking Fear

One of the easiest ways to reduce the fear of public speaking is by inserting stories or examples to reinforce or back-up facts or statistics in your presentation. Stories are easy to deliver, and you don’t have to memorize them, so they reduce public speaking fear.

To Register for a Fearless Presentations Public Speaking Class, click here.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-stories-reduce-public-speaking-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-class-in-san-diego-helps-participants-delivers-fearless-presentations http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-class-in-san-diego-helps-participants-delivers-fearless-presentations#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:00:05 +0000 chrismcneany http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=5363

Public Speaking Class in San Diego helps participants deliver Fearless Presentations. The Leader’s Institute® traveled to beautiful San Diego, California to conduct its Fearless Presentations public speaking class on September 20-21.

Participants attended the course to overcome the fear of public speaking and to improve their presentation skills.  By working with a trained coach, each participant was able to receive personalized coaching and take their presentations to the next level.  This group was able to incorporate stories into their presentations very effectively.  Stories help to capture the audience’s attention, build rapport, and relax when they feel those nervous jitters coming on.  They experienced firsthand how the use of stories in presentations is a win-win situation!

Whether your are in San Diego, California or any one of the other fifty cities where we conduct Fearless Presentations®, we have public speaking classes scheduled year round.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-class-in-san-diego-helps-participants-delivers-fearless-presentations/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear-the-quick-and-easy-way-to-fearless-presentations http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear-the-quick-and-easy-way-to-fearless-presentations#comments Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:15:55 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=4742

The fear of public speaking is still one of the biggest and most debilitating fears. Public speaking fear causes competent professionals to miss out on fantastic opportunities to persuade and win people to their way of thinking. So where does this fear come from? Better yet… How does the average person get rid of it? The truth is that public speaking is a skill just like any other skill in that the first time that you do it, you will be nervous. However, if you are still feeling the fear time after time, it’s probably caused by some of the things that you are doing to try to eliminate that fear. That’s right… Often the things that you do to try to reduce public speaking fear actually end up CAUSING this presentation nervousness.

Where Public Speaking Fear Comes From?

Anytime a person tries something for the first time, he or she will feel nervousness or anxiety about it. Remember back when you got on a bicycle for the first time? Or the first time you tried to drive on the freeway? We tend to remember situations like riding a bike for the first time or driving a car for the first time because in those situations, we felt an imminent threat to our safety — the bigger that threat to our safety is, the more intense the fear or nervousness. For instance, if you have ever been sky-diving or bungee jumping, you probably felt a lot of fear.

Last week, I took a trip to London with my wife, and since we had been to London a few times, we decided to do some of the things that we always wanted to do, but just never got around to it. So we ended up going to St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is the big architectural centerpiece of London that the US Capitol building was modeled after. On the tour, we got to walk up over 500 stairs up to the very top of the dome. When we got to the top, an usher was sitting in a chair and looked at us and pointed to a small peek-hole built into the floor. My heart started racing as I leaned over and peeked through. Now I knew that there was a solid floor between me and the cathedral floor hundreds and hundreds of feet below, but that didn’t really help. I could feel the room start to spin a little as I got just a little queasy. Somehow my sub-conscious mind came to the conclusion that if I wasn’t careful, my 225 lb body was going to squeeze through this four inch hole and fall to my death on the hard stone surface below. It was a crazy thought. I quickly looked up and realized that I was still in the safety of the confined room, and I started to think more clearly. When I looked a second time, it was still scary, but not nearly as debilitating. Fear when you attempt something new is normal, and if it’s NOT there, you’re likely to have a much bigger problem than if it IS there.

To a lesser extent, though, we feel this fear constantly when we try something new even if the threat of bodily harm is not apparent. For instance, when I got my first Smart Phone, and I accessed the App Store, I was really nervous about downloading that very first “Free App” because I was scared to death that I’d end up with a recurring charge on my phone bill that I’d never be able to get rid of. I felt the same way years ago the first time I entered a credit card number on Amazon.com and bought a book. Nervousness is normal when we try something new. The more imminent the threat to our safety, the more nerve-racking the activity will be. For instance, my heart beat a lot faster when the first time I went bungee jumping than it did the first time than when I bought a book on Amazon.

I good analogy for this fear is when you are walking down a lonely street in a big city. If you see petite woman in a white lab coat walking toward you, you may not feel a lot of fear. However, if you see a teenage with tattoos and gang paraphernalia, you might start to experience a bit a anxiety. If you see four people dressed the same way, and two of them are carrying baseball bats, you will likely feel great fear. The more that you are threatened by an experience, the more fear you will fear during the experience.

Public speaking fear comes from an internal sense of a threat. The more that you see the speaking activity as a threat, the more fear you will feel. So, the key to lowering the threat is to lower the risk. For instance, in the analogy above where a gang of hoodlums is coming at you with baseball bats, if you happen to be accompanied by a couple of armed bodyguards, you will probably not feel nearly as much fear as you would if you were alone and unarmed.

Lower the Risk, Lower the Threat, Lower the Fear

When the risk of harm is lowered, the fear will diminish pretty dramatically. When I was high above St. Paul’s Cathedral, and I took that second look, I had consciously reassured myself that it would be impossible for me to fall. So the second look was not nearly as shocking as the first look. The first time I drove on the expressway, I was a nervous wreck (no pun intended), but after years of success driving at fairly fast speeds, now when I drive on the expressway, it’s almost second nature.

There are times that I’ve driven to the store or my office, and I put my car into park at my destination and think, “How did I get here?” The process was so second-nature to me, that I didn’t even have to think about it.

The skill of public speaking can happen in much the same way. Public speaking training with a good coach can ensure that you gain confidence in a step-by-step fashion so that as you get up in front of the next group, you have a pretty good shot at having a successful experience. Since the risk of failure is now lower, your fear will lower as well. The lower that your risk of failure becomes, the lower your fear will be as well. So after you train with a good coach, and you deliver your next presentation, because you are better prepared, you’re more likely to have a successful experience. The fear may still be there for this first run, but once you complete the presentation, and you have performed well during the speech, you’ll feel more confident about what you’ve accomplished. So the next time that you stand up to speak, it should be much easier. And the next time, easier still.

Are You Growing as a Speaker?

The point is that every time that you speak, you should have a success — You should set yourself up for success. And every time that you have an additional success, your confidence should grow. If that is not happening for you, then something is interrupting this cycle. For instance, some public speaking classes have a teacher or an instructor who uses constructive criticism as a coaching tool. Typically, the class member will deliver the speech, sit down, and receive a critique of his/her performance.

So instead of the teacher helping the class member deliver the initial speech better (helping the participant succeed), the teacher waits for the participant to fail and then gives a critique that reinforces that failure. As a result, when the class member stands up to deliver his/her next speech, instead of confidence, the person is experiencing a higher risk of failure. “I failed last time, so I’m likely to also fail this time… As soon as I sit down, I’m going to get another critique.”

A good public speaking coach will help a speaker deliver a better speech in the first place and then build on each of these successes. The difference in styles would be like letting a four-year-old get on a new bike and pedal and fall… pedal and fall… pedal and fall, and then once the kid is really frustrated coming over and critiquing her performance by telling her the three main things that she did wrong. Then waiting a week or two and repeat the process again. Although the fear would be high on the first attempt, the fear would be even higher the second time this new rider tried to get on the bike. A good coach will hold the seat for the child and then praise her performance once she has a small success. Once she has even a small success the risk of failure lowers, and although she’ll still be nervous, she’s now willing to attempt something more complicated. As the successes grow, the confidence will grow as well.

Get a good public speaking coach, and your confidence will grow. The Leader’s Institute® offers Fearless Presentations® Public Speaking Classes in cities all over the world. Click the link to access a class schedule or to request information.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear-the-quick-and-easy-way-to-fearless-presentations/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-public-speaking-fear-grows-with-constructive-criticism http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-public-speaking-fear-grows-with-constructive-criticism#comments Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:55:58 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=5272

A new video about how helpful coworkers, supervisors, even spouses who give us constructive criticism to help us reduce public speaking fear actually have an opposite effect. Constructive criticism causes public speaking fear!

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-public-speaking-fear-grows-with-constructive-criticism/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/the-leaders-institute-presentation-skills-class-delivers-world-class-presentations-in-chicago-illinois http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/the-leaders-institute-presentation-skills-class-delivers-world-class-presentations-in-chicago-illinois#comments Wed, 28 Sep 2011 03:34:25 +0000 chrismcneany http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=5126

The Leader’s Institute® conducted a presentation skills class in Chicago, IL, where participants not only improved their public speaking skills, but also delivered outstanding presentations by the end of the second day!

The class is designed to reduce the nervousness that often comes with public speaking, and teach students how to design a world class presentation in 15 minutes or less.  We had a very enthusiastic group of people who came from both the Chicago area and from across Illinois and the United States to take the class.  They especially enjoyed learning tools to improve impromptu speaking, and had a lot of fun in the process.  Good job everyone!

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/the-leaders-institute-presentation-skills-class-delivers-world-class-presentations-in-chicago-illinois/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-reduce-public-speaking-risk-and-reduce-public-speaking-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-reduce-public-speaking-risk-and-reduce-public-speaking-fear#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:09:14 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=5067

Public Speaking Video: Reduce Public Speaking Risk and Reduce Public Speaking Fear. The fear of public speaking basically comes from an increased risk of failure. The bigger the risk, the bigger the fear. So if you lower the risk associated with public speaking — in essence insure that you have a success when you stand up to speak, the nervousness and fear diminishes significantly.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-reduce-public-speaking-risk-and-reduce-public-speaking-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/stories-and-examples-reduce-public-speaking-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/stories-and-examples-reduce-public-speaking-fear#comments Mon, 05 Sep 2011 20:18:15 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=5025

The fastest and easiest way to eliminate public speaking fear is to insert more examples and stories into your formal presentations or PowerPoint Slideshows.  When participants in public speaking classes are first introduced to this technique, many of them will often resist the advice thinking, “My presentations are technical (or numbers oriented or academic) so my audience isn’t really into stories.” When a presenter has this attitude, he/she is missing out on a fantastic opportunity to make their presentations easier to follow and understand, more memorable, and easier to deliver. Your audience not only wants examples, but they also expect examples to help them better understand your content.

Stories Make Presentations Easier to Follow and Easier to Understand

The more technical a presentation, the more vital it is to include stories and examples. A technical presentation without examples is purely theoretical, whereas a technical presentation with examples is extremely practical. For example, let’s say that I’m delivering a presentation on last quarter’s financials for my company.  If I just give the audience the numbers… Last quarter, we had a 15% increase in revenue, but profit was down 1.2%, I’ve given the audience the technical aspects of the presentation, but the audience is likely to be unclear of exactly WHY the numbers came out the way that they did. So in order to give the audience a clearer understanding, I’d need to include the story behind the numbers. What happened to cause the increase in revenue and why did profit suffer?

The presenter could relay the explanation in a story by telling the audience how in the middle of the last quarter, the company invested in some new advertising that finally hit in the last month of the quarter. As a result, for the last few weeks, the phones have been ringing quite a bit more frequently, but not all of the new leads generated from the advertising have closed yet, so profit should return shortly. For example, Chris, one of our telephone sales reps got a lead two weeks ago from Microsoft in which he is in the process of negotiating a big $80,000 contract. He expects that contract to close in the next 10 days. We have another seven pending contracts that should close in the next 30 days as well.

The example clarifies the data and makes it easier for the audience to understand—even if they are unfamiliar with the technical side of the business. You don’t have to be an accountant to understand how the revenue can be up and profit down temporarily if you’ve just listened to the story above.

Stories Make Presentations Easier to Remember

When we give our audience a list of facts, figures, and numbers, most often, the audience will remember only a small percentage of the data that is presented to them. However, when we give the data in a story format, the data becomes much more memorable. For example, year to date, Joe’s closing ratio is 12.3%, Colette’s ratio is 21.7%, and Bill is at 7.5%. The average ratio is 13.83% which 3.8% higher than our 10% goal that we set in January.

So let’s test the theory. Without looking back at the numbers above, who had the highest closing ratio, and what was that ratio? If you were able to remember the number, then congratulations.  You are in a vast minority of people.  Most people forget numbers the moment that they hear them. Now let’s deliver the numbers in a story format and see if it’s easier to remember.

At the beginning of the year, we set a goal of have a 10% closing ratio for our sales team.  One of the ways that we wanted to accomplish this goal was to focus more on repeat business. Colette, who is one of our best sales reps, took this goal to heart, and she has really focused on working with her current customers.  For example, last fall, she worked with Jet Blue on a series of contracts that brought in about $50,000 in business in their New York hub.  Since they are such a good customer, she started working with them to do similar programs in one more of their hubs in Salt Lake City.  As a result, she was able to generate an additional $50,000 on the West Coast last quarter.  She increased her personal closing ratio to 21.7% because she is getting multiple contracts off of the same lead.

After reading that story, who is our best sales rep? What was her closing ratio? How much total revenue was she able to generate from Jet Blue?  If you were able to correctly answer these questions, you’re now seeing the power of stories.

Stories Reduce Public Speaking Fear

Just as a long list of numbers and statistics is hard for an audience member to remember, it’s equally hard for the presenter to remember.  As a result, when we stand up to recite a list of facts, we put tremendous pressure on ourselves in increase nervousness dramatically.  However, when we deliver the facts and figures in a story format, the delivery is much easier.

Basically, when we tell a story from our own first-person experience, all we really have to do is play the video tape in our head of what actually happened and just recite it as we remember it.  This takes away a lot of the pressure.  One of the most dramatic changes that class participants receive when they learn this secret is a dramatic reduction in public speaking fear.  In fact, if you can use stories or example to prove or verify your bullet points, you’ll wow your audience and pretty much eliminate your fear of public speaking.  It’s a win-win solution to public speaking nervousness.

This is an embarrassing example, but it really shows how this works.  I was hired to deliver a keynote speech for an association in Chicago, so on the plane trip into ORD, I wrote out the speech that I’d be delivering a couple hours later.  (Since I teach people how to write presentations pretty quickly, this is kind of a normal habit for me.)  Well, about three or four minutes before I was introduced, the director of the organization introduced me to the president of the organization and let me know that the meeting would be called to order shortly.  He said that he would start with a few points of order, but that I would be introduced shortly after the start of the meeting.  As I sat down in my seat, I looked over at the seat next to me, and it had a meeting agenda sitting on it.  As I looked down at the agenda, I noticed that it had my name listed as the keynote speaker, but the topic of my speech was total different than the one that I had designed on the plane.  My heart dropped, and I started to feel a little dizzy.  Panic was just about to hit me, and I paused, thought about the topic, came up with a few tips, and basically wrote the whole speech as I was walking up to the front of the room to deliver it.  When the speech was over, I got a standing ovation.  What made the speech work, though, was that I reinforced each of the tips with a simple real-life story of how to use it.  Every time I completed another story, my nervousness dropped.  It worked perfectly, and the audience loved it.

So give examples and stories, and you’ll feel more comfortable and your audience will love you.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/stories-and-examples-reduce-public-speaking-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-where-does-public-speaking-fear-come-from http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-where-does-public-speaking-fear-come-from#comments Fri, 02 Sep 2011 02:49:51 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=4975

Public Speaking Fear: New video Where does public speaking fear comes from? This video is a preview of a series of 30 public speaking tips videos that we are creating that will accompany 10 chapters of our new public speaking book that will be published in the next few months. This first video explains where public speaking fear comes from so that you can then eliminate the fear. Please let us know what you think.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/video-where-does-public-speaking-fear-come-from/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/self-growth-website http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/self-growth-website#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:29:45 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=1966

Just wanted to let you know about one of my absolute favorite websites called www.selfgrowth.com. It has one of the most comprehensive libraries of motivational and self-help articles, videos, websites, and more, and it is a great place to spend a few minutes early in the morning before the work day. If you are a fan of the site, let me know by hitting the LIKE button above.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/self-growth-website/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/people-judge-your-competence-by-confidence-that-you-show http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/people-judge-your-competence-by-confidence-that-you-show#comments Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:37:54 +0000 Public Speaking Course » presentation skills http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=4694

The Importance of Self-Confidence People will judge our COMPETENCE by the CONFIDENCE that we show. For example, let’s say that you are going in for surgery, and just before you go under, the surgeon walks into your room. His posture is slouching, as he speaks, he stumbles over his words somewhat, and when you look at his hands, they are trembling a little. Now, it doesn’t matter how good of a surgeon he is, you’ll probably want a second opinion (maybe even a third opinion) — Fast! Well, it’s the same in just about any industry. People judge how good we are at what we do by how confident we are when we communicate with them. If we speak with poise and confidence, they will automatically make the assumption that we are competent at what we do until we prove ourselves otherwise. The opposite is true as well. When we speak with nervousness or fear, the audience will automatically assume that we don’t know what we are doing until we prove ourselves otherwise.

Trainee Perception

A couple of days ago, I took my kids to a fast-food place. It was pretty busy, so I jumped in the shortest line. When I got to the front of the line, I gave the young person my order, and I could tell by the look in her eyes that something I had said had confused her. She looked down at her screen and started searching for the item that I had mentioned. My first impression of her kicked in, and it was “Wait a minute… something is wrong her.” I watched her finger searching the electronic menu, I could see it tremble a little. I changed my impression to “Ahhh… must be a trainee.” Immediately after drawing that conclusion, I glanced at her name tag, and there it was… Trainee in small letters under her name. (By the way, she gave us great service and did a great job, but that is not the point.) The point is that her self-consciousness caused her to question herself. When she questioned herself, she showed nervousness. The nervousness came across to me as her not being that good at working the cash register, yet. Do you want to give the perception to people that you are a Trainee or that you are the Professional?

You are the Expert! Communicate that Way

To be the professional, you want to exude self-confidence when you present to groups, speak to individuals in a one-on-one fashion, and when you lead people. That way, the outside appearance matches the inside competence.

The Fearless Presentations^® Public Speaking Class Eliminates Public Speaking Fear

To overcome public speaking fear, break the skill into component parts and master each part. Fearless Presentations^® helps each presenter have a series of public speaking successes by changing the way that we PREPARE for a presentation. Our step-by-step process makes writing and delivering presentations much easier. Once you have a series of success after success after success with zero failures in between, the fear of public speaking fades away… just like the fear of driving on the freeway faded after a few successes.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/people-judge-your-competence-by-confidence-that-you-show/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-skills-class-can-build-self-confidence-in-other-areas-as-well http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-skills-class-can-build-self-confidence-in-other-areas-as-well#comments Thu, 26 May 2011 17:15:33 +0000 Public Speaking Course » presentation skills http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=4549

Public Speaking Confidence is Seen by Others as Competence

Public speaking skills or presentation skills will often lead to greater esteem from coworkers and peers, so when up-and-coming leaders and managers focus on building self-confidence in public speaking, that same confidence often spills over into other areas as well. When a person speaks with poise and confidence, the listeners often promote the speaker to a position of being an expert in whatever topic the speaker is presenting. As a result, once the speaker begins to realize how others see him/her, the speaker begins to see himself/herself differently as well. An audience will always judge a speakers competence by the confidence that he or she portrays.

I try to never use politicians as examples, but a few recent political examples come to mind. In 2002, Barack Obama was asked to speak at the Democrat’s convention, and the crowd went wild when he spoke. He was the young, up-and-coming leader of the party. At the time, he had practiced law a few years, been an attorney for ACORN for a few years, and was recently elected to the Illinois House of Representatives, but because of the way that he spoke, the audience saw him has being a competent leader. (I’ll let you be the judge as to whether they made the correct choice.) In recent weeks, Donald Trump and Herman Cain have jumped into the fray and developed loyal followers from their speeches. Cain was the CEO of Godfathers Pizza, and he’s been a radio talk show host for a while. At a recent speech, political commentators were amazed when Cain “Ad Libbed” an entire speech, meaning that he delivered his presentation without any notes. His confidence is winning followers over.

Public Speaking Fear Causes Missed Opportunities

Self consciousness or public speaking fear causes a speaker to hesitate when opportunities present themselves. That risk of failure causes people to pause and say, “I wonder if I should say something here…?”  That moment of hesitation is typically all that a more confident person needs to get noticed in a positive way. Later, the person who hesitates will likely kick himself saying, “That was my idea! I should have said something.”

I remember when I was first starting out in the business world, I worked for a big oil company, and the a big problem with government paperwork was being discussed at a staff meeting. Because I was new to the group, I didn’t have the preconceived notions that the others at the table had.  The solution seemed simple and easy, but because I was so new, I paused. The discussion continued, and the more that each person contributed, the more that my idea looked pretty good. But I still kept silent. One of the directors who was in the room, Mary Lou, thought for a second and told the group a simple solution that was really, really close to the idea that I had. That idea was implemented, and Mary Lou was a hero. A couple of years later, when the price of oil dropped and over 300 people were laid off, Mary Lou was one of the few who were kept.  Executives look for people who contribute good ideas that create value for the company.

Public Speaking Training Classes Can Help

When participants attend public speaking classes or presentation skills courses (good ones anyway), the complete a series of successful presentations over and over. Once they have these successes, future presentations become easier.  The risk associated with presenting is lowered, so these speakers tend to hesitate less when opportunities present themselves. When confidence in speaking is paired with competence in your field, people around you begin to see you as the expert. You become more valuable to your company.

Attend a public speaking class, a good presentations skills class, and you will increase your success in many different areas.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-skills-class-can-build-self-confidence-in-other-areas-as-well/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/underlying-causes-of-public-speaking-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/underlying-causes-of-public-speaking-fear#comments Sat, 07 May 2011 14:09:00 +0000 Public Speaking Course » presentation skills http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=4494

Questioner:	Sabrina
Category:	Public Speaking
Private:	No
Subject:	Underlying Causes
Question:	QUESTION: Doug, I was wondering what you thought were some causes of the fear of public speaking, such as previous traumatic experiences or possibly other fears such as the fear of judgement that cause the fear of public speaking. Also, what do you know about people’s acceptance of this fear, and if many people cannot admit their fear to others? ANSWER: Sabrina, the cause of public speaking fear (any fear for that matter) is pretty simple… Anytime we try something new (any new skill whether it’s learning to ride a bike when we’re 4 or 5 years old, learning to drive a car when you are 15, or learning how to use a computer or new smartphone, etc.) we will have quite a bit of nervousness. If during the practice, we have what we consider to be a success, our confidence grows.  If we have what we consider to be a failure, our nervousness increases.  The more times that we attempt something and have one of the challenges, the more difficult it becomes to attempt the same skill in the future. So if someone doesn’t attempt to speak in front of a group very often, and the person has a challenge in front of a group, he/she will have a tougher time speaking in the future.  The only way to overcome this fear is to replace the “perceived failures” with successes. For instance, when we teach our Fearless Presentations class, we start each presenter with a fairly simplistic presentation to deliver in the beginning, and then we add more to it in future presentations.  So every time the speaker is presenting, he/she is building on past successes to build confidence.  It works every time. People sometime do have a tough time admitting fear to others, because they think it makes them look weak.  As a result, they tend to avoid opportunities that could cause this fear to manifest itself.  As a result, they will often pass up opportunities succeed. Doug Staneart ———- FOLLOW-UP ———- QUESTION: Thanks so much for your reply! I was also wondering if you that these “failures” are not only leading to that specific fear, but also to a judgement of ourselves that we are therefore failures, which then can possibly lead to us fearing others judgement of ourselves because of our lowered self-esteem. I am also wondering if possibly other failures other speaking in front of people could possibly cause this fear. Such as a “failure” in another activity which then leads to a fear of people judging you, which will ultimately lead to a fear of public speaking. I also wonder if in these classes where you teach people how to get over their fears, whether you consider and use this as an effective way to help them understand and overcome their fear.
Answer:	Sabrina, sorry for the delay in responding. I just realized that you asked a follow up question (I thought it was a duplicate of the original question.) Yes, fear not only comes from true “failures” but also “perceived failures.” Once they occur, they will make self-confidence and self-esteem fall (at least a little). A perceived failure in one area can cause overall self-esteem to fall as well. For instance, when something traumatic like a physical attack or accident occurs to some people, they retreat and stop participating in other activities. However, success or perceived success has an opposite reaction. I find that when people get a good public speaking coach and gain confidence in presentation skills that the self-confidence spills over into other areas of their life as well and self-confidence and self-esteem grows dramatically. Many people who complete formal presentation training with a good coach tend to accomplish a lot of fantastic things in a short period of time. Many get promoted (sometimes two and three levels in a year or so), gain a lot of prestige and esteem from others, and more. Doug Staneart America’s Fearless Presentations Coach

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/underlying-causes-of-public-speaking-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/keeping-the-peace-at-work-conflict-resolution-from-a-boss-perspective http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/keeping-the-peace-at-work-conflict-resolution-from-a-boss-perspective#comments Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:48:03 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=4396

Steele Steadiman is a boss… (not a leader or a manager) and is in an eternal conflict with human resources. If you are looking for leadership training or to be a good coach with your direct reports, it’s a good idea to just do the opposite of what he suggests. However, if you are looking for a very entertaining keynote speaker, Steele will get your group fired up.

A survey by Accountemps indicates Managers spend an average of 18 percent of their time intervening in employee disputes. That is more than seven hours a week or nine weeks per year.   Past Accountemps studies from as far back as 1991 show very similar results.

These survey results show what it is important to be a Strong Boss.  Employees’ personal problems are messy and like a tidal wave of emotion can eat up a lot of time.  The touchy, feely folks at Accountemps offer five tips for minimizing personality conflicts.  I have added my own suggestions.

1.     Know when to step in. You don’t want to interject every time a minor issue arises, but you can’t afford to turn a blind eye to problems that jeopardize the group’s output… Steele says, “Punish all parties involved in the disruption.  This will keep employees from bothering you with their petty problems.”

2.     Don’t let one bad apple spoil the bunch. When friction is clearly stemming from the actions of a single individual, remind that person that the ability to collaborate and treat coworkers with respect is a requirement of the job.  Steele says, “Collaborate?!?  No, Elaborate your dissatisfaction with the employee twice and then fire the troublemaker.”

3.     Help employees get to know each other. Provide opportunities for your staff to interact in non-work activities, such as lunches or volunteer activities; familiarity can breed greater understanding.  Steele says, Oh please!  Strong Bosses don’t get involved in familiarity.  Remember familiarity breed’s contempt.  Keep your distance from employees and don’t waste time on socializing.

4.     Reward positive role models. Dole out praise, promotions and choice assignments to individuals who contribute to a supportive work environment. Recognizing staff for being team players sends a clear message that how they interact with others is as important as their job performance.  Steele says, “You can tell eggheads from Human Resources are involved with this suggestion.  Nothing is as important as job performance.  To suggest that being a team player is the same as being the top producer is just silly!

5. Make good hiring choices from the start. Hiring individuals with excellent interpersonal skills who are a good fit with your organization’s culture will reduce the potential for future conflicts.   Steele says, “It is a big mistake to look for interpersonal skills in hiring.  People like that talk too much and want to be happy.  I think you look for the best talent with the least interpersonal skills.  This way the new employee keeps their mouth shut, head down and focuses on the work in front of them.

Steele Steadiman is a Bosses’ Boss.  After a successful career in the business world, he is committed to showing weak leaders the path to control.  Steele is the author of “Squish Creativity Like a Bug.” He lectures and travels the world helping bring managers and leaders to his level.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/keeping-the-peace-at-work-conflict-resolution-from-a-boss-perspective/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/do-you-really-know-how-to-motivate-your-team http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/do-you-really-know-how-to-motivate-your-team#comments Tue, 05 Apr 2011 01:26:36 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=4311

Leadership, And Management Skills Are Not Coded Into Our DNA.  Do You Really Know How To Motivate Your Team?

Leadership and management skills are not coded into our DNA.  But you hear people say, “He or she is a born leader.”  Well….not really.  They may know less about their own team and what motivates it than they imagined.  Just ask managers what motivates workers and they will pop off a list that is topped by “recognition of good work.”  Sure that makes sense.  We all love praise.  But have you talked to your team about what truly motivates them?  Their answers may be very surprising, and certainly enlightening.

A research team at Harvard put diaries in the hands of employees.  What came back was a picture of the psychology of the employee and what motivates them.

§  Making progress at work

§  Figuring something out

§  Completion of difficult tasks

Think back to the last time your boss said, “Good work.”  What does that mean?  Did it feel good?  Or did it feel like a cursory observation?

A strength-centered compliment has a lot more motivational power.  “Ah, you figured it out!  Your intelligence and determination, is obvious by the way you made the details talk to get the answer.”  Now it feels like all of your hard work resulted in a higher level of appreciation, and more importantly, you know you accomplished something, figured it out.

A young Albert Einstein was always trying to figure things out.  Throwing a spit wad at another boy in front of the class produced a scientific “Aha…moment” for him.  He realized that gravity had a role in the speed of the spitball.  His teacher did not care what he learned or achieved, and rewarded him with expulsion.  A small acknowledgement of his discovery may have been worth a little behavior modification.

The Harvard study, part of the Breakthrough Ideas for 2010, offers fitting advice when an employee makes progress, a discovery, or solves a challenge.

“Negative events generally have a greater effect on people’s emotions, perceptions, and motivation than positive ones, and nothing is more demotivating than a setback—the most prominent type of event on knowledge workers’ worst days.”

Good management and skills must be fostered, practiced, practiced more, and used frequently.  If you want to work more effectively with your team, listen to them. There is nothing in DNA coding that makes any of us a natural leader, who motivates and leads well.  Your team has the answers to motivation.  So listen.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/do-you-really-know-how-to-motivate-your-team/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/free-public-speaking-fear-tele-seminar http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/free-public-speaking-fear-tele-seminar#comments Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:58:35 +0000 Public Speaking Course » presentation skills http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=4176


Click here to register for free 30 minute tele-seminar covering…

1. An Overview of Fearless Presentations
2. 10 Ways to reduce public speaking fear (today)
3. Big preparation mistakes that actually cause nervousness (versus reducing it — Ex.: Having Notes in Front of You).

This Tele-Seminar is absolutely free to our friends and fans, but we can only accept the first 25 people because space in the teleseminar is limited. Click the link above to register, but since space is so limited, please don’t register unless you can make it to the seminar.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/free-public-speaking-fear-tele-seminar/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/the-kings-speech-is-a-fantastic-movie-about-presentation-coaching-and-public-speaking-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/the-kings-speech-is-a-fantastic-movie-about-presentation-coaching-and-public-speaking-fear#comments Sun, 13 Feb 2011 21:37:04 +0000 Public Speaking Course » presentation skills http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=4036

My wife and daughter went to see The King’s Speech a few weeks ago, and they couldn’t stop talking about how great it was. So, after a few weeks of hearing about this movie, my daughter (who is nine by the way) convinced me to go see it again with her. I was amazed at how good this movie was. It is the true story of how King George VI of England (father of Queen Elizabeth) successful overcame a traumatic speech impediment (caused by public speaking fear) in order to give a fantastic speech just as England was entering World War II. England was in a desperate situation having just a couple of decades prior already participated in the First World War, Hitler had just declared war against them, and the new king was crowned because his older brother had abdicated his thrown in order to marry a divorced bride from the US. Anyone would have been terrified to give such an important speech while the world was listening, but King George VI had a stutter that became more pronounced when he became more nervous.

The movie is about a “speech therapist” (really a presentation coach) who helped him diminish his fear and reduce his impediment dramatically. A very heartwarming story that was extremely well acted. You will absolutely love this film.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/the-kings-speech-is-a-fantastic-movie-about-presentation-coaching-and-public-speaking-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/speed-is-the-key-to-small-business-lead-generation-follow-up http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/speed-is-the-key-to-small-business-lead-generation-follow-up#comments Sat, 05 Feb 2011 17:33:30 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=3929

By Doug Staneart

Many small businesses pay thousands of dollars for pay-per-click ads for lead generation, and then, when the leads come in, blow it by waiting too long to follow up with them. When people look for information, products, or solutions on the internet, they want instant gratification. If they have to wait for you to send back an email or wait for a phone call from you, you’ve probably already lost them. If they have to wait for you to send them something in the postal mail, you never had a shot anyway.

The first time that I realized just how critical this was, I had been in business for a few years, and my company was a preferred vendor for a training website. Every day, people would visit this website, and because it was so comprehensive, it was very difficult to navigate. As a result, a lot of people would just fill out the form on the website requesting whatever type of training that they were looking for. As soon as someone filled out the form, it automatically got posted onto the secure side, so if you were one of these preferred businesses, you could login at any time and see what had been posted.

To help us all out, though, the owner of the website would send out a summary at the end of the day, so every evening about 8:00 PM or so, we’d all get an email with a list of all of the leads that came in that day.

I responded to hundreds of these leads without any success whatsoever. Then, one evening, there was a lead for a public speaking class in Dallas. (I owned a company that taught public speaking classes in 50 cities around the world, but we were based in Dallas.) I thought, “Oh, I got this one.” And I responded to it. The next morning, I called the person and introduced myself, and she was the most cold and distant prospect I think I have ever talked to. She just said, “We’ve already chosen someone else,” and hung up. I was totally confused.

So I thought about what I should do to try and close some of these leads, and I figured that I really needed to know what everyone else was doing. So I went onto the site and created a posting of my own. It was about 10:30 AM, and I put into the posting that I would only accept email proposals.

By 11:00 AM, I had already received three proposals. The first was just a generic email with a HUGE attachment that took quite a while to download. It was about 20 MB of brochures in eight separate attachments that I never really went through. The second was just a simple email saying, “If you still need help, call me.” (Okay it was a little more involved than that, but not much.) The third, though, was a beautiful, professional looking proposal. After glancing at it, I had pretty much decided that if I had really been buying a public speaking class, I would have hired that company.

By 3:00 PM, I had about 25 proposals.

By 6:30 PM, I had received almost 50 proposals.

By 8:00 PM, the time that I was typically receiving the summary email from the website, I had received over 72 proposals.

The next morning when I woke up, I had received 143 proposals. After the first 20 or so, I didn’t look at any of them – not even out of curiosity.

When new proposals kept coming in the morning (less than 24 hours since I posted the listing,) they just ticked me off. I was thinking, “What a loser! You’re number 150 on the list.” But remember, that less than 24 hours prior, I was consistently number 73 or 74 on the list every single night.

I met with my team that day to share what I found out. We made a commitment to be the first to respond to every request. We only had six people working for the company, but we decided to assign one person every day just to wait for the phone to ring, one person just to wait for individual email leads to come in, and another just to wait for corporate contract requests to come in.

Our goal was to call any email inquiry back in less than five minutes. The most common comment that we started getting when we made those phone calls was, “Wow! I just hit send. You guys are really fast.”

That year we went from a small half-million dollar company to almost one and a half million dollars. The next year we doubled sales again. The only thing that really changed was the speed at which we were following up with potential clients.

Typical Web Surfer

Typical web surfers will usually do something like this. They have a question and quickly do a Google search. They will scan the first page that pops up looking for a listing summary that most closely relates to what they are looking for. If they find one, they will click the link to see if an answer can be found.

Not finding the answer right away, they might fill out a web form requesting additional information.

Then they will go back to Google and look at the next listing. This one has an FAQ page, and they read a few of them and feel comfortable enough to fill out another form to get a second opinion.

Then they will go back to Google and look one more time. This time, the website has a blog with dozens of helpful articles and a few videos that look really nice. They now pick up the phone and end up getting a voicemail.

They might look at a few more listings, but most will not likely to fill out any more forms. No one wants to be bombarded with spam from a lot of websites, so they will probably be cautious about filling out more forms. They will probably only call additional listings from here on out and only if the website is very compelling.

So here is the big question…

Who is most likely to get the business?

If the owner of the third website had answered the phone instead of having the call go over to voicemail, then that person would have had a tremendous advantage over the other two companies. In fact, if the person replies to the voicemail right away, that owner still has an advantage.

In reality, the person who makes contact with the prospect first and builds rapport with the prospect is always in the driver’s seat.

However, if you respond to the email the next day, the person will answer the phone saying, “Huh? Who are you again?” The person typically forgets entirely that he/she requested the information in the first place.

If the person gets a brochure in the mail a week after sending the email, well… you get the picture.

Speed is your friend in online sales. If you can’t personally follow up on the requests, then hire someone. If you can’t hire someone, then at least invest in a good email follow up system.

Don’t make your good prospects wait for you.

Move quickly. Move nimbly. And make a ton of people happy and a ton of money in the process!

Doug Staneart is the founder of The Leader’s Institute Entrepreneur Boot Camp author of the book Cultivating Customers, Small Business Lead Generation in a Digital Age. His small business seminars help entrepreneurs generate new customers and build small business infrastructure. Visit the Entrepreneur Boot Camp website for details about his programs.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/speed-is-the-key-to-small-business-lead-generation-follow-up/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/upcoming-leadership-boot-camp-seminars http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/upcoming-leadership-boot-camp-seminars#comments Sat, 05 Feb 2011 17:25:46 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=3976



The Leader’s Institute^® Leadership and Public Speaking Boot Camp

A couple of times a year, we schedule one of our “big” seminars which covers all of the content from our two-day High Impact Leaders class, our two-day Fearless Presentations^® public speaking course, and a lot of content from our Entrepreneur Workshops as well. If you can only attend one of our seminars, this is the one to travel to, because it definitely gives each participant the most “bang for the buck”. For details about the content of the Leadership Boot Camp Seminar, just click this link. If you’d like to save a spot for yourself and maybe a coworker or partner, make sure and register early as these seminars typically sell out. To register, just click the button next to any of the descriptions below.

3-Day Public Speaking and Leadership Boot Camp. This leadership course is a Big Event with Guest Speakers. Tuition is $499/person.

May 19-21, 2011 Dallas/Ft. Worth, DFW Westin (8:00 AM to 4:30 PM)

May 26-28, 2011 Indianapolis, Sheraton (8:00 AM to 4:30 PM)

Seating is limited in all of our public speaking courses and leadership seminars, and we reserve seats in each program on a first come, first served basis. If you want to attend one of these sessions, make sure and register early!

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/upcoming-leadership-boot-camp-seminars/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/dump-the-data-and-tell-me-a-story http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/dump-the-data-and-tell-me-a-story#comments Sat, 05 Feb 2011 17:15:21 +0000 Public Speaking Course » presentation skills http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=3969

Fearless-what every presenter wants to be.  Overcoming public speaking jitters is often as simple as dumping the data, and telling stories.  Stacking your brain with statistics, or dumping them onto a slide guarantees one thing – your audience will disconnect.  However, when a speaker turns boring statistics into real life stories he or she makes the audience sit up and listen, “appreciate” not “tolerate” his presentation.

During our two day program, Fearless Presentations, one participant said, “I like how telling “the story” actually helped get the information out to the audience.  It made giving a presentation in front of a group easier.”  Using that technique, her stories brought out the best in her as a presenter – her personality.

My personal rule during presentations is – every set of data deserves a good story – a story that you can claim, and bring to life.  A really good story helps your audience understand the data.  Drawing on shared emotions and experiences, stories creates rapport, interest in your subject, and buy in.  The more stories you tell – the more persuasive your speech becomes, and the more relaxed and powerful you become as a speaker.  If you want the audience to listen and believe you – tell the story behind the facts.  I  learned this early on as a young news reporter, and practice it every time I speak.

Dump the data – tell me a story.

Statistics are just a bunch of easily forgotten numbers, unless you give them a face and heart

Example:  Pearl Harbor Day

I looked down at the assignment in my hands “Pearl Harbor Day – Veteran.”  I wanted to take a different angle.  I wanted to explain the data through the eyes of a Japanese-American, county commissioner.  My news director liked the idea, and after much persuasion, Commissioner George Shiozowa, agreed.  No data set could tell the

Soldiers with guns, searched our house, taking family documents and photos, all the kitchen knives and my pearl-handled pocketknife, a treasured gift from my uncle.  We hoped it was over.  We were wrong.  They loaded us like cattle into the backs of trucks and took us away.  I was so frightened I did not speak for days.  Finally we reached the Idaho desert.  We were penned like animals behind barbed wire in the Idaho desert, while my brothers fought the Japanese.”

If you call me twenty years from now I will not recall the facts, that 2,117 Americans died at Pearl Harbor, or that 120,000 Japanese-Americans, men, women and children, were locked behind barbed wire in the desert.  (I had to re-research those facts.)  I will, however, be able to tell you the story of a ten year old Japanese-American boy who was taken prisoner by his own country because he looked like the enemy.

Behind every group of facts, data set, or event there is a powerful story.  Look inside your “life catalogue” flip through the pages.  Whatever principle you want to express – there is a story or example for it, a human look at otherwise heartless information.

Your personal stories will bring richness to your presentation, and understanding to your audience.  You are the only one who can tell them, because you have lived them.  Your stories  are unique, interesting and a powerful way to make your point, and persuade your audience to your point of view.  If you want to “wow” your audience – tell more stories.  By Connie Timpson/ Sr. Instructor/Performance Coach/The Leader’s Institute

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/dump-the-data-and-tell-me-a-story/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-worries-handling-questions-answers http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-worries-handling-questions-answers#comments Fri, 04 Feb 2011 03:07:58 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=3870

One expectation frightens people preparing for a public presentation above all others. The fear is, “Even if I master the material someone will ask me a question and I will look stupid.” Here is everything you need to know about handling Q&A. Keep these tips in mind and you can check that fear off your list.

1. Questions are your Friends. When giving a presentation It is extremely important to know what your audience is thinking. If you aren’t getting any feedback from them while you are talking, you have no idea how the information is being received. Questions let you know if you are moving too fast or conversely too slowly. A question informs you if you are clearly expressing your ideas. Rather than avoiding questions, try seeking them.

2. Body Language. There are two actions you can take to encourage questions. The first is physical. Stand still and raise your hand (like you had to do in elementary school). Secondly ask, “What are you questions?” The appropriate verbiage is “what,” not “are there any” questions? The first implies you know the audience has questions and simply asks them to express them. The second calls in to doubt whether any questions exist.

3. Prime the Pump. It may surprise you to learn that people are hesitant to ask questions. The audience members do not want to appear “dumb” by asking an inappropriate question. You can help them get started by asking yourself a question and then answering it. You might say, “At this point I am often asked why…?” You then answer your own question. Next you say to the group, “Who has the next question?” This technique makes it easier for people in the audience to ask their questions.

4. I Don’t Know, But. When (not if) you are asked a question you don’t know the answer to, simply, honestly reply – “I don’t know.” This is always the correct response when asked for information you do not have. Remember that fear of looking stupid, I mentioned at the beginning of this article? The absolute best way to look stupid is to fake an answer. The important tag follows “I don’t know” and that is “But I will find out and give the information to you at (specific time).” At a press conference the President has to know the answer to every single question they are asked. He does not have the luxury you have of saying, “I don’t know.” You do have the ability and when expressed calmly you will appear articulate and professional.

5. Hostile Questions. Now that we’ve gotten this far I need to let you know sometimes people will try and make you look foolish with a question. The agenda in their question may not be readily apparent to you. When you sense hostility, here are two things you can do. First Do not respond in kind. When you are verbally attacked you must never retaliate. Since I mentioned elementary school in Tip 2, let’s go back to the playground at recess. When two boys got in a tussle, what did the rest of the children do? On the playgrounds of my childhood everybody would step back. Someone might yell, “Fight!” But only the teachers would step in to break it up. If during your presentation someone “attacks,” you must never allow it to seem like a fight. Do NOT drop the discussion to their level. Second Remain calm and Bridge. Take a deep breath. If you need time repeat the question. Acknowledge any truth in the question and immediately bridge to talk about something positive. Let me give you an example. I have a product and I’m making a sales presentation to a potential client. Someone asks, “Didn’t you lose the contract with XYZ company because of your pathetic customer service?” Ouch! Here is the correct response, “Yes we did lose XYZ as a result of customer service issues. (acknowledge truth) As a result of examining why, we learned our customer service reps did not have access to important technical information. (Bridge) We invested $$$ to upgrade our phone system and integrate informational databases. Last year we received the J.D. Powers award for Outstanding Customer Service.

By practicing these tips you will learn the value of questions from your audience. Your skill as a public speaker will grow, along with your confidence.

Rick Highsmith teaches the Fearless Presentations Public Speaking Class and helps participants eliminate public speaking fear. For information about upcoming public speaking seminars, visit www.fearlesspresentations.com.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-worries-handling-questions-answers/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/contest-for-entrepreneurs-who-are-us-veterans http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/contest-for-entrepreneurs-who-are-us-veterans#comments Thu, 06 Jan 2011 06:44:46 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=3746

By Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader’s Institute

A couple of good friends of mine (and extremely successful entrepreneurs) have recently decided to partner up to help US military veterans who want to start their own businesses or who are already entrepreneurs and would like a little help growing their small businesses. Phil Dyer and Larry Broughton are both pretty famous entrepreneurs in their own right. Larry is an author, former Green Beret, and founder of Broughton Hospitality Group. He owns a chain of lavish boutique hotels and was named Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year. Phil is an author, a West point graduate, and certified Financial Planner who has specialized in helping entrepreneurs grow strong, financially sound businesses.

Six People will Get to Mentor with Gunny R. Lee Ermey (You Jackwagon!)

They are offering a contest for six seats in their upcoming mastermind meeting, and details are available on their Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/#!/Vetrepreneurs?v=app_178983045459393. The contest is open to any military veteran looking for help with his/her small business.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/contest-for-entrepreneurs-who-are-us-veterans/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/closing-the-sale-big-mistakes-that-cause-your-customers-to-buy-from-someone-else http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/closing-the-sale-big-mistakes-that-cause-your-customers-to-buy-from-someone-else#comments Wed, 29 Dec 2010 05:24:38 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=3255

By Doug Staneart

Closing the sale can be one of the trickiest parts of the selling process if you make a few mistakes. You’ve worked really hard to get tons of new people looking at your website and all of those great leads start flowing in. Now the most important part takes place. You have to turn those leads into sales. Unfortunately, this is the part at which most entrepreneurs fail miserably. Most small business owners have an expertise in their own industry, but they often don’t have a lot of first-hand experience in how to close the sale – especially when they are first starting out.

Below are some of the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs make in the follow up process that keep them from closing the sale. Avoid them, and you will increase your closing ratio dramatically and turn more leads into sales.

Mistake #1: Thinking that All of Your Leads are Ready to Buy Right Now

Remember that just because people who search you out have a challenge or a problem, doesn’t mean that they will be ready to buy right now. However, if you keep in touch with them, avoid pressuring them to buy, and continue to educate them, they will often come to you when they are ready to buy.

You or your sales team will want to provide information for potential clients that help them solve their problems, build a relationship with these potential clients, and follow up until they are able to make a buying decision. It is a process, and in every step of the process, the trust level between you and your potential client should grow.

Granted, though, if you are getting thousands of leads every month, it will be impossible to follow up in detail with every single lead forever. You will also need some type of automated follow up system so that no one falls through the cracks.

An email follow up system can save you a lot of time.

Mistake #2: Giving Up on Leads

Most professional salespeople give up on prospects before they turn into business. Most entrepreneurs have an even lower closing ratio, but if you change the way that you follow up with your potential clients, you can turn things around very quickly.

When an initial lead comes in, for instance, someone comes onto a website and requests information via a form on the website, most small business people will do one of these things.

Most entrepreneurs will likely email the prospect with tons of sales literature and follow up via email a dozen times or so, and then quit trying with a “that’s not a real prospect after all” mentality.

Others might make a phone call and leave a voicemail and just wait for the person to call back.

Others will call and leave a voicemail and wait. Then call back and leave another voicemail. Then call back and leave another voicemail. And when the client doesn’t call back, they quit trying with a “that’s not a real prospect after all” mentality.

A very few will send out an expensive sales kit to the client via FedEx and wait a week or two to call them again hoping that the sales kit closes the deal.

By the way, any of those techniques will work every once in a while, but none of them will close a high percentage of deals for you.

A better process is to create different tiers of potential leads.

The first tier might be what I call email address leads. These are people who got free information from you and gave you their email address in return. If all you have is their email address, then you only have one way to follow up with them. So create an email follow up system in your CRM that combines education (information that they need) with offers to buy stuff from you. You might want to start with something small and build on it. If you are using a CRM system with an automatic email follow up, your follow up is turn-key.

The second tier might be website form leads. This is where someone comes onto your website and fills out a form requesting information or a call back from you. These are much higher quality leads, so they deserve a phone call. They are more likely to close more quickly, so be persistent in getting them on the phone. Don’t just leave a voicemail and wait. Based on your conversation with them, you can determine whether you want to create more follow up calls with the person or just divert them over to your email follow up system.

Your highest tier might be call-in leads. Typically, when people call you, they want immediate results, so they will close much more quickly. Spend more time with these folks and follow up with them one-on-one for a longer period of time. Don’t quit on these leads.

Whatever system you decide to use, DON’T QUIT! They requested information from you for a reason. You can help them.

Mistake #3: Giving a Sales Pitch

Don’t deliver prospects a standardized sales pitch. Instead, find out why they requested information from you. Once they tell you their problem, oddly enough, they will assume that you can solve the problem.

Here are a few phrases that will be gold for you.

* Do you mind if I ask you a few questions so that I have a better idea of what we should be talking about?
* So why are you interested in (fill in the blank with whatever product or service you sell)?
* Has something happened recently that has moved this up on your priority list?

Those should help you get started on the right foot with your new prospect. The more that they talk, the more they will want to buy from you. Fight the urge to jump in when you see an opportunity to sell to them.

Example:

Business Owner: “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions so that I have a better idea of what we should be talking about?”

Prospect: “I guess so…”

Business Owner: “So why are you interested in getting some advertising specialties made for your company?”

Prospect: “Well, the company that we bought pens from last time increased their charge and then messed up our website on the pens. We had to send them back, and we didn’t have any for our big tradeshow.”

Business Owner: “Well let me tell why that won’t be a problem with our company…”

Arrggghh… That is a BIG mistake. Your prospect is now venting to you about how bad your competitor is. Don’t cut her off. Encourage her to tell you more instead. Try something like…

Business Owner: “Gosh, that sounds terrible. What do you think that cost you?”

After she vents a little more, ask another question like, “Is there anything else about your current vendor that you’d like to improve?” etc. etc.

Continue asking questions until you feel like you have a few challenges that she has experienced that you think that you can fix for her.

So if you really want to close the sale and not push those leads away, realize that many of the people who contact you are not necessarily buyers now, but will become buyers in the future if you build a relationship with them. Keep following up with your leads and get an email follow-up program to help you turn those leads into sales. And finally, don’t come rushing in with a sales pitch. Instead ask questions of your prospect that gets the person to tell you what the real problem is, then offer a solution. Do these three things and you’ll close the sale more often.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/closing-the-sale-big-mistakes-that-cause-your-customers-to-buy-from-someone-else/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-how-to-deliver-powerpoint-presentations-designed-by-someone-else http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-how-to-deliver-powerpoint-presentations-designed-by-someone-else#comments Sun, 19 Dec 2010 06:52:52 +0000 Public Speaking Course » presentation skills http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2850

By Doug Staneart, Author of The Fearless Presentations Seminar

Narrating PowerPoint Presentations designed by someone else can be very challenging. In fact, one of the fastest ways to increase public speaking fear and make your PowerPoint presentations sound canned and… well boring, is to try to deliver a PowerPoint slideshow that someone else designed for you. This doesn’t mean that you can’t deliver PowerPoint slide decks that someone else created. It just means that when you do, you’ll probably be more nervous and have less of a natural flow than what you’d normally have when you stand up and deliver a speech. Remember that a presentation or a speech is just a conversation with your audience, so if you create the speech, you’ll be speaking in your own words. When someone else creates a speech for you, you will feel more uncomfortable and the public speaking nervousness will increase.

If you remember the movie Roxanne or the play about Cyrano de Bergerac, the two male characters, Christian and Cyrano are both in love with Roxanne, but Christian sees himself as being inarticulate and Cyrano sees himself as being ugly. Christian gets Cyrano to write love letters for him, which works pretty well until Roxanne finds out who actually wrote them. In the movies, Christian is portrayed as a dunce, but according to the original play, Christian is a brave and intelligent warrior who is just nervous. Christian is the kind of person that Roxanne would have fallen in love with if he had just used his own words to woo her. But because he was using Cyrano’s verbiage (his slideshow,) it just made Christian even more nervous – not less. Roxanne never got to know the real Christian. Your audiences are the same way. You will feel much more confident if you can communicate your own words to your audience versus trying to manufacture the “right thing to say” about a PowerPoint slide or bullet points that someone else created.

With that in mind, we know that situations will occur where we have no control over the PowerPoint slideshow or any of the visuals really. For instance, if you are a sales associate, and your company requires that you use a standardized PowerPoint presentation when you speak to customers or if someone calls in sick and you have to fill in for them at the last minute, the tips below will help you out tremendously.

Top PowerPoint Presentation Narration Tips

1. Add Your Own Personal Experiences: The main thing that sets one presenter apart from another is the personal examples or stories that they tell when they deliver a presentation. You can easily make your PowerPoint presentation your own by inserting stories and examples from your own experience into the speech. For example, let’s assume your bullet point is “Sales decreased by 10% last quarter,” you’ll want to first clarify the point and explain in more detail what it means. For instance you might show the total number of “call-in” leads that the sales team received in the quarter versus previous quarter. Then once you have explained the point, add a personal experience to further explain it. “A couple of years ago, when I was a sales rep, I remember days that as soon as I would set the receiver down, another new incoming call was already being routed to me. The guys who are on duty now, however, are averaging ten to fifteen minutes between each call. At first, we thought that the time between calls was wasted time, so we looked at downsizing the sales team. However, because each salesperson is able to follow up better with each incoming lead, their closing rations have increased over 250%. So that 10% decrease in sales is coming from less than half the number of incoming leads that we were receiving in the boom.” Without the personal story, the bullet looks like the sales team is failing, but in reality, they are doing a tremendous job with the resources that they have had.
2. Avoid Memorizing Someone Else’s Notes: If you try to write down everything that someone else tells you to say and memorize it, you will increase your nervousness exponentially. Instead, go to each bullet point and ask yourself, “What is the most important thing that the audience would need to know about that point?” Whatever pops into your head when you ask that question will likely be exactly what the audience needs to know. If you use this technique, then if you forget what you have prepared while you are speaking, you can just, internally, ask yourself the question again, and your answer is likely to return pretty easily.
3. You May not Need to Speak to Every Point: When other people write a PowerPoint presentation for you, they often will insert way too much data into each slide. As a result, it can be very challenging to speak to every point. Realize that, as the presenter, you are in control of what you say. I had a client once whose executives decided that they wanted to create one all-encompassing slideshow that any sales rep could use in any situation. The finished PowerPoint deck had over 120 slides. There is no way that any presenter could deliver that much data in so short a period of time. So what my client did was print out the whole deck and had an office supply store put a cover on it. She gave this out to the clients as a reference and hand-picked the slides that were most appropriate to each client at the time she presented. As a result, she didn’t bore any of them. So sometimes, you might have to get a little creative in your delivery.

Remember that narrating a PowerPoint slideshow that someone else creates for you is definitely more challenging than delivering a presentation that you create on your own, however it can be done. Just be sure to make the PowerPoint your own by inserting your own personal stories and experiences into the slides, spend time determining exactly what is most important to the audience, and feel free to cut out some of the bullets if your presentation is too data heavy. If you follow these simple tips, you will be more charismatic and articulate when you narrate someone else’s PowerPoint presentation.

Doug Staneart is the founder and CEO of The Leader’s Institute® public speaking training and leadership coaching institute. His first book, Fearless Presentations is available on Amazon and Kindle. He offers hundreds of different public speaking tips on his website at http://www.fearlesspresentations.com and to his followers on Facebook.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-how-to-deliver-powerpoint-presentations-designed-by-someone-else/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/top-ten-small-business-lead-generation-mistakes http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/top-ten-small-business-lead-generation-mistakes#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:20:55 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2792

Small Businesses are always looking for new lead generation ideas, but many of the things that entrepreneurs do before they even make their first cold call or before they attend their first business card exchange practicaly ensure that they actually fail in the Lead Generation department.  Folks say that “Experience is the best teacher,” but that is really only about half right. In fact, “Someone ELSE’S experience is the best teacher,” because they have already made those mistakes. Learn from their mistakes, and you get to a higher level of success in a much faster time frame.

Below are The Top Ten Small Business Lead Generation Mistakes that Entrepreneurs Make (and How to Avoid Them).

Mistake #1: Hiding Your Company from the World. The internet is the great equalizer for small businesses, but you have to make it easy for people who are looking for your products or services to find you on the internet. Search engine optimization (making it easier for people to find your website through search engines like Google) should be your top priority as a small business owner.

Mistake #2: “I’m a Really Small Company” Website. Just like when a person hands you a business card with the rough edges from separating it at the perforation after it was printed at home, a cheap looking or homemade looking websites is a neon sign saying, “I’M A SMALL BUSINESS… Don’t trust me.”

Mistake #3: Creating a Confusing Perception in the Marketplace. This mistake made early in a business’ history can follow you for years. When we first start out, we’re trying to find any way that we can to generate revenue, so when times are tough in one product or service line, we dabble in others to make ends meet. People who see you promoting dissimilar product lines will wonder what exactly it is that you do.

Mistake #4: I Can Do It on My Own Mentality. We become entrepreneurs because we are experts in a specific industry, and we know that we can do it better than our competitors. However, we are never going to be experts in EVERYTHING, so it’s important to surround yourself with other experts in different industries. You can either contract work out through subcontracting or joint ventures, or you can create alliances with other companies who support you but don’t compete with you.

Mistake #5: Offering Something that the Market Doesn’t Want. You might have a great product or service that people actually want to buy, but if you are promoting that product or service to a marketplace that doesn’t want it, you’ll go broke. If you are networking with other entrepreneurs and your services are for prime contractors, you’ll just become very frustrated. Go find where people in your market gather, and promote your company there instead.

Mistake #6: Salesperson Fangs. This mistake is the absolute most annoying and will drive customers away in droves. It occurs when someone out of genuine interest or in some cases, just kindness asks a question about what the person does for a living, and in response, the person spends the next fifteen minutes talking about himself and how the listener really needs his product or service. Successful people tend to be pretty good listeners.

Mistake #7: Casting Your Pearls before Swine. Just so you know, I’m not calling your prospects swine. I’m just saying that most small business people spend way too much time with people who they think are prospects but who have absolutely no chance of ever buying something from them. In order to be a good prospect for you, the person needs to have the resources to buy from you and the authority to buy from you. Don’t spend a lot of time and effort building a reputation amongst people who aren’t in and will never be in your market. Find where your market gathers and build your reputation there.

Mistake #8: Giving a Pitch Instead of Solving a Problem. Most people walk into a meeting with a prospect or start a call with a prospect with a pitch in mind. So, before the prospect even indentifies a problem or a need that she has, the pitch starts and we verbally jumps all over the person with features and benefits about how great our product is. Remember that a successful entrepreneur is a one who solves problems for clients and customers, so spend less time talking about yourself and ask more questions about the prospect.

Mistake #9: No Follow Up (Web Visitors and Leads). This used to be a big problem with face-to-face meetings where an entrepreneur collects a business card from a prospect and then just doesn’t do anything with it, but in the digital age, website visitor follow ups are way more valuable and rarely capitalized on effectively. For instance, if you look at most website statistics, you’ll see a number of “page views” which is just the number of pages on your website that people have looked at in a given month. This number is almost always a BIG number, but then if you compare it with the number of people who actually request information from or buy from you, the latter is microscopic in comparison. More often than not, the big difference in numbers comes because we don’t make it easy for people to request information from or contact us.

Mistake #10: Slow Follow-Up. In face-to-face meetings, if you don’t follow up within 24 hours, your prospect will likely forget about most of your meeting because people are extremely busy. Website visitors are not as forgiving. If you don’t respond to them within a few minutes, they will forget about you. When we surf the internet looking for solutions to our problems, we want instant gratification. If we don’t get it, we just move on to the next site. Follow up quickly with your prospects, and you’ll increases sales dramatically.

If you solve just some of these challenges that many small businesses face, you’ll increase your income potential and your growth rate very quickly. This book was created to offer tangible, step-by-step processes and ideas to conquer these and other obstacles that you’ll likely face as you build your small business.

Doug Staneart is the founder of The Leader’s Institute® and the creator of the Entrepreneur Boot Camp that helps small business owners grow their companies by sharing little-known secrets of successful entrepreneurs with new business owners. This article is one in a series of helpful small business lead generation tips, and you can read all of them for free on his Entrepreneur Boot Camp blog at http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/top-ten-small-business-lead-generation-mistakes/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/small-business-lead-generation-%e2%80%93-pay-per-click-advertising http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/small-business-lead-generation-%e2%80%93-pay-per-click-advertising#comments Fri, 26 Nov 2010 18:23:43 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2777

By Doug Staneart, The Entrepreneur Boot Camp

Small business lead generation using pay-per-click ads can be very challenging. In fact, paying for leads can either make you really rich or drive you out of business. Google makes a ton of money every year from pay-per-click ads. Most of the money that they make from these ads did not generate a single bit of additional revenue to the companies or entrepreneurs who purchased them. However, there are a few people out in the business world who pay a little bit of money to Google and generate millions of dollars in return. They don’t generate this type of income by accident. These entrepreneurs just have a better strategy than the ones who end up losing money on pay-per-click ads.

How to Lose Money in Pay-Per-Click Ads

The Uninformed Entrepreneur says, “I am not making money from my website because no one is coming to my website, so I will invest in pay-per-click ads and that will make me money.” No, that will cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars every week with very little, if any, return on your investment. Effective advertising leverages or magnifies the return that you are already getting from your current sales channels. If your website is not generating leads or business for you before you invest in advertising, then you will be magnifying a zero return. 300% of zero is still zero.

Most people use pay-per-click ads as the starting point, and when they do, they will almost always lose money. They are betting their business capital on an untested experiment. It would be like buying a thoroughbred and running down to the racetrack and betting a bunch of money on your horse’s first race. Yes, you would know your horse, but your horse is untested against other horses. However, if your horse wins his first three races, you might want to invest a little in his fourth one.

Your website is the same way. Develop your website to where you are generating leads and sales from those leads. Then, one you have a track record of success, invest in pay-per-click ads. Then you are betting on a sure thing.

How to Generate Lots of Revenue from Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Test. Then test some more. Then, once you have tested, test everything again.

The Informed Entrepreneur says, “I have finally got my business generating new leads from the internet, and now I want to leverage the success that I am currently getting.” Now you can make an informed budget for your pay-per-click advertising.

Here is a highly simplified example. If you are generating 10 leads per week from your website, and you are averaging closing one of those leads for $100 in revenue and $25 in profit, then you could only afford to pay $2.50 per lead to break even. Remember that just because someone clicks your pay-per-click link, does not mean that they will contact you and become a lead. If you have a fantastic website, you might be able to turn one out of every ten clicks into leads, so you could pay no more than $.25 per click to just break even. So pay-per-click won’t yet work for you yet. You would need to increase the revenue per customer, or the profit margin, or the closing ratio (or all three) to make pay-per-click more cost effective for you.

If you invest in an email follow up system and generate the same 10 leads per week, this time you might turn three of those leads into customers. Since you are now able to build a longer term relationship with your leads, you might be able to bundle a few of your products together and generate a higher revenue per sale and increase your average sale to $300. By doing all of this, your cost per lead goes down dramatically. Now for every sale you are generating $100 in profit. With three sales out of ten leads, you generate a total of $300 in profit. You can now afford to pay $30 per lead, so with the same ten clicks turning into one lead, you could afford to pay up to $3 for each click. If you can get quality clicks for just $1 each, you will triple your pay-per-click investment.

So forget the cold calls and spam, use your website to get more leads to call you, and then use pay-per-click to leverage your success, and you will generate great success through small business lead generation.

Writing Pay-Per-Click Ads that Lead to Sales

Once you have a great site and follow up system set up, now you can in some ads. Remember that the goal is NOT to get people to click your ad. The goal is to get people who will buy something from you to click your ad. For instance, if I put “One out of every 100 who click this link will get $1000,” I’d get a LOT of clicks. However, none of them would buy anything from me, so I’d just lose a lot of money. Or, if I am a local dentist in Frisco, Texas, and I place an ad that says, “Free Teeth Whitening Tips,” I’ll also get a lot of clicks, but very few sales. Most of the people who click will just want the free tips, and very few of them will be in my local neighborhood. A better ad would say something like, “Frisco, TX Dentist – Free teeth cleaning with your first whitening treatment.” If you don’t want to go to a dentist in Frisco, TX, you are less likely to click that link. People who do click the link are probably pretty good prospects for you.

You will always have numb-skulls who click your links even though they don’t need or want anything that you are promoting, but you’ll have fewer people click your paid-for links who are looking for something different than what you are offering.

So if you want to generate more leads for your small business using pay-per-click, make your website and follow up system solid first, then use effective ads to target the specific market who will buy your services.

Doug Staneart is the founder of The Leader’s Institute® and the creator of the Entrepreneur Boot Camp that helps small business owners grow their companies by sharing little-known secrets of successful entrepreneurs with new business owners. This article is one in a series of helpful small business tips, and you can read all of them for free on his Entrepreneur Boot Camp blog at http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/small-business-lead-generation-%e2%80%93-pay-per-click-advertising/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/small-business-lead-generation-%e2%80%93-why-spamming-and-cold-calling-does-not-work http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/small-business-lead-generation-%e2%80%93-why-spamming-and-cold-calling-does-not-work#comments Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:16:01 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2764

By Doug Staneart, The Entrepreneur Boot Camp

Every small business is the proverbial Needle in the Haystack, so small business lead generation is critical to an entrepreneur’s survival and the growth of his/her small business. The thing that most entrepreneurs forget, though, is that it is a lot easier to turn a prospect or lead into a customer if the lead calls you versus when you call them. It cracks me up when I hear titles of articles, seminars, or books about how to “Make Effective Cold Calls” or how to “Warm Up Cold Calls”. In the past decade (through two recessions, mind you,) I’ve built a total of four multi-million dollar businesses from scratch, and none of that revenue was ever generated from any “cold call”. In fact, I’ve had over 405 of the Fortune 500 companies become clients, and they have all called or emailed my companies. They searched my companies out when they had a problem instead of us trying to find people within these companies that were facing the specific problems that we could solve. These are a few of the secrets that we have uncovered to help small businesses generate more leads (and more quality leads).

Cold Calls do not Work at All in a Digital Age

Cold calls, email spam, blast faxes, popup windows, forced “opt-in” subscribers and the like just don’t work in this digital age (I’m not sure any of them ever worked very well for very long). The ones that crack me up the most are the companies that send out blast email spam guaranteeing us that they can get our website to the top of Google in 48 hours. Seriously? Do you think that if they could actually do this that they would be wasting their time spamming millions of people trying to beg someone to buy their service? Last month, there were 165,000 people who went to Google and searched for the term “Google search optimization”. If they could get to the top of Google with just that one term, they would have about two million people potential leads coming to them every year. So why would they need to spam people? If you are so good at what you do, why are you spamming me? Why are you cold calling me? Why are you trying to force me to subscribe to your newsletter? The truth is that cold calling and spamming people shows desperation, not success.

Get Potential Leads to Call You to Turn more Leads into Customers

The internet is the great equalizer for small businesses. Big businesses have websites, but their bureaucracy forces them to move very slowly in implementing new technology and captivating on new opportunities. However, nimble small businesses can capitalize on these opportunities immediately. It is actually very easy to get to the top of a Google search result. It is very difficult, however, to stay there. In fact, it is a fulltime job. But it is a very lucrative fulltime job. Logically, this is why this is your most important goal for your small business. When someone has a question, where do they go for an answer now? In decades past, if you had a challenge or a question, you might ask a friend or coworker or if it was a really big problem, you might go to the library and search for an answer. Today, though, people go immediately to Google. The listings at the top of the first page have a lot more credibility than the ones on the second, third, or four-hundredth.

If your small business is listed at the top of the results when they enter their question, and then they click through to your website and get the answer to that question, your small business is now at the top of their short-list for solution providers. If they call you or email you, you automatically have about a 25% chance or so of turning that lead into a client. In contrast, if your small business is listed at the top of page two on Google, in order to have someone contact you, they will have already looked at listings from at least 10 other competitors. Most potential customers will not be that thorough, so you will generate fewer leads, and now, since you are competing with at least ten other competitors, your percentage of closing drops to below 10%.

Get Leads to Call You by Giving Away Something that They Need or Want

What is common knowledge to you is uncommon to most people. Remember that your expertise and knowledge is extremely valuable to people who are searching on Google for answers as in the previous example. So if you can help them answer the question – and really help them in the process – they are more likely to share with you their contact information. Once they do, you now know two things about them. First, you know that they have (or had) a specific problem that you can help them solve. Second, you know that they already know who you are and trust has started to develop from them that you are an expert in your industry.

What you give away doesn’t have to be costly, but it must be valuable. Costly means that it doesn’t have to cost you anything to give it away. For instance, if you have a lot of informational content on your blog, then you might ask people to register in order to conduct a search of your blog for specific topics. Or, you might give away a special report or access to a video or audio file with information that a prospect might need. For example, if you are a dentist, you might offer a video about how to teach a three-year-old to brush properly. Anyone who requests the free information will likely have a young child and be concerned about the child’s oral health. Whatever the gift, just make sure that your costs are low and the value of the item is high from the customer’s perspective.

So forget the cold calls and spam, use your website to get more leads to call you, and then use a high-valued free gift to encourage prospects to contact you, and you will generate great success through small business lead generation.

Doug Staneart is the founder of The Leader’s Institute® and the creator of the Entrepreneur Boot Camp that helps small business owners grow their companies by sharing little-known secrets of successful entrepreneurs with new business owners. This article is one in a series of helpful small business tips, and you can read all of them for free on his Entrepreneur Boot Camp blog at http://www.bootcampgifts.com.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/small-business-lead-generation-%e2%80%93-why-spamming-and-cold-calling-does-not-work/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/power-point-tips http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/power-point-tips#comments Sat, 20 Nov 2010 21:11:01 +0000 Public Speaking Course » presentation skills http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2202

Power Point Tips: The 10 Biggest PowerPoint Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

By Doug Staneart

The most frequently asked topic that we get questions on when we conduct public speaking training is always related to PowerPoint Tips. Because PowerPoint is so powerful, people tend to either get really good at all of the bells and whistles and overwhelm their audience, or they use PowerPoint as a crutch and rely on their slide deck too much making their presentation very boring. Below are the top 10 biggest Power Point Mistakes that we tend to make along with ways to overcome them. (By the way, we cover a whole section on designing PowerPoint Presentation in The Leader’s Institute Leadership Boot Camp.)

1) Designing a “PowerPoint Presentation”: Remember, a presentation is a verbal communication to your audience that may or may not use visual aids. PowerPoint is just ONE type of visual aid that can be used to further explain or clarify your presentation. If you focus entirely on this one type of visual aid without putting an emphasis on what you are actually saying, your presentation will tend to have a disconnected flow and will be difficult for the audience to follow. Instead, design your presentation and get good at delivering it first. Once you get good at delivering the presentation, then decide what visual aids you might be able to use to help you clarify your points.

2) Too Many PowerPoint Slides: Another big mistake is creating too many slides and using them as a crutch to make sure that we don’t forget anything in our presentation. Slide… Click… Slide… Click… Slide… Click… is a very boring way to deliver a presentation and makes the presenter look unprepared and uninformed about his/her topic. Only add a slide if it helps you better clarify your point.

3) Too Much Data on Your PowerPoint Slides: Your slide deck should be a visual aid to help you explain your point, so if you put too much data on a slide (too much text, too many numbers, or charts and graphs – gasp… Is he saying we can’t use charts and graphs?) you will overwhelm you audience. Your PowerPoint slide should convey a simple concept at a glance. A good rule is what we call 6X6, which means to limit your number of words per line to six and limit your number of lines to about six as well.

4) Overuse of Animation: PowerPoint will do some really cool types of animation, but remember that if you animate something, it should help you clarify your point. Bullet points that fly in, spin around, make sounds, and blink are just a distraction from your message. If you want your audience to follow you step-by-step, you can reveal your bullets one at a time. However, you’ll have more energy as a presenter if you just make your slide appear and physically move to your screen and point to your bullet point when you talk about it.

5) Too Many Busy Charts: (Gasp… He is saying not to use charts and graphs.) For the most part, charts, graphs, and pictures make terrible PowerPoint slides. If the charts or graphs are simple, they can be judiciously used in a slideshow, however if you are graphing total revenue of five different divisions on a quarterly basis for each of your ten major product lines, your graph will be way too busy to understand in a slide. Use a handout instead. If you need a visual aid for it, make a big poster of the graph but in most cases, you can just use the handout itself as the visual aid.

6) Improper Use of Pictures: A picture is worth a 1000 words, but only if the picture is important to your point. Often, we will look at our slide and think, “It seems a little plain…” so we stick a picture in to jazz it up a little. While that is not, in itself, a terrible strategy, sometimes the pictures that we choose cause confusion because it was an afterthought. You could set a small picture on the slide master so that it shows on every slide. That way, since the picture is always there, it doesn’t cause confusion when the text changes. By the way, making a poster of a good picture will add much more impact than a picture on a slide

7) Not Practicing Your Presentation with the Slideshow: Time is getting short, so you send your slide deck to marketing to jazz it up a little. They send you the final copy minutes before you go in front of the group. Everything is perfect in the slideshow, but because you haven’t practiced, your flow is off, and you have to keep clicking the next slide before you start to speak. It just makes you more nervous. Finish your slide deck early and practice with it.
Sitting Down to Deliver Your Presentation: The moment that you sit down and start clicking slides, the PowerPoint deck becomes the authority in the room on the topic and your energy will plummet. Stand between your screen and the audience, and you will be the expert.

9) Read… Click… Read… Click…: If you are doing this one, then I hate to be the one to tell you this, but… You’re Boring! Sorry. I know that hurt, but it’s true. The good news is that if you follow the prior guidelines, this one goes away automatically. So if you are experiencing this, go back and work on the earlier tips.

10) Letting Someone Else Design your Slideshow: Realize that if someone else designs your PowerPoint Slide Deck, it will likely have many of the earlier mistakes in it. You’ll also have a more difficult time delivering it and be more nervous. To combat this, you’ll need to practice your delivery a lot more than if you designed your own presentation, but it can be done. Over time, use the guidelines above to influence the person or people who are designing your slideshow.

Follow these simple guidelines, and your PowerPoint Slides will help you better deliver more powerful presentations. Violate them, and you’ll likely be more nervous and have a more difficult time delivering your presentation.

Doug Staneart is the creator of The Fearless Presentations® Public Speaking Class that is offered in major cities all over the United States, Canada, and Europe. Click the link here (http://www.leadersinstitute.com/public-speaking/fearlesspresentations.html) and request information about his presentation course, and he’ll send you a free copy of his book, Fearless Presentations®. His new program, the Entrepreneur Boot Camp, helps small business owners grow their businesses during difficult financial times like a recession.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/power-point-tips/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/individual-coaching-quickly-boosts-your-public-speaking-skills http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/individual-coaching-quickly-boosts-your-public-speaking-skills#comments Thu, 18 Nov 2010 16:50:41 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2724

Certainly the first step to becoming an accomplished public speaker is to take a comprehensive class. The Leader’s Institute’s Fearless Presentations is an example. The focus is on gaining confidence and learning basic skills. Virtually all participants make dramatic increases in poise, expressiveness and audience involvement. For many people this is sufficient.

Others find that they want more professional skills. They desire to become the person at work who expresses ideas competently, persuasively and seemingly at ease. An advanced class like Public Speaking Secrets, also offered by The Leader’s Institute can move you along that path.

Still others recognize how “world class” speaking skills will enhance their careers. Having taken classroom courses, they realize the importance of individual attention. A one-on-one coaching session can allow them to polish their skills. The entire focus of the expert is on their delivery and/or preparation proficiencies. Extensive use of videotaping and critical analysis reinforces their strengths and objectively evaluates potential weaknesses.

Let me give you an example of the importance of a coach. Think of your favorite sports star. How did he/she reach the incredibly high performance level they routinely displayed in their sport? Certainly inherent skill / talent was important. In Malcom Gladwell’s book, “Outliers,” he proposes it takes 10,000 hours of practice to excel in any endeavor. But the old saw that “practice makes perfect” doesn’t hold up. If you are practicing a skill incorrectly you will never become great.

Remember that sports star I asked you to think of? Someone worked with them. Someone trained and instructed them. They worked with a coach. Excellent public speaking is a skill that requires practice. However, practicing without a coach won’t make you a “star.”

The Leader’s Institute offers you the opportunity to take your public speaking to the highest level. We have a staff or experts ready to coach you, bringing your best game to the business world. Here is a video of a client who just completed a day of coaching.

Richard Highsmith

Senior Instructor

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/individual-coaching-quickly-boosts-your-public-speaking-skills/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-pt5 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-pt5#comments Wed, 10 Nov 2010 13:46:42 +0000 Public Speaking Course » presentation skills http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=297

Public Speaking Ideas- Audience Participation Adds Impact

Part Two

Sound

Have you ever been in a conversation, heard something and interrupted with, “What was that?”

Many would say that sound is one of the most important senses we have. It allows us to listen, of course, but it also serves as an alert, or warning system. It is a special filter that our brains have the capacity to use to help us decide what we want and need to listen to, and what is not as important. Ever sit in a restaurant oblivious to the sounds around you until you catch a simple word from another conversation, your ears perk up, you motion to the person you’re with to be quiet and your strain to catch the conversation you were previously unaware of- all because one word you overheard?

Stop right now, sit back and make take note of all the things you can hear but were previously unaware of, quite interesting. When you are making a presentation your audience has many sounds going on around them, not just what you’re saying. So why not use that to your advantage. Besides your voice engage their hearing in activities that will help reinforce your message.

Hearing a speaker on time management, there was a continuous clicking sound that was almost distracting, until the presenter mentioned the seconds pounding away on a watch. We had all been hearing it, but when we discovered what it was, it reinforced the value of time and the crime of wasting it.

A song played before, during or after a presentation can be a powerful things if the words are displayed and there is an obvious emotional connection to the presentation (just be aware that long (or even not-so-long) instrumentals can cause people’s minds to wonder). A loud noise that rattles the audience can make a vivid point if used wisely and timed properly.

I attended a Good Friday service in which the pounding of a hammer against a nail could be heard in the background.

Once when talking about teamwork I would randomly bang a loud cymbal. At the end I made the point that as part of a symphony a cymbal can be a very valuable instrument, while by itself it simply is nerve-racking- it made the point well.

When you plan a presentation consider how to involve the sense of hearing beyond just using your words. It may get you message to your audience beyond the ears and into their imagination.

Craig Wagganer is an instructor for The Leader’s Institute® and teaches the Fearless Presentations® public speaking training class as well as individual presentation coaching sessions for clients and individuals.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-pt5/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact#comments Sat, 30 Oct 2010 17:11:25 +0000 Craig Wagganer http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=194

Public Speaking Ideas- Audience Participation Adds Impact

Part Two

Taste: A great meal is a great memory.

I can’t remember every meal I’ve eaten (although I carry the evidence), but I can remember certain times that were outstanding. A good public presentation is that way, it is memorable- like a great taste that lingers in the mind long after the palate has moved on to something else. When preparing a presentation it is a good idea to consider taste and how you can get it involved into your presentation. Consider your next presentation, what taste comes to mind? That may sound like a silly question, but if the material you are presenting is important and you want your audience to remember it, involve as many senses as possible. Taste may seem like a difficult consideration, but if you think about it and let your creativity guide you, it may be possible to add something that will make your presentation a very memorable experience.

Speaking to a group on the powers of refreshing friendships I had volunteers pass out small glasses of ice water. Another time speaking on the idiosyncrasies of the group I was presenting to, I passed out small glasses of 7-Up (at that time the “Uncola”). On another occasion, speaking on the need of refreshment and renewal (on a very hot summer day) I passed out Dixie Cups of ice cream. Each time there was a very welcomed reception of the refreshments, but I was also able to use the “taste” of the experience as dramatic illustration of the subject matter. People became more engaged in the presentation than if I had only used words and descriptions. Having the illustration in their hands (and literally their mouths) made the message come alive and offered a greater engagement of the audience with the point of the presentation.

Taste is a very powerful sense that can also create and/or recall emotions. By doing so people connect to your message at a deeper level than just the spoken communication. When taste is used to reinforce the verbal a clear connection and more memorable experience is likely. Think of the difference your presentation will make if you simply, creatively come up with a taste experience for your audience to share. When you tell a story, give an anecdote, make a demonstration and then add an element that is not expected- giving them something to taste, not just think about, or touch, but actually taste… imagine the impact.

When preparing your presentation, does a specific taste come to mind? How can you incorporate that into your presentation? Can you use that in a clever and innovative way to reinforce the message? Don’t be afraid to try new things, new ways. Your creativity may set you and your message apart and your audience. You may be able to take your material from their mouth to their imaginations.

Craig Wagganer is an instructor for The Leader’s Institute® and teaches the Fearless Presentations® public speaking training class as well as individual presentation coaching sessions for clients and individuals.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/the-most-frightening-type-of-public-speaking-impromptu-speaking http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/the-most-frightening-type-of-public-speaking-impromptu-speaking#comments Sat, 30 Oct 2010 16:38:26 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2638

By Rick Highsmith

Public speaking is recognized as the Number 1 fear of adults in The Book of Lists. Assuming that’s true where would impromptu public speaking rank? Even when we have prepared thoroughly, speaking to an audience provokes anxiety. So what is the factor of increase in anxiety when we have to speak with little or no preparation?

I have spoken with hundreds of people who are seeking help in overcoming the anxiety and fear of public speaking. It is virtually unanimous among this group that fear of being judged or criticized is behind much of the anxiety. When confronted with speaking without preparation people tell me, “My mind freezes up;” or “I can’t put words together;” or some variation on that theme. So the anxiety produces the feared result.

When helping people overcome these fears, The Leader’s Institute© uses a desensitization process that allows our clients to realize their brain has the information they need. And that anxiety is preventing access to the information. In our Fearless Presentations© class we have the participants make a list of common objects, feelings and experiences. Each member is given a topic (other than their own) and stands to speak. Here are two participants in a recent class in Orlando.

As Stacy and Karen shared, we use a simple technique to call on our brain to provide us with a picture to talk about. The brain cooperates and words flow. Through this experience our class members realize they can access information readily. This transfers in to the work place by simply changing the query you are making to yourself, i.e. what terms are you “googling” your brain for? It might be “What’s the most important thing about this project the committee needs to know?” or “What is the most significant problem affecting the project deadline?” or “What is the most valuable contribution this employee is making to the company?”

With the first piece of information your brain provides you begin speaking. While speaking you formulate the second “most important” and continue delivering information. This may seem complicated. However, I have found through years of teaching and coaching public speakers it is a skill easily mastered with practice.

For more information contact me at The Leader’s Institute©.

Rick Highsmith
Senior Instructor

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/the-most-frightening-type-of-public-speaking-impromptu-speaking/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear-and-eye-contact http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear-and-eye-contact#comments Wed, 27 Oct 2010 12:15:27 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2577

Questioner: Mikey
Category: Public Speaking
Private: No

Subject: Fear to perform

Question: Hello, I am supposed to give a presentation in my college class and I’m kind of nervous. It is a presentation where I have to talk about an immigrant that I had to interview. So I need to stand in front and talk about him for 5 minutes. My biggest problem is who to look at and eye contact. Thanks!

Answer: Mikey, worry less about where to look and focus more on communicating with the individuals in your audience. Pretend that you are speaking to your friends at lunch and trying to tell them about the cool person that you just met. When you are at lunch speaking to a few friends, you’ll naturally (without thinking about it) look at one of your friends while you are speaking for about three to six seconds. You’ll tend to hold that eye contact until you see the person react to what you are saying. For instance, the person will likely nod slightly or smile, etc. Then, typically, you’ll turn to a different friend at the table and continue the conversation.

It’s the same with speeches. Tell the audience something that is important or meaningful, and you’ll naturally make good eye contact with individuals in the audience.

Good luck.

Doug Staneart

http://www.fearlesspresentations.com

http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear-and-eye-contact/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/leadership-tip-look-at-things-from-the-other-person%e2%80%99s-point-of-view http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/leadership-tip-look-at-things-from-the-other-person%e2%80%99s-point-of-view#comments Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:18:31 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2509

“It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others.” — Alfred Adler

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/leadership-tip-look-at-things-from-the-other-person%e2%80%99s-point-of-view/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/tried-and-true-is-right-for-you http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/tried-and-true-is-right-for-you#comments Wed, 13 Oct 2010 19:34:02 +0000 Richard Highsmith http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2487

By Rick Highsmith (Steele Steadiman)

Change is dangerous. I devote an entire section of my book, “Squish Creativity Like a Bug,” to revealing the danger. But I failed to heed my own advice. You see for the last couple of years my adult son, Rocky, had wanted to take the Florida Motorcycle Safety Course. This is required by law to rent and/or ride a motorcycle. His Wife and Mother objected. In college I had owned and ridden a Honda 350. So this past Christmas I gave Rocky a gift certificate for the course. We took it together. It rained all day the last two days of our training. This was obviously a clear sign that we shouldn’t proceed. But I had completely forgotten about the wise words from my book.

We both passed the course and planned a trip along Crystal River on the west coast. The first date, April 26th, was washed out by another rainy day. Hello… what does it take to get my attention? Monday, May 3rd came and the sun was shining. Rocky and I roared of the driveway with anticipation and excitement. We were doing something different… a change from the routine! I wasn’t thinking like a Boss. I let silly ideas like adventure, relationships and exciting change cloud my thinking. Look at the smile on my face in this picture. What an idiot I was!

I used a vacation day, leaving a weak middle manager in charge. This way I was assured that no major decisions would be made in my absence. Now you might think I was considering all angles, as a strong Boss should. If you have come to that conclusion, you are missing the point. Look at the picture on the right. That’s me on a gurney in the emergency room with a totally wrecked right shoulder. The road we traveled was full of unknown curves. The final one was so tight I left the road and went down in someone’s front yard. The surgery left me with a steel plate and eight screws holding my shoulder together. I was unable to return to work until September 7th. For you non-bosses who lack math skills that is four months of painful physical therapy. Four months of sitting at home – away from the office. Four very long months of doing what I was told, taking my medicine, painful exercise, and not being the Boss.

During my extended absence the numnut I left in charge reorganized my department. He gave other middle managers authority to change procedures. He began holding “feedback” sessions with the employees. He even put in a suggestion box! Worse that putting up the stupid box, he actually read the suggestions!! And horror of horrors made changes based on employee input!!! Suddenly the employees began to feel listened to. They started to believe their opinions mattered. Creativity, initiative and innovation grew like poisonous weeds.

Upon my return, it took the entire month of September to get things back under control. Fortunately, when I resumed command and began undoing all the harm numnut had caused, he quit. Actually several employees left with him… good riddance! The remaining peons understood the folly that was engaged in during my absence. They quickly returned to focusing solely on the tasks in front of them. Initiative and creativity immediately decreased to acceptable levels.

The lesson I learned from this is where I started: “Tried and true is right for you.” The business world is full of dangerous, unknown curves. Veering off course has dire consequences. Don’t let family relationships or the false hope of excitement lure you off the path of a true Boss.

Rick Highsmith is a Florida Keynote Speaker and trainer who has audiences roaring in laughter as his alter-ego, Steele Steadiman, a boss’ boss. In addition to great articles and tips, Rick teaches great workshops listed on his website at http://www.leadersinstitute.com.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/tried-and-true-is-right-for-you/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/are-you-in-line-for-a-promotion http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/are-you-in-line-for-a-promotion#comments Sat, 09 Oct 2010 14:36:02 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2478

I found this funny post by Penelope Trunk. I had not heard of her before finding this, but she is one of my new heros. You’ll laugh out loud while taking her “non-scientific” quiz.

http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2008/04/29/will-you-get-promoted-take-the-test/

If you’ve ever wondered why you got passed up for that last promotion or wondered if you are in line for the next one, her article might help you uncover a blindspot.

Doug Staneart
CEO of The Leader’s Institute
http://www.leadersinstitute.com

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/are-you-in-line-for-a-promotion/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/business-powerpoint-presentations-with-a-little-spice http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/business-powerpoint-presentations-with-a-little-spice#comments Sat, 02 Oct 2010 16:19:07 +0000 Craig Wagganer http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2444

By Craig Wagganer

Business PowerPoint Presentations have changed a lot in the last ten years, but some of the best presentation secrets have been around for a while.  Almost 25 years ago I was given a little book published in the 1950’s. It was entitled, “Public Speaking as the Audience Likes It”. I don’t remember much of the contents, but I do remember the point- when you are preparing to make a presentation, consider the audience and think about the best way to present your material so they will enjoy the experience and remember the valuable material. So here 3 things you need to know to help you relate to your audience when you design a business PowerPoint presentation.

In Business PowerPoint Presentations, Consider Your Audience

Before you start to design a business presentation, spend some time thinking about those who are going to receive your message. What do they have in common? What do you know about who they are? What do they feel? What experiences have they had? Where are they coming from? Consider, from the audience’s perspective- what is so important about what I have to say? Why should they listen? How will they benefit? And how can I help them enjoy the experience?

Too often we begin our preparation thinking about what we want and need to say. We think about major point and what information we need them to assimilate or remember. We think about our responsibility, and if we have any fear or trepidation about being in front of people, we just wish it were over and prepare the message without much thought given to the audience.

That last line is too much too true. We prepare the message without much thought given to the audience. We think about the message, what we want to say and how we are best going to say it; we prepare our PowerPoint slides hoping that will “wow” the audience into valuing the material. We remember the KISS method of presentations and we keep is simple, stupid. Maybe we remember the old adage, stand up, speak up, shut up, sit down. Fun little sayings, but not much help.

First in your PowerPoint preparation is to consider the audience and the best way to communicate with them. Think about the specific people, the demographics, commonalities, idiosyncrasies; examine them from every angle you can. Also consider your venue- where you will be making your presentation. Will you be on a stage with people seated in front of you; will you be on the same level as your audience; will they be at tables, round or square; will you use a microphone- hand held, lapel, or stationary; what kind of interaction can I facilitate, and the list goes on based on your own experience and creativity. But always consider your audience; it will influence the rest of your presentation.

Second- Involve the Audience

The days of getting up and speaking and then sitting down have past. We live in an age of reality TV in which we get to vote on the results, interactive games on the computer and via game modems, we have unlimited accessibility through cell phones, email and texting. People are not used to sitting back and just listening, the presenter must get them involved.

So you have considered your audience, and you know your message, now how do you get the audience involved? It is more than asking questions and showing slides, it is putting something in their hands, it is incorporating movement, it is using as many of their senses as possible to get them and keep them involved.

Nearly every book on public speaking skills written within the last 15 years has a section on telling stories, but don’t just tell a story, show it. If you were riding a bike, then show it; if you were going over something, show it; if you were involved in a heated conversation, show it; if you were throwing a ball, show- never just tell a story, but show it, use gestures and plenty of them.

Are you talking about something, an object, show it, better yet, if possible give everyone a sample. If you are talking about something with an aroma, then work the smell into your presentation, use a candle, home baked cookies, incense, whatever it takes. Perhaps it is a sound, a firecracker, jet engine, ocean waves- find a way to duplicate it for your audience’s aural stimulation. Perhaps it is a taste, give them something to remind them of the taste, a candy bar; a drink; ice cream- be creative. Maybe it is a texture- then give them something to feel, sandpaper, a piece of cloth, a rock, use your imagination, but incorporate some type of extra sensory experience for your audience to participate with you in the presentation. Be creative and push the envelope. (Some things I have done- handed out ice cream, given latex gloves and pens so the audience could take notes on their hands (five points-five fingers), lit incense prior so the room would smell like pine trees, given out hotel size soaps; spoken in a Santa Claus suit and a guerrilla outfit; given the participants small craft packages to built a boat made out of wooden ice cream spoons a toothpick and a piece of cloth, given out colored pipe cleaners for participants to fashion antennas… the ideas are as limitless as your imagination. Do it- get your audience involved.

Third- Be Concise in Your Closing

Once you had delivered the main thrust of your PowerPoint presentation and have involved the audience, leave them wanting more. Be concise in your closing remarks. Highlight the high points and then be on your way. Too many speakers close with their main points but continue to drag on thinking that re and re-emphasizing will make the message stick. When it is time to end, then end. Don’t keep re-covering the topics and never introduce new material. If you have considered the audience, gotten them involved, then you can make a quick recap and let their involvement continue to speak after you have stopped.

Besides giving thoughtful consideration to your messages, these are three ideas to help your presentation be powerful and memorable- first, consider the audience; second, involve the audience; and third- make your closing concise.

Craig Wagganer is a speaker and trainer specializing in Business PowerPoint Presentations training and skill development. (http://www.fearlesspresentations.com/) Craig teaches the Fearless Presentations class in major cities all over the US, Canada and Europe. Request information from his website, and we’ll send you a free copy of the Fearless Presentations book.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/business-powerpoint-presentations-with-a-little-spice/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-tips-10-biggest-powerpoint-mistakes-webinar-replay http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-tips-10-biggest-powerpoint-mistakes-webinar-replay#comments Fri, 20 Aug 2010 06:17:10 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2277

Here is the replay of our free webinar called PowerPoint Tips: The Ten (10) Biggest PowerPoint Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. We ended up with hundreds of people registering to attend, so if you happened to try to login and all of the seats were gone, we apologize. Enjoy the free PowerPoint Tips Webinar.

If you have trouble viewing the movie above, you can watch it at the source at: http://www.blip.tv/file/4024846/

Other Resources:

• www.fearlesspresentations.com
• www.10publicspeakingsecrets.com
• www.leadersinstitute.com/images/PowerPointTips.ppt

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-tips-10-biggest-powerpoint-mistakes-webinar-replay/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/free-webinar-the-10-biggest-powerpoint-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/free-webinar-the-10-biggest-powerpoint-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 03:12:49 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2205

This Thursday Evening, our CEO, Doug Staneart, will be leading a Free Webinar called PowerPoint Tips: The 10 Biggest PowerPoint Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. One of the things that we’ve found conducting over 1000 Fearless Presentations Seminars is that one of the biggest causes of Public Speaking Fear is the way that a person designs his/her PowerPoint Presentation. Design it wrong, and your nervousness increases exponentially. Design it right, and you’ll be poised and confident.

Register for the seminar by clicking this link: http://www.leadersinstitute.com/powerpoint-tips-10-biggest-powerpoint-mistakes-webinar-replay/ 

In the free webinar, we’ll cover the following:

• The 10 Biggest PowerPoint Mistakes and How to Avoid them.
• The simple mistake that, if you do it, will cause your presentation to fall flat every single time (and what to do instead).
• How what we do to reduce our nervousness actually causes us to be more nervous (and boring!)
• A strategy that will increase the clarity of each slide ten-fold.
• How, often, the things we do to make our slides look prettier actually cause the audience to be confused.
• Everything your boss and coworkers have ever told you about charts and graphs is absolutely wrong — and once you know this secret, you will tower over them.
• How just physically moving two feet in the room can give you more confidence and authority on your topice (seriously — two feet, and it’s not what you think).
• And how if you let someone else design your slide deck, you’ll increase your nervousness exponentially.
• And a whole lot more!

The webinar will take place Thursday, Aug 19th (that’s this Thursday) at 8:00 PM Central Time (9:00 PM Eastern/6:00 PM Pacific) and it’s free to our friends and clients.  Seating is limited, though, so you do need to register in order to reserve a seat (login early because we expect to run out of speaces.)

If you’d like to attend but can’t make it, register anyway, and we’ll send you a link to the replay so you can watch it at your leisure.



See you at the webinar! (The links in the article now forward to the replay of this webinar. Just click any to watch it.)

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/free-webinar-the-10-biggest-powerpoint-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentations-skills-using-analogies-video-from-rome http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentations-skills-using-analogies-video-from-rome#comments Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:16:27 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2199

Presentation Skills, Using Analogies — Analogies are a great way to take complex data in a presentation and make it easier to understand.  I was in Rome a few weeks ago, and I was staying in a hotel that overlooked the city.  It reminded me of an analogy the Freud created to explain the complexities of the conscious and sub-conscious mind.  This video shows how he took this complex data and made it more understandable.  Fearless Presentations is a presentation training course offered in major cities all over the world, and here is a video from Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader’s Institute, who gives a few ways that a little training can eliminate stage fright.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentations-skills-using-analogies-video-from-rome/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear#comments Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:44:35 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2161

 

By Doug Staneart 

Public Speaking Fear? Where does stage fright come from, and how in the world do you get rid of it?  Most people who stand up in front of a group and feel the butterflies in the stomach, the sweaty palms, and the shaky hands think that they are the only ones who feel public speaking anxiety, but presentation fear is very common. Surveys show that over 95% of people asked admit to having, at least some, public speaking fear.  Over the last 20 years, I’ve helped over 20,000 overcome their presentation anxiety, though, and here are a few things that I’ve learned in the process that might help you too.

Where Public Speaking Fear Comes From 

Anytime you try something new, you will be nervous.  However, when we try public speaking for the first time — by definition, — we are always experimenting in front of a group.  Think about how nervous you were when you drove a car on the freeway for the first time.  Think about how much more traumatic that would have been if 25 of your peers had been watching every move you made during that first drive.  So the initial fear or anxiety that you felt the first time you spoke in front of a group was absolutely normal.  If you didn’t feel nervous, that would be strange.   Over time, if you have successes in your new skill, your confidence grows, but if you have what you perceive to be a failure — even if you did okay — your nervousness will grow.  This is why most people have this fear.  Continuing the learning to drive a car example, if you only drove once every year or two and every time that you did, you had all those peers watching you, it would be difficult to develop a track record of perceived successes. 

How to Eliminate Public Speaking Fear 

The best way to eliminate the nervousness is to have a series of successes.  That’s why Toastmasters and other speaking clubs work so well when people attend over a period of time.  When you speak and have a success, your confidence will grow slightly.  So if you string a series of successful presentations together, you’ll diminish the fear pretty dramatically.  The biggest problem with toasting clubs, though, is that it takes months or years to make progress, and most of the time, people who attend need help right now!   A good public speaking class can help dramatically here.  A public speaking class where you can get up and physically speak in front of the class six to 10 times in a short period of time like two to three days will work wonders if it is in a controlled environment. 

Once the Public Speaking Fear Diminishes, Experiment with More Challenging Presentations 

After you start to feel more comfortable, it’s important to try more challenging presentations.  In reality, you have to force yourself to become more nervous again.  The reason why is that as you get better at the more challenging types of presentations, the simpler presentations become really easy.  Going back to the car driving analogy, if you only ever drive in the parking lot, you’ll never grow as a driver.  However, when you begin to drive in a neighborhood, and then you go back to the parking lot, the parking lot is easier.  When you get on the freeway, going back to the neighborhood and driving is a lot more comfortable.  If you became a NASCAR driver and got good at the bumpin’ and rubbin’ at 170 MPH with just inches between each car, then you will have absolutely no fear when you drive around your neighborhood.  It’s the same with public speaking.  When you get really good at the complicated, the simpler presentations become second nature. 

So if you are feeling those butterflies and sweaty palms, realize that you’re normal.  Find a place where you can string a series of successful presentations together in order to begin to grow your self-confidence.  Then experiment with more challenging presentations over time to continue to grow.  You’ll eliminate your public speaking fear in no time.

Doug Staneart is a public speaking coach based in Dallas, Texas.  He teaches a public speaking crash-course called the Leader’s Institute® Boot Camp where he helps participants eliminate their public speaking fear in as little as three days.  Request information about the Boot Camp at http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com and, he’ll send you a free copy of his best-selling book, Fearless Presentations.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/protected-get-published-webinar-replay http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/protected-get-published-webinar-replay#comments Fri, 23 Jul 2010 02:02:47 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2084

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]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/protected-get-published-webinar-replay/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/how-to-recover-from-a-terrible-speech-bombing-on-stage http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/how-to-recover-from-a-terrible-speech-bombing-on-stage#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:47:59 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2078

How to recover after giving a terrible public speaking performanceand bombing on stage – how I did it after a disastrous speech in college, and how you can too.  Ever have one of those situations where we are asked to do some public speaking, and things just don’t go well?  Whether it is from public speaking fear or presentation anxiety, or if the poor performance just came from preparing for your speech in an inproper way, it happens.  Even public speaking pros can bomb a speech.  These are a few things that you can do to recover.

Public Speaking Fear comes from Past Failures (or Pervceived Failures)

The first thing to remember about having a terrible speech is that public speaking fear comes from situations like this where we have a failure — or even just a perceived failure.  Anytime we try something, and we don’t perform very well, we will become more nervous when we try to attempt the skill again.  Think about it…  What would have happened if the first time you ever drove a car, you had a terrible accident.  If that drive was your only experience behind the wheel, it will be nerve-racking to get back into the driver’s seat.  If the first time you ever used a computer, you accidentally erased the hard-drive, you would be very timid about trying again.  This is what happens to a lot of people try to develop presentation skills.  They give it a try, things don’t go so well, so they give up.  In our heads, when we don’t perform well in front of a group, we think that we absolutely failed.  However, in most situations, you probably did a lot better than you think.  We tend to exaggerate our failures when we think about them internally.

For example, when I was in college, I was the youngest intern at a huge Fortune 500 company, and at the end of the summer, before going back to school, I had to give a presentation to the intern committee, my intern peers, my boss, and quite a few of the corporate vice-presidents who flew in just for the presentations.  I was the third to present.  I had memorized my entire presentation and got to where I could deliver it flawlessly within the 15 minute time limit.  However, when I get nervous, I speak REALLY fast.  I gave the entire presentation in about five minutes and said every word.  I was so nervous that I had sweat on my forhead that I kept wiping off my brow with the sleeve of my shirt.  When I sat down, I knew that I had totally failed.  I was embarrassed, and it was torture to have to sit around the table for the rest of the afternoon as each of my peers got up and presented flawlessly.  Interestingly, though, a friend of mine who was one of the other interns is an attorney in my hometown, Ft. Worth.  I saw her a few years ago, and I mentioned that I had spent the last 12 years trying to overcome that horrible speech that I gave when we worked together.  She looked back at me puzzled, and said, “What horrible speech?”  The performance stuck with me, but I suspect that most of the people in the room probably didn’t really notice.  That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t perfom well, but it should give you a little confidence in that we are typically a lot harder on ourselves than the audience is on us.

Change the Way that you Prepare for a Speech

One of the biggest mistakes that I made in that big speech was that I tried to memorize my speech.  Writing a talk word-for-word and trying to memorize it is the absolute worst way to prepare for a speech.  When I created the Fearless Presentations class, one of the first things that I designed was a simple way to prepare for a speech without memorizing it.  We typically spend a couple of days helping participants master this skill, but in a nutshell, the technique works like this.  First, narrow down your topic to something pretty specific, because the more that you try to say in one siting, the less likely anyone in the audience will be to remember it.  Once you narrow down your topic, organize your speech into just a few key points.  Three, four, or five key points will work well in most situations.  I design my presentations by choosing which key points are most important to explaining the topic.  Let’s say that you have a broad topic, and you have about ten or fifteen things that need to be said about the topic.  Chances are that after you cover the first few points, your audience will start to drift off anyway, so instead of covering all ten items, pick the three or four most important items instead.  Give a couple of pieces of proof or support for each key point.  That way, if you have three key points and a couple of support for each item, you really only have to memorize about nine things.  You could write nine things on one note card and have room to spare.

Get a Good Coach

One of the fastest ways to recover from a terrible speech is to get a good coach.  I don’t mean get someone to critique your performance.  A lot of well-intended coworkers or friends tend to do this, and it just makes things worse for the most part.  What you want instead is someone who can identify a few of the key strengths that you have as a speaker and who can help you develop those strengths.  For instance, where a coworker might tell you that you are monotone, a good coach would help you see that your pretty detail-oriented and have a knack for providing solid support.  Since that is a tallent, if you stop trying to memorize your speech (see above) you would automatically increase your enthusiasm.  Another example would be where a friend might point out that your hands are shaking, a good coach would see that you have a talent for building rapport with your audience (even though you might feel a little shy).  If you develop that skill, your nervousness will decrease and your shakey hands will diminish dramatically.  Focus on the things that you do well versus trying to correct symptoms, and you’ll have a lot more success.

Bottom-line is that when you have one of those inevitable poor public speaking performances, it’s not the end of the world.  You can recover from it.  If you use it as a learning experience, you’ll become a stronger speaker the next time that you give a presentation.

Doug Staneart is a public speaking coach for The Leader’s Institute headquartered out of Dallas Texas. He is the founder of The Fearless Presentations Public Speaking Class and author of the book, Fearless Presentations.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/how-to-recover-from-a-terrible-speech-bombing-on-stage/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/persuasive-public-speaking-video-from-rome http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/persuasive-public-speaking-video-from-rome#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:54:49 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=2069

Persuasive Public Speaking.  One of the most effective ways to persuade your audience is to relay a personal story or an example that shows the benefits of your recommendation to your audience.  Religious leaders have used this technique for over 2000 years with great success.  This video explains how the persuasive public speaking technique works.  Fearless Presentations is a presentation training course offered in major cities all over the world, and here is a video from Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader’s Institute, who gives a explains this technique in the courtyard of the Vatican.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/persuasive-public-speaking-video-from-rome/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/leadership-tips-video-%e2%80%93-anyone-can-be-a-great-leader http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/leadership-tips-video-%e2%80%93-anyone-can-be-a-great-leader#comments Wed, 07 Jul 2010 04:41:33 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=1854

Leadership Skills: You can be a Great Leader.  Until less than 250 years ago, if you wanted to be a great leader, you had to be born into the right class or family.  Today, though, anyone can be a great leader.  People who develop the appropriate leadership skills such as being able to think and speak with poise and self-confidence and being able motivate and inspire people, can become the go-to leader in your industry.  Here is a self-help video from Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader’s Institute, is on location at The Forum in Rome, Italy talking about how when Ceasar Augustus walked the streets below, in order to be a great leader, you had to be born into the “ruling class”, but today, communication skills and self-confidence can help anyone be seen by others as a great leader.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/leadership-tips-video-%e2%80%93-anyone-can-be-a-great-leader/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear-where-does-public-speaking-fear-come-from-video http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear-where-does-public-speaking-fear-come-from-video#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:12:39 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=1538

Public Speaking Fear — Where does Public Speaking Fear come from? (VIDEO) I just finished a fantastic presentation skills class in Baden Baden, Germany, and I made a very interesting observation.  I’ve been teaching public speaking classes and presentation skills for years, and I realized a long time ago that fear comes from uncertainty about an outcome.  So, for instance, when people feel nervous about speaking in front of a group, they are nervous because they are uncertain about whether they will do well or do poorly.

In this particular class, though, just about every single person was a non-native English speaking person.  Studies show that 95% of the American population is nervous about public speaking — uncertain about the outcome.  Just think how much more nervous you would be if you were asked to give you speech in Spanish, or French?  That’s exactly what this group was asked to do.  And yet, within a couple of days, these participants were delivering Fearless Presentations!

The group was made up of participants from the US and UK (the only native English speakers) as well as participants from France, Germany, Russia, and China.  When diverse groups like this get together, more often than not, they speak English as a common language.  And that is what this group was doing.

What I noticed was that this group acted very much the same as participants in our normal US and UK classes. Sure, they were nervous, but as we progressed through the class, and each speaker had a new success in speaking, their self-confidence grew dramatically.

The key to developing self-confidence in public speaking is to have a series of fantastic successes, and the best way to do that is to get a good coach.  Failure causes uncertainty in future presentations, but success causes certainty that you will speak confidently and with poise.

Success to you!

Doug Staneart is the CEO of The Leader’s Institute. If you’d like information about how to eliminate your public speaking fear, visit our public speaking class website.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear-where-does-public-speaking-fear-come-from-video/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/music-101-the-key-to-accent-reduction http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/music-101-the-key-to-accent-reduction#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:56:51 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=1220

By Erin Corrigan

“Without music life would be a mistake”

These are the words of the famous German Philosopher Frederik Nietzsche, and as a specialist in pronunciation and Accent Reduction for non-native English speakers, I can attest to this regarding the English language. English is a musical language, as is Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, and many other languages. The trick to speaking English with clarity and impact, is understanding the melody and rhythm that is specific to English, but differs in other languages. Therefore, without the music of the English language, pronunciation is a mistake.

If English were a two-man band, it would be made up of a drum and a saxophone. Firstly, English is a swinging language, more like a jazz or rock group than a classical orchestra. English sounds are big, loud, and emphatic, and our melody is bold and dance-worthy.

I hear complaints from my students time and time again that they are always asked to repeat themselves, and even when they do, the listener still has difficulty understanding. Where does this come from? There are three major components that make up an accent: Sounds (consonants and vowels), Rhythm (stressed and unstressed words), and Intonation (the rise and fall of pitch in a sentence).

Let’s take as an example, a native Russian speaker. When my former student, Raisa, said the word “coffee”, she pronounced it “Kofi” with a quick “O” sound as in the word “Coke”. There are two things that keep the listener from processing the word that she is trying to say. The first is the length of the vowel; in English we have stressed vowels that hold like a half note, instead of a quarter note, for example. The second problem is the articulation of the vowel. Russians tend to have a tight jaw when speaking, which inhibits proper pronunciation of the English open-vowel sounds such as in the words “coffee,” “politics,” and “options”. In a modern pop song, most of the emotion comes in the singing of vowels. Think of Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, who are known for stretching their notes. The same goes in English. We create impact and emotion in our vowel sounds. So not only is it necessary for the sake of proper articulation, but it is also a leveraging point for powerful speakers.

In the case of Rhythm, I will use, Luc, a former French student as an example. Most of his presentations and conversations sounded deadpan and unclear. In the French language, each syllable and word in a sentence should get equal emphasis. Conversely, in English, we not only stress certain syllables, but we stress certain words. Typically, we stress nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and question words (content words), and we de-emphasize articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and “to be” verbs (structure words). This allows certain words to jump out at the listener, avoiding a stream of words that become jumbled together. So, with the implementation of rhythm, Luc went from a crowd sleeper to a crowd pleaser.

Last, but not least, we have the component of Intonation. Intonation is the overall melody of a song or a sentence. It allows the listener to determine the mood and the intention of the sentence. For example, Sylvia was an Italian student of mine, who constantly left a rising intonation at the end of her sentences. This made Sylvia look unsure of herself because her statements were delivered as questions. Sylvia’s biggest challenge was overcoming working in a male-dominated, English speaking industry. Therefore, helping her control her intonation patterns was a first step in creating a better clarity and a more positive perception in the workplace. This is just one example of how intonation can affect the delivery of a speech. As in music, the more dramatic the change from high to low pitch, the more intense the delivery of a thought becomes. This can be used not only for clarity, but also for persuasiveness and emphasis. Intonation sets the tone, so it is extremely important for a non-native English speaker to understand the intonation patterns of the English language.

So, if you are a non-native English speaking individual and you are tired of people asking you to repeat yourself, you can always crank up the stereo and sing your heart out to your favorite American artists, or if you’re worried about what your neighbors will think, take some accent reduction classes with an expert!

Erin Corrigan, is a speaker and trainer for The Leader’s Institute. She specializes in public speaking training and accent reduction programs for non-native English speakers.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/music-101-the-key-to-accent-reduction/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/how-to-scare-the-gooey-out-of-a-new-public-speaker http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/how-to-scare-the-gooey-out-of-a-new-public-speaker#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:44:20 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=1149

By Doug Staneart
95% of the population has some type of fear of public speaking, and a great deal of this nervousness or anxiety comes from well-meaning friends or coworkers who offer constructive criticism as a way to help a new presenter improve his/her public speaking. Public speaking is not unlike any other new skill that is developed in that when we try to speak in front of a group for the first time, every one of us will be nervous (just like the first time you used a computer, or the first time you drove a car, or the first time you rode a bicycle.) What happens next, though, usually determines whether the first-time speaker will gain confidence or become more nervous.

Any time we try something new and have what we consider to be a success, we gain confidence in that skill. Any time we try something new and feel like we failed, we diminish confidence.

Think about learning to speak in front of a group as we do about riding a bicycle. When a kid hops on a bicycle, rides for a few yards, then falls over, the Mom or Dad, usually says something like, “Look how far you rode! Let’s see if you can go farther next time,” not “You did good, HOWEVER, toward the end there, you really tapered off, so you should probably keep pedaling a little longer and make sure you keep a firm grip on the handlebars, and oh yeah, by the way, you looked a little shaky, so keep your posture upright so you can have better control of the bike.”HOWEVER, that’s the way most friends and coworkers coach speakers. We tell the speaker something good, but then we follow up with either a BUT or a HOWEVER. What that tells the speaker is, “What I just told you was just to make you feel better, BUT here is how you really did.”

A seasoned presenter will be able to accept this type of coaching more positively. A new speaker, though, will most likely reduce his/her confidence and focus primarily on fixing the problem instead of presenting well. For instance, if we count “Uhs,” then over time, a new presenter will focus on not saying “uh” instead of on presenting his/her talk well. Consequently, the speaker will most likely say “uh” more often.

Constructive criticism in public speaking usually sounds like the following (I’ve included natural interpretations that we all internalize when we hear these types of comments about ourselves):

- Slow down (You talk so fast that people can’t understand you.)
- Speak up (You timid little person… We can’t hear you.)
- Stand up straighter (We can all see that you are not confident enough to present well.)
- Take your hands off the lectern (We want to be able to see your hands shake.)

And there are dozens more. Just remember, the best type of coaching you can give a new speaker is to tell them they look natural and confident (if that is a stretch, tell them how much courage they have.) Let them get comfortable speaking a few times and have a few successes in front of a group. After a few successes, a lot of the menial nervous ticks and symptoms will start to diminish. When the trust is high between you and the speaker, and he/she knows that you think he/she is confident, then you can begin to offer a few constructive comments a little at a time.

Doug Staneart, doug@leadersinstitute.com, is a senior instructor for The Leader’s Institute. He has twenty-five years experience training and coaching. He has built and sold two successful businesses. To learn more about becoming a High Impact Leader visit our website at http://www.fearlessandpersuasivespeaking.com or call Doug toll-free at 1-800-872-7830.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/how-to-scare-the-gooey-out-of-a-new-public-speaker/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/everything-youve-learned-about-public-speaking-is-wrong http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/everything-youve-learned-about-public-speaking-is-wrong#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:29:24 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=1108

By Doug Staneart

Many myths about public speaking have been passed along from person to person over the years, and the one thing that is consistent about these myths is that the people who pass them along are still nervous about speaking. After facilitating over 200 public speaking classes and never having a single person fail to significantly reduce his/her fear of speaking, I had a dramatic realization. Just about everything I was taught about public speaking while I was in school and from well meaning peers and coworkers – WAS WRONG!

Below are the top three myths that we have identified, and some simple tips that will help you reduce your fear or nervousness.

Myth #1: If you write out a talk and memorize it, you’ll be more comfortable.

This is the fastest, easiest way to make your presentation boring and canned and to make you more nervous. When you memorize a talk word-for-word, any slight hick-up or distraction can throw you off track. That can increase your nervousness. Instead, write out just a few key points and practice giving stories or examples to back up each point.

Myth #2: More facts/details will better clarify your topic.

Most of us believe that a little is good, more is better, and a whole bunch is just right in public speaking. If I can give you 10 reasons why my topic is true, then that is obviously better than two or three reasons, right? Well in public speaking, the more points we offer, the more confused our audience can become. A good rule of thumb is five or less. So, after you decide on your topic, narrow down the key points that support your topic to around five key points or fewer. If your talk requires more than five points, then it would be best to divide the presentation into two different talks.

Myth #3: Nervous habits make you a poor speaker.

Most people think that “Uhms,” talking fast, and nervous gestures are bad, but in fact, these things can make you very relatable to your audience. “Uhm” is a normal word in the English language. We say this word all the time in normal conversation. When it’s not there, the speaker can sound phony and forced. Plus, I’ve found that if you try to get yourself to stop saying “Uhm,” you’ll probably just start saying it more often anyway. Also, when people speak fast and move more, they show energy and enthusiasm. I’ve had many speakers come through my classes who were scared to get up and speak at the beginning of the program, but when they did speak, the audience thought that they were excellent speakers. The audience saw the nervousness and assumed it was enthusiasm.

Realize that speaking well is like learning to play golf. If you get a group of hackers together to coach each other, you’re just going to get a group of people very proficient at a bad golf swing. However, if you get a good coach, he can shave strokes off in no time. If you really want to get good at public speaking quickly, get a good coach who doesn’t buy-in to all the speaking myths.

Doug Staneart, doug@leadersinstitute.com, is a senior instructor for The Leader’s Institute. He has twenty-five years experience training and coaching. He has built and sold two successful businesses. To learn more about becoming a High Impact Leader visit our website at http://www.fearlessandpersuasivespeaking.com or call Doug toll-free at 1-800-872-7830.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/everything-youve-learned-about-public-speaking-is-wrong/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/secret-to-great-presentations-enthusiasm http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/secret-to-great-presentations-enthusiasm#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:25:29 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=1103

By Doug Staneart

If you take only one piece of advice about public speaking, make sure that it is this pearl of wisdom. If you focus on this one simple thing, the number of times you say “uhm” won’t matter. If you focus on this one thing, your gestures and not knowing what to do with your hands won’t matter. If you focus on this one thing, then the occasional loss of train of thought won’t matter. In fact, if you focus on this one simple thing, you can break just about every rule that public speakers are supposed to abide by, and you will still win over your audience.

This one simple rule has transformed countless mediocre speakers into good speakers, scores of good speakers into great speakers, and numerous great speakers into world-class speakers.

This simple rule that can make or break a speaker is… ENTHUSIASM.

That’s right, if you have a little excitement in your talk and a spring in your step, people pay attention. Your audience will have just about as much excitement about your talk as you do, and no more. So, if you want to win over your audience, add a sparkle of enthusiasm.

One of my mentors told me that there are two rules to live by in the world of professional speakers. She said, “Rule number one is to never speak on a topic that you yourself are not enthusiastic about, and rule number two is that if you ever violate rule number one, fake it ’til you make it.”

Frank Bettger in his book How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling said it a different way. He said, “If you act enthusiastic, then you’ll be enthusiastic.”

For those of us who get nervous in front of groups, it’s even easier. In the previous chapter I pointed out that 90% of our nervousness doesn’t even show. Let’s look at the other 10%. When we are nervous, we often cut out preambles and get right to the point, our rate of speech typically speeds up, we tend to move around a lot more, and we may move our hands around more than normal. Well, when we are excited about something, we do the exact same things.

Years ago, when I was a sales manager, I was often amazed at the number of times that a brand new sales person without a lot of product knowledge and absolutely no experience, could close sale after sale while my more seasoned people were struggling. The more times I went on sales calls with these new people, the more I started to notice a pattern. New salespeople are often nervous, so when they walk into an office on a sales call, they tend to cut right to the chase. They also generally talk faster because they are afraid they’ll forget something. They have a tough time sitting still because of the nervousness, so they move around a lot.

I noticed that these symptoms of nervousness worked to the advantage of these new salespeople, because their prospects looked across the table at salespeople who appeared to be extremely enthusiastic about what they were selling. I would imagine that these potential buyers were saying things to themselves like, “if this person believes so much in this product, it must be good.”

We as speakers can also use our nervousness to our advantage. When we turn that pent up nervousness into energy and enthusiasm, our audience can’t help but be energized as well.

Doug Staneart, is CEO of The Leader’s Institute® Entrepreneur Workshops. He can be reached toll-free at 1-800-872-7830.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/secret-to-great-presentations-enthusiasm/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/get-off-the-short-list-winning-bid-presentations http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/get-off-the-short-list-winning-bid-presentations#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:12:23 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=1099

By: Doug Staneart

In past decades, the contractor who had the lowest bid typically got the job. And while low bids are still critical, today that same contractor is likely to be placed on a “Short List” where the contractor will have to sell himself and sell his company to the potential clients. This is usually done through a presentation.

There is no foolproof way to win a bid, but there are a few things you can do to hedge your bets. By using these simple tips, you may be able to increase your chance of getting the job pretty significantly.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Never go into a presentation with a standard, generic proposal. Each buyer is different, and each buyer will have different priorities in choosing a contractor. Remember, no matter what the buyer tells you AFTER the presentation, price is almost never the reason they didn’t choose you. The reason that buyers tell us this is that they usually have no other means to make a decision.

Let me explain. Let’s say we are writing a proposal for a school district. The buyer, the person making the ultimate decision (by the way, that is usually only one person, even though it may to appear to be a committee,) has a hierarchy of priorities that will influence the decision. This hierarchy will be different for different people, but let’s say this particular buyer is primarily interested in the job finishing on time, the safety of the children, the aesthetics of the building, and finally, price-in that order. If this buyer views three proposals all saying basically the same things, “We are the best at finishing on time. Safety is our priority. Look at how beautiful our buildings look.” Then the only criteria left to make a decision is price.

If any of the contractors in the above example could have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were indeed the best at any one of those things, then that contractor would have easily made it to the top of the “Short List.” Specific evidence that you can do what your buyer wants will set you apart. This evidence could be pictures, testimonials, exhibits, quotes, trade journal articles, and many other forms. The more dramatic the evidence, the more easily it will be remembered. One of my clients photocopied over 100 letters of recommendation and delivered a set to each of the committee members at the conclusion of his presentation. He was the only contractor who offered even one. He got the job and was $250,000 over the lowest bidder.

How do we know what our buyer’s hierarchy is? ASK. Call up or visit the people you will present to. Find out what, other than price, is most important and why. Many times, these buyers will tell you in great detail. Make notes and accumulate evidence that supports how you can do what they want.

THE PRESENTATION

Right or wrong, people form an impression of how competent we are in the first few seconds that they meet us. Are we nervous? Do we present ourselves in a confident, professional manner? Our confidence when we present is vital to winning over our audience to our way of thinking.

The buyers want to get to know the people they will be working with. They want to know if they can trust the contractor. The contractor who can present confidently and build trust and rapport with the audience has a great shot at getting to the top of the “Short List.”

Presenters who have received professional coaching in public speaking skills have a distinct advantage over those who have not.

Doug Staneart, is CEO of The Leader’s Institute® Entrepreneur Workshops. He can be reached toll-free at 1-800-872-7830.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/get-off-the-short-list-winning-bid-presentations/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/effective-public-speaking-in-business-presentations http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/effective-public-speaking-in-business-presentations#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:06:14 +0000 Doug Staneart http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=1093

By: Doug Staneart

Right or wrong, people form a perception about how competent you are by how you present yourself when you stand and speak. They also form perceptions about the company you represent based on your performance. In fact, public speaking is an easy way to set yourself apart from your competition, because when you stand up and say what you want to say, they way that you want to say it, you are doing what 95% of the people in the audience wish they could do. A person who is confident in front of a group gives off an air of competence, whereas a person who fumbles might leave a negative impression.

When I was in college, I had an internship with a major oil company, and at the end of the summer, I had to present a summary of my internship to a group of department managers and vice-presidents. I was the youngest person in the room, just 20. Many of the other interns were graduate students who were much more comfortable in front of a group. When I spoke, I could feel the sweat beads on my forehead, and I could see my hands shaking. The butterflies in my stomach were uncontrollable. After the presentation, I asked myself, “If I were the decision-maker in that room, and I only had one permanent position to offer, would I choose me?” I had to answer “no.” Over the next few years, I trained with some of the most successful public speaking coaches in the country. Since then, I have spoken before thousands of people, and coached hundreds of managers, executives, and other leaders on how to present more effectively to groups. Below are some of the great public speaking tips that I have found that really work.

1. Realize 90% of nervousness doesn’t even show. The audience usually can’t see the butterflies, or shaky hands, or sweaty palms. The problem occurs when we start thinking about these symptoms rather than focusing on the audience and our topic. By human nature, most people are focused on themselves not on you. Focus on them and two things will happen: 1) they will like you more, and 2) much of the nervousness that you feel will go away.
2. Add some enthusiasm to your talk. Your audience will never be more excited about your talk than you are, so give them some energy, and they will give it back to you. Walk about a half step faster. Smile. Let your gestures and voice emphasis come naturally. Don’t over do it, but give more energy than what you normally would.
3. Limit your talk to a few key points. Narrow down your topic to either one key point for a short talk, or thee key point for a longer talk (a talk longer than 30-minutes.) Ask yourself, “If my audience only remembered one thing from my talk, what would be most important thing for them to remember?” The reason this is so important is that the human mind likes to think of only one thing at a time. For instance, think of the Statue of Liberty. What do you see? You probably see a picture in your mind of the statue. Now think of a pink elephant. Again, you probably see a picture in your mind, but the important question is…where did the statue go? Your mind can only truly focus on one thing at a time. As you add additional points, each previous point will become diluted. The more points your presentation has, the less focus the audience will have on each individual point. Once you have your key points, then create your PowerPoint slides. That will keep you from having hundreds of PowerPoint slides.
4. Tell stories. Don’t tell little white lies, but do tell anecdotes and personal experiences. Stories build rapport with your audience, and they give you more credibility. Your audience will remember your stories a lot longer than they will remember your talking points. I heard Les Brown, a famous motivational speaker, years ago, and he told a story about how a man in his hometown went around the town square holding two baby dolls and squawking like a chicken. Kids in town made fun of him, but Les found out that this man’s house had caught on fire, and his two baby girls died in the blaze. The man attempted to go in and save them many times, but the heat was too great. When his brother-in-law showed up, he verbally assaulted the man calling him a chicken for not going in to save his girls. Ever since then, the man has not spoken a word — instead he just clucks like a chicken. I heard this story years ago, and I can’t remember the specific point Les Brown was making on stage. I do remember the “chicken-man,” though, and I frequently think about how I should get all the facts before passing judgment on people. Les Brown’s stories have longevity, and your stories will have that type of impact as well.
5. When in doubt, speak from the heart. Let your audience see the real you, and you will have a great speaking performance.

Doug Staneart, is CEO of The Leader’s Institute® Entrepreneur Workshops. He can be reached toll-free at 1-800-872-7830.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/effective-public-speaking-in-business-presentations/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/how-to-reduce-public-speaking-anxiety http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/how-to-reduce-public-speaking-anxiety#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:55:42 +0000 Richard Highsmith http://www.leadersinstitute.com/?p=1087

By: Rick Highsmith

“I can’t believe I agreed to do this speech. Look at all those people out there! My knees are shaking, and my stomach feels like I just went over the top of a roller coaster. My heart is beating so fast and hard my tie is jumping. I just want to scream and run away!”

Speaking in public is often cited as the number one fear of adults. The Book of Lists places the fear of death in fifth place while public speaking ranks first. Jerry Seinfeld said, “That would mean at a funeral, people are five times more likely to want to be in the casket than giving the eulogy.”

Let’s look at some techniques to deal with the anxiety and give an excellent presentation. The methods are divided into the acronym P.R.E.P.A.R.E.

Preparation - The foundation of a good speech is built on the 6 “W’s” of effective journalism. You must determine:

• Who is your audience?
• What are your key points?
• When are you speaking; how long?
• Where is the speech; physical surroundings?
• Why should the audience listen to you?
• How are you going to present?

In an effective speech your audience will only remember 3 to 4 main ideas. Decide on the essential ideas vital for their understanding your topic. These are your key points. Make a brief outline with supporting details, quotes and graphics.

Rehearse- Practice is essential. Try delivering your talk without using any notes and check your timing during this rehearsal. If you have to use notes, then just jot down your key points. Don’t attempt to memorize the entire speech word for word. Mark Twain said, “It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” That is the effect you are working toward- a conversational, impromptu style, but with through knowledge of the material.

Entry- Launching your presentation is as important as the takeoff of an airplane. If the liftoff fails, the rest of the trip becomes irrelevant. Determine how you are going to start your speech and commit the first several lines to memory. An excellent beginning includes telling the audience why they want to listen. What is the benefit to them?

If you are particularly nervous, look for a sympathetic face and talk to that person for several moments. Do not begin with an apology… “I didn’t have much time to prepare for this talk.” Or “I’m not really good at giving speeches.” Starting with a negative makes the audience uncomfortable. Remember you feel more anxious than you look. Convert your nervous energy into enthusiasm and launch your speech positively.

Posturing- Your body is a tool. Learn to use it effectively. Find your center of balance. Your feet should be firmly planted about shoulder width apart. Hold your shoulders back and chin up. Stand calmly, being careful not to fidget or sway. Let your hands rest by your sides.

Make your movements purposeful. If you make a gesture with your hands, let them return to the resting position by your side. Don’t wander around the room. If you want to go to a different location – go there and then stop. Speak to one person at a time and maintain eye contact.

Your voice has volume, tone and pace. Realize you will speak faster and at a higher pitch than you did when you were rehearsing. Be aware of this tendency. Speak loudly enough so everyone in the room can hear you, but not so loudly that people in the front rows are covering their ears.

Audience – Know your audience. Don’t be like William Safire who said, “Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don’t know and I don’t care.” What does your audience know about the topic? Try to anticipate their questions. During the presentation, seek reactions, questions and concerns. This makes your appear accessible and allows you to move through the topic with your audience following along closely.

If possible greet audience members as they arrive. Ask why they came or about their interests in the topic. Adjust your presentation plans to better meet their needs. Finally keep in mind the audience is not your enemy – they want you to succeed. Nobody came out to watch you flail or fail. Engage people and make them partners in your successful talk.

Relax – Remember the physical reactions you experience in front of a group are normal. When confronted with a stimulating situation the body resorts to the “fight” or “flight” response. Your pulse increases. Adrenaline releases into your bloodstream. Your body prepares for a physical response but you have to stay put!

Sometimes your mind generates negative thoughts. Michael Pritchard said, “Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.” Deal with your fear by building a solid foundation (know your topic!) and feeling confident in your message. Take a few deep breaths. Mild exercise or stretching can disperse some of the anxious energy. Smile.

Ending – Like the touchdown of an airplane, your presentation must be landed correctly. Begin the end by summarizing your key points. Next ask for audience questions and clarify any remaining issues. Then make your closing statement, which should encourage some action. What do you want the audience to do? Memorizing the last few lines ensures a strong close. Finally smile and nod your head.

If the thought of speaking in public makes you anxious, you probably will be. However if you P.R.E.P.A.R.E., the level of your anxiety will be lover and you will deliver a better, more effective speech. Who knows, you may find you like giving the eulogy better than being in the casket!

Richard Highsmith, rick@leadersinstitute.com, is a senior instructor for The Leader’s Institute. He has twenty-five years experience training and coaching. He has built and sold two successful businesses. To learn more about becoming a High Impact Leader visit our website at http://www.fearlessandpersuasivespeaking.com or call Rick toll-free at 1-800-872-7830X102.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/how-to-reduce-public-speaking-anxiety/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/put-sizzle-in-your-presentation-with-unique-stories http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/put-sizzle-in-your-presentation-with-unique-stories#comments Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:17:08 +0000 Connie Timpson http://blog.leadersinstitute.com/?p=503

By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor/The Leader’s Institute

What?! Snow in Florida? Inside the gates of one of America’s most visited attractions? Yes, Cinderella lost her slipper in the slush, and it is raining Iguanas in the sunshine state. I dressed most of our plants as blanket mummies hoping to keep freezing temperatures out and plant life in.

Our phone rings and the caller speaks “lizard.” The Iguana tale has captured our imagination, tickled our funny bone and kept our attention. We humans love a good story, and Florida’s unladylike winter temperatures have given us a colorful book of them. (The iguanas will scurry back up the trees as soon as warmer temperatures defrost their little innards.)

Put Stories Into Your Presentation. Use your own stories to help you make a point or explain a premise. Your audience will understand and relax much more quickly if you tell them a story.

Stories of the “unusual” capture our attention. We remember the “different” story. We even repeat it. If you want to get your audience’s attention while making a presentation, tell them a unique story about yourself that supports your main point.

Persuade me to listen to the facts – wrap your stories in the cloak of drama, humor, or the oddities of real life. The sooner you tell me a colorful story to make a point – the quicker you will get buy-in.

Put compelling and visual details into your storytelling – call your iguana by name, tell us about walking him on a leash and how you are rescuing the once “pet” iguanas from the freeze.

I checked in with our backyard lizards and they are content to let sleeping lizards lie, but I will be telling stories about them!

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/put-sizzle-in-your-presentation-with-unique-stories/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/free-presentation-coaching-session http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/free-presentation-coaching-session#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:40:45 +0000 Public Speaking Course » presentation skills http://www.fearlesspresentations.com/?p=16645

Have an important speech coming up, or did you just finish a presentation that just didn’t go so well?

Our toll-free 800 number is always manned by one of our actual presentation class instructors, and they can often help you with a free one-on-one phone coaching session. Of course the best way to get long-term public speaking confidence and over come the fear of public speaking is with a structured program like the Fearless Presentations® Class, but often, our coaches can give you a few simple tips that can help you immediately.

Complete the Form Below or
Call One of Our Instructors Toll-Free at (800) 975-6151

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/free-presentation-coaching-session/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/go-behind-the-scenes-with-a-veteran-presentation-coach http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/go-behind-the-scenes-with-a-veteran-presentation-coach#comments Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:08:19 +0000 Connie Timpson http://blog.leadersinstitute.com/?p=429

By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor The Leader’s Institute



It looks so easy! Just put on a mic, talk to the camera, walk around, sit down, do a couple of interviews, be smart, funny, serious, relate to the viewer, and get more out of your guest than anyone ever has.

Above all else, do not sweat. No one likes shine on TV…and try, try not to stumble. See, I told you it was easy. Not!


The problem is that Viewers are really fickle. It takes them less than 20 seconds to hit the zapper and decide your future. Talk about a stressful job interview!

In many ways presenting a television program is like teaching someone how to make a Fearless Presentation.  No matter the kind of presenter, or kind of presentation, the person making the presentation needs an experienced coach for guidance. Successful presentations come from a powerful combination of personality and structure.

• Tell stories that will get my attention. Tell the story behind the facts. Help me get to know the person living the issue. Explore the issue through her eyes.
• Be clear and concise. Get to the point! No one has time for rambling, and please don’t confuse me.
• Deliver your message with energy passion. Infuse the presentation with energy, and persuade me to fall in love with the issue.

Now the caveat – forget the camera, while it records every stray-hair, slip of the tongue, and silly question that sometimes leaks out when the red light turns on.

Speaking To An Audience Or To A Camera
Promise expertise, energy, passion and depth – and deliver on the promise. Every audience is assailed with zillions of images and messages every day. As a presenter, you are competing against everything from Smart Phones to the sleep deprived person who stayed up all night sending proposals and email to clients trying to land the next big job.  Your audience needs to feel that you have something they need, that something exciting is about to happen.  If you are passionate and excited about what you say – your audience will put down their Blackberry’s and be excited with you.



Get a presentation coach – An experienced coach can help you check your nerves and make quick, substantial growth before you try out your presentation in front of an audience.

A good coach sees behind the presentation and works with you to get your “best self” in front of a group or camera.

Believe in yourself. Let  Yes I can, become your internal mantra. There is no room for self-doubt.

• Be who you naturally are. The best thing you can give any audience is yourself, so BE YOURSELF! No persona, no stand in personality, no “someone you would like to be like.”
• Take control of your nerves – How can you help people understand a topic or point when your nerves press against your voice box and threaten to make your voice crackle or make you sound like you are 15?  It is all about psychology - yes you can!
• Tap the “caring emotional” part of your brain – the one that reassures you that you know the subject very well. Hold tight to the fact that you are prepared and have confidence that no one could do this better than you can.

Other than all that – it’s easy!

Connie Timpson is a coach, instructor and keynote speaker based in Jacksonville, Florida <http://www.leadersinstitute.com/connietimpson> . Her keynote speech, Don’t Faint, It’s Just a Camera is a light-hearted and fun keynote presentation where Connie uses her experience as a TV journalist, news director and trainer to help the audience understand that the camera is just an electronic box. She will help you keep your wits and check your nerves, and keep your head off the floor and out of the lion’s mouth. She is available for association meetings, corporate meetings and conventions, and other keynote events and breakout sessions.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/go-behind-the-scenes-with-a-veteran-presentation-coach/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/how-to-persuade-an-audience-during-a-persuasive-speech http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/how-to-persuade-an-audience-during-a-persuasive-speech#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:25:36 +0000 Ann-Marie Gordon http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=314

How to persuade an audience during a persuasive speech?

Have you ever been in a meeting where half the room is in favor of your point, and the other half…well, you feel as if you have to do a whole lot more in order to get them to agree with you? This happens a lot in our personal as well as our professional lives. Sometimes, we have to be persuasive if we want to get our points across, and win over the other party. To achieve this, there are a few easy things that can be done in order to persuade an audience during a persuasive speech, one of which is to tell a story.

By telling stories, you are gaining the audience’s attention and piquing its interest.  Sounds easy, right? We occasionally forget that stories can be a very persuasive and effective tool, and is usually simple to use in any situation. You are probably thinking that by giving numbers and percentages in order to convince your audience, you are coming across as very clever.  Well, that’s probably true, but stop and think. Are numbers alone powerful enough to get your point across, and are they interesting enough to get your audience to believe in you? For example, if you are a salesperson for a software company, and you base your presentations to clients solely on your previous experience as a salesperson, or on the company’s history, do you think that will be enough to compel your clients to purchase your software? Most likely not. However, if you add a story about a specific client, and how it resulted in the company changing over to the new software, that can have a tremendous emotional impact on your audience. Your audience will probably be influenced by the stories you tell them. Stories can apply to a multitude of situations and circumstances. You want to use them as much as possible as a way to convince your audience that what you are telling them has real life application, beyond the numbers.

Storytelling, as a whole, takes on the specific role as the first part of the “convincing” of your audience. If, on top of telling stories, you tell your audience what you want them to do, all of a sudden, your stories become more powerful. For instance, let’s use the software salesperson example again. Telling your clients a story is great, but if you then add specific situations where they could use the software, it becomes a lot more convincing, much more so than if you were to waste time on material that the client is not interested in. You want to tell them “use this software in such and such situations”. Then, what will happen is that your audience can now relate to your story and by having formed an emotional connection to your example, they will be in a better position to buy in to what you are saying.  This won’t mean that you’ll sell your software to everybody, but at least, you’re more convincing with greater passion, and emotion.

The last piece of a good story is to let your audience know about the “positives” of doing what you tell them to do.  You basically tell them what will happen if they use your advice. For example, I was working in a manufacturing company as a Human Resource Generalist a few years ago. I was trying to convince the management team that using Training & Development would be a great advantage for the company. I didn’t really know how to persuade them. I realized that they knew what Training & Development was, but they didn’t know what the tangible benefits were. For them, it was more about spending money blindly, than helping the company. What does it mean for us to invest in our people? That was the question they were really asking. I decided to “show” them what it meant for them. I went ahead, and told them a story about the time when the company lost a huge contract because one of their engineers was not up to date with the technology used by the potential client. We lost the contract! I told them “if you use Training & Development as a global strategy, you are ensuring your place in the market, and you will not lose a big contract ever again”. That’s just a brief example of what this would look like in real life. In the end, you’re doing your audience a favor by telling them what happened to you (story), what they should do, and then the positives of it. You’re saving them time, and effort. By focusing on the positive take-home-message, (the morale of your story), it also gives them closure. Your audience will now know why you told them this story. This will be the “AH-HAH!” moment, where your audience will go “now I get it”.

Stories become increasingly valuable during “question and answer” periods, especially if the person asking the question is aggressive or negative towards you. I was teaching a class in San Diego last week, and was faced with such a situation. One of the participants was questioning one of the techniques I was explaining. Sometimes, we like to answer questions using logic: We have become so used to explaining the “why” of things, without ever considering the audience’s real-life experiences that it becomes increasingly difficult to convince our audience, or at the very least win them over and have them sympathize with us and believe in our cause. Using stories as a means to answer questions can be beneficial to the audience, as they can relate to the story told, as well as become less likely to come back with hostile or pessimistic comments in the future.

Stories are a great way to persuade an audience when delivering a persuasive speech. They add spice and feeling to your presentations, they allow your audience to relate to what you are saying, as well as convincing them without turning them off with the typical and tired numbers, figures, percentages and dry techniques that don’t really work anyways. So think back to the original question: have you ever been in a meeting where you had to convince half of the room of something? Try telling a story and be amazed at the results.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/how-to-persuade-an-audience-during-a-persuasive-speech/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-six-synergy http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-six-synergy#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:48:44 +0000 Craig Wagganer http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=310

Public Speaking Ideas- Audience Participation Adds Impact- Part Six- Synergy

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Here is a lesson we need to take to just about every part of our lives, including our presentations. Too often we prepare just wanting to get done. We don’t take time to really think of making an impact and making sure that our points are remembered and assimilated. We simply prepare the parts of the message, put it together, and when it makes sense we practice to make sure we don’t look foolish. Too often the goal of the presentation is to simply get done without making a fool of ourselves, accomplish this and we consider ourselves successful.

But there has to be a better reason to be making the presentation. We must be filling a need and their must be a purpose to what we are doing. When we go about preparing for the presentation we must know that material we are presenting is crucial to those who will hear it. It is important information they need. It is an ingredient in their lives that if they miss it, or forget it, will be the difference between a savory loaf of fresh baked bread and a fresh from the oven brick; just because you forgot a minute amount of yeast. To enjoy a slice of fresh baked bread would be much better than to simply eat the ingredients that go into the delight.

When we prepare our presentations we must see the importance of what we are doing. Then we can become creative to make sure that the message not only gets to the audience, but gets into them. Plan your presentations to take advantage of synergy. Involve the whole person in the experience and the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts. Often presentations are an assault on two senses- hearing- after all we are talking, and sight- we all us some type of presentation software these days. But what of taste, touch and smell? If we can involve more senses in the learning experience that learning becomes more integrated, solicits greater involvement, impacts in a greater capacity, and makes the experience much richer, deeper and lasting.

Instead of asking, “Here are my three points, how can I relate them?” Ask, “Here are my points, how can I help my audience experience them?” Plan and prepare your presentations to be synergistic, you will get your audience beyond just attendance and get into their imaginations.

Craig Wagganer is a Keynote and Motivational Speaker specializing in Teambuilding, Leadership and Public Speaking

 

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-six-synergy/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear-leads-to-missed-opportunities http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear-leads-to-missed-opportunities#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:38:36 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=306

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmi_UUa8gUc]

Once you overcome the fear of public speaking, you’ll be amazed at how you capitalize on opportunities that you previously missed. If you experience stage fright or public speaking fear, then there is a good chance that you are missing opportunities. Have you ever had the opportunity to do something or say somthing and you hesitated? Then later, you kicked yourself because you know you should have acted. The Fearless Presentations Bootcamp is a presentation training course offered in Dallas, TX, that helps people become more powerful speakers and leaders so that they capitalize on these opportunities. Here is a video from Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader’s Institute, who talks about how presentation training can help.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-fear-leads-to-missed-opportunities/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-five-sound http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-five-sound#comments Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:32:08 +0000 Craig Wagganer http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=298

Public Speaking Ideas- Audience Participation Adds Impact- Part Five- Sound

Have you ever been in a conversation, heard something and interrupted with, “What was that?” Many would say that sound is one of the most important senses we have. It allows us to listen, of course, but it also serves as an alert, or warning system. It is a special filter that our brains have the capacity to use to help us decide what we want and need to listen to, and what is not as important. Ever sit in a restaurant oblivious to the sounds around you until you catch a simple word from another conversation, your ears perk up, you motion to the person you’re with to be quiet and your strain to catch the conversation you were previously unaware of- all because one word you overheard? Stop right now, sit back and make take note of all the things you can hear but were previously unaware of, quite interesting.

When you are making a presentation your audience has many sounds going on around them, not just what you’re saying. So why not use that to your advantage. Besides your voice engage their hearing in activities that will help reinforce your message. Hearing a speaker on time management, there was a continuous clicking sound that was almost distracting, until the presenter mentioned the seconds pounding away on a watch. We had all been hearing it, but when we discovered what it was, it reinforced the value of time and the crime of wasting it.

A song played before, during or after a presentation can be a powerful things if the words are displayed and there is an obvious emotional connection to the presentation (just be aware that long (or even not-so-long) instrumentals can cause people’s minds to wonder. A loud noise that rattles the audience can make a vivid point if used wisely and timed properly. I attended a Good Friday service in which the pounding of a hammer against a nail could be heard in the background. Once when talking about teamwork I would randomly bang a loud cymbal. At the end I made the point that as part of a symphony a cymbal can be a very valuable instrument, while by itself it simply is nerve-racking- it made the point well.

When you plan a presentation consider how to involve the sense of hearing beyond just using your words. It may get you message to your audience beyond the ears and into their imagination.

Craig Wagganer is a Keynote and Motivational Speaker specializing in Teambuilding, Leadership and Public Speaking

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-five-sound/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/best-way-to-eliminate-stage-fright http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/best-way-to-eliminate-stage-fright#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:59:08 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=289

Sarah Gershman, President, Green Room Speakers –

I still wonder why performance triggers the flight or fight response – and believe that this may have something to do with a negative performance experience as a child – which left the child feeling somehow “attacked” so that every time after that when he/she is asked to speak – the “attack” feeling returns.

 *******************************

Sarah, you asked above, “Why would fight or flight kick in?”  That’s the key question.  I’ve helped over 12,000 eliminate stage fright, and I’ve never witnessed fight or flight kick in with any of them.  Fight or flight kicks in when a person is in danger and only has two choices.  Stage fright can be eliminated by avoiding the circumstances where fight or flight would kick in.

 Eliminating stage fright is actually a very easy process — once you understand that it is a process.  The simple truth is that fear comes when we try anything new.  If we have what we perceive to be a failure the first time, nervousness increases the next time.  Confidence in the skill is developed as the person has a series of successes along the way.

 A better analogy is learning to drive a car.  The best way to gain confidence driving is to start in a parking lot with a parent or coach, and once you master the basic, go out onto the street and just do right-hand turns.  Once you master that, make a few left-hand turns, and eventually make your way to the freeway.  Every time you try something new in the car, you’ll feel nervous doing it until you have a few successes.  After a few successes, though, each of the component parts becomes part of the sub-conscious – you’d think about what you are doing when you drive a car now.  Most people learn public speaking by performing in a big speech — which is nuts.  That would be like putting a 15 year-old into a car on the back of one of those car carriers you see at auto dealerships, getting the speed up to 60 MPH on the freeway, dropping the ramp down and rolling the car off the back.  The kid in the car would have sheer terror, and just before the ramp is dropped down, the “flight” part of the fight or flight will kick in. 

 The bottom-line is that if you want to eliminate your public speaking fear, get a good coach and master the basics.  Your fear will go away quickly.

 Doug Staneart, America’s Fearless Presentations Coach

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/best-way-to-eliminate-stage-fright/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/audiences-are-selfish http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/audiences-are-selfish#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:52:27 +0000 Connie Timpson http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/audiences-are-selfish/

You would think that your profound thoughts and words would be enough to make anyone listen. You want to tell them everything you know about the subject. You worked on your speech or presentation, put in some great language, big dollar words, that will make them understand that you are very smart. And let’s not forget your super duper, detailed, animated powerful Power Point slide show…that took you two days to create. You are sure to wow them!

A few minutes into the presentation you notice the evil texting impulse toying with the audience’s attention. You want to shout, “Blackberries, Smart Phones, put them down! Why were they ever invented?”

Oh….for when your audience is bored, and texting colleagues, looking stuff up on the Internet or playing games to keep themselves awake. You spot a couple of people quietly sneaking out, and you wonder why are these people so rude? I hate to tell you this, but it probably has more to do with “your presentation” than “them.”

Whose Presentation Is This Anyway?

Yours, of course! You created it. But who did you create it for? Was there a thought of what your self-absorbed, selfish audience might want or need to know? They are not impressed by your big, expensive words. In fact they didn’t buy into your use of high dollar language or your polished but tedious PowerPoint. They didn’t buy into your presentation because you did not invest in them.

You owe them! They have given you a half hour or an hour of their time. They are just as busy as you are. If they do not come away feeling enlightened, inspired or richer for the experience of hearing you speak, they will want their investment back – their time.

The Audience Has A Single Thought – What’s In It For Me?
You do not have to commission a survey to understand what your audience may want, but you do need to ask yourself a series of questions? Who are the people in your audience likely to be? What do they need and want to know? Are you offering them something new, a better understanding of the subject?

When you have determined what the audience wants – you can begin to put together your material in a clear, concise and interesting way. Make it audience focused.

Read Your Audience
Watch for their responses, engage them, get them to participate. React to their mood. Address your audience on their level. Use your natural gifts as a speaker. If you are enthusiastic show your passion for the subject, your audience will listen. Give them what they want and they will come to you for more.

Give The Leader’s Institute two short days of your time and we will give you a structure and the skills to become a top notch presenter.  Your audience is a key element and we can teach you how to make them sit up and listen.  Join us for Fearless Presentations at any one of our conveniently located courses across the USA.

Connie Timpson is a Sr. Instructor for The Leader’s Institute, specializing in Public Speaking, Team Building, Leadership and on-camera Coaching.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/audiences-are-selfish/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-four-sight http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-four-sight#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:42:56 +0000 Craig Wagganer http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=281

Public Speaking Ideas- Audience Participation Adds Impact- Part Four- Sight

What do you see when you participate in a presentation? Or better yet, what do people see when you are presenting? They see you, of course, and perhaps your flip charts and PowerPoint slides, but what else. We are presenting to generations that grew up with so much visual stimulation that they are waiting to see something “different” each time they view a presentation. PowerPoint has become cliché; flip charts have also become a useful, but retro medium. So how can we involve sight as a creative augment to our presentations?

Once speaking on the problem of commercializing Christmas I spoke in a Santa Claus outfit. There were several opportunities throughout the presentation to use the costume to help emphasize dramatic points. Likewise, speaking on an Easter Sunday on the real meaning of Easter, I spoke while dressed as the Easter Bunny. The comic relief was immediate, which was easily translated into many illustrations and illuminations concerning the subject material. Speaking to a group on an issue that needed to be taken seriously I wore a gorilla outfit, reminding them throughout the presentation, “not to monkey around with…..” The extra visual helped people to make the connection of the presentation points while becoming a constant illustration that I could refer to with appropriate gestures and comments.

We think we’ve helped the audience when we have made our display on a white board or flip chart- and these are great items to include. We often put up PowerPoint, or presentation slides that we have labored over concerning the content, font, size, color, pictures, animations, etc. All of which are fine, but don’t make the impression or connection they used to make.

Our personal movement, gestures and voice are the most important visuals that we can enhance to make better connections with the audience, but don’t overlook being creative. Give them something “else” to see. Once demonstrating the importance of prioritizing I saw a presenter place objects in a glass jar in descending size order. Every time we thought he couldn’t get more in the jar he would place something smaller in the jar, finally filling it with sand and then water. The point wasn’t that there is always room for more, but rather you better get the big things in first. I still remember the lesson because of the visual.

In your next presentation preparations take some time to be innovative while thinking, “What can I put before the audiences’ eyes to help them understand and integrate the message?” Maybe your message will get through their eyes and into their imaginations.

Craig Wagganer is a Keynote and Motivational Speaker specializing in Teambuilding, Leadership and Public Speaking

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-four-sight/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/leadership-skills-training-program-dallas-tx http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/leadership-skills-training-program-dallas-tx#comments Fri, 09 Oct 2009 02:30:53 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=236



Leadership Training Class in Dallas, TX

We had a fun leadership class in Dallas on Tuesday and Wednesday. The High Impact Leaders class focuses on building confidence as a leader, presentation skills, how to build a great team, and how to position yourself as a great leader within your industry.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/leadership-skills-training-program-dallas-tx/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-three-smell http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-three-smell#comments Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:03:05 +0000 Craig Wagganer http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=232

Public Speaking Ideas- Audience Participation Adds Impact- Part Three- Smell

 I was working outside the other morning and the air was fresh and blowing. The smell of rain was drifting about and it made me want to close my eyes and just breathe deeply. I don’t often contemplate the olfactory sense, but it is an important part of our life experience. Haven’t you ever been traveling down a country road and been smacked in the face by the pungent smell of a skunk? Or maybe you’ve had the opposite experience of waking up in the morning to the smell of bacon sizzling on a griddle. We wrinkle our nose and turn away from the irritating smell of vinegar, while breathing deeply and soaking in every last whisper of aroma as we drive past our favorite coffee stop. 

 Unfortunately when we think of presentations we usually don’t think about the sense of smell. Well, unless it is an ungracious comment after we are done. But smell is one of the five senses we have that help us understand and make sense of the world. It can also be a powerful tool in making presentations more meaningful and the lessons last longer.

 I was once speaking on the power of looking forward. It was the dead of winter in Minnesota and the thoughts of the coming spring was a thought everyone could easily relish. I planted several “spring scented” candles inconspicuously around the venue and had them lit as I began the presentation. As I talked about the power of looking forward, and illustrated it with the desire for spring, it was as if the people could actually smell spring coming, in fact they could! The minds desire for the next season, along with the fragrant aroma of its coming, made a powerful impact on the audience and made the message more clear and applicable to their situations. By involving another sense they were lifted to a greater plane of understanding and application.

 Our sense of smell is one that makes connections. How many times have you been driving somewhere, or walking along a street, taken a deep breath and remarked, “That smells like…” and made a connection to a certain memory or experience? Whenever I smell fresh baked bread I am transported back to my childhood memories of Sunday morning, driving to church in our 1956 Chevy, and passing the Wonder Bread Bakery. If we can creatively involve the sense of smell in a presentation we have helped our audience make an immediate connection to a memory or experience, or even better, we created a new memory or experience for them through the creativity of our presentation message.

 There is a verse in the Bible that talks of the prayers of the saints as being a sweet smelling aroma. When presenting on that perspective of our prayers before God, I had several “sweet smelling’ candles lit so that the aroma would be clear to everyone’s noses. This simple illustration made an immediate impact and lasting impression on the audience and the power of their prayers from God’s perspective.

 When you have prepared your next presentation ask yourself if there is a way to incorporate the sense of smell to your audience into your presentation experience? It may get the message out from under their noses and into their imaginations.

Craig Wagganer is a Keynote and Motivational Speaker specializing in Teambuilding, Leadership and Public Speaking

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-three-smell/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-2 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-2#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:10:30 +0000 Craig Wagganer http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=195

Public Speaking Ideas- Audience Participation Adds Impact- Part Two- Taste

A great meal is a great memory. I can’t remember every meal I’ve eaten (although I carry the evidence), but I can remember certain times that were outstanding. A good public presentation is that way, it is memorable- like a great taste that lingers in the mind long after the palate has moved on to something else. When preparing a presentation it is a good idea to consider taste and how you can get it involved into your presentation.

Consider your next presentation, what taste comes to mind? That may sound like a silly question, but if the material you are presenting is important and you want your audience to remember it, involve as many senses as possible. Taste may seem like a difficult consideration, but if you think about it and let your creativity guide you, it may be possible to add something that will make your presentation a very memorable experience.

Speaking to a group on the powers of refreshing friendships I had volunteers pass out small glasses of ice water. Another time speaking on the idiosyncrasies of the group I was presenting to, I passed out small glasses of 7-Up (at that time the “Uncola”). On another occasion, speaking on the need of refreshment and renewal (on a very hot summer day) I passed out Dixie Cups of ice cream. Each time there was a very welcomed reception of the refreshments, but I was also able to use the “taste” of the experience as dramatic illustration of the subject matter. People became more engaged in the presentation than if I had only used words and descriptions. Having the illustration in their hands (and literally their mouths) made the message come alive and offered a greater engagement of the audience with the point of the presentation.

Taste is a very powerful sense that can also create and/or recall emotions. By doing so people connect to your message at a deeper level than just the spoken communication. When taste is used to reinforce the verbal a clear connection and more memorable experience is likely. Think of the difference your presentation will make if you simply, creatively come up with a taste experience for your audience to share. When you tell a story, give an anecdote, make a demonstration and then add an element that is not expected- giving them something to taste, not just think about, or touch, but actually taste… imagine the impact.

When preparing your presentation, does a specific taste come to mind? How can you incorporate that into your presentation? Can you use that in a clever and innovative way to reinforce the message? Don’t be afraid to try new things, new ways. Your creativity may set you and your message apart and impact your audience. You may be able to take your material from their mouth to their imaginations.

Craig Wagganer is a Keynote and Motivational Speaker specializing in Teambuilding, Leadership and Public Speaking

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-2/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-one-touch http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-one-touch#comments Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:39:31 +0000 Craig Wagganer http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=175

 Public Speaking Ideas-  Audience Participation Adds Impact

Communication has changed. My dad grew up listening to radio. The family would gather around and sit attentively as the radio broadcast news, variety shows, and serials. I grew up with television. Not only did I have something to listen to, but my eyes were involved as well. My kids grew up with Atari; a simple video game system that involved the ears, eyes and simple hand movements. My grandkids have interactive games that include all the senses (with maybe the exception of smell). The point is it takes more to get reception than it did in generations past. To make sure our message is heard and remembered we must involve more of the total person than just the ears. Our senses are daily bombarded with myriads of impressions. If we are going to give presentations that make an impact and are memorable we must use very sense available to impact our audience.

Speaking to a group of people about how easily we let things slip through our grasp, I handed out hotel-sized bars of soap and had them write the three main points on the outside wrapper. Those little soaps are hard to hold onto and slip though the grasp very easily. The small bars of soap made an easy and memorable illustration; it also gave the participants something other than paper to use, feel, and even smell. Writing on and holding on to the little soaps helped them pay attention and reinforced the learning. It is also something more likely to be kept and pondered than notes on a piece of paper.

The more senses we can get involved into our presentations the more enjoyable and memorable they will be. As we are speaking if we can put something in their hands that can reinforce the message we will also be successful in getting it into their heads. The small bars of soap mentioned above were easily accessible at a local hotel chain that was more than happy to donate them to the assembly.

Too often we think our passion will be enough. If we can create some excitement and enthusiasm with our voice and gestures it will be contagious and will connect. Although that can be true, to engage as many senses as possible will help us create a more long-lasting impression, one in which the content, not just the presentation or presenter, will be remembered. When we have crafted a presentation only a little more thought will help us tap into a innovative way to help the audience connect to the message and remember its key points.

When speaking on the power of communication to do damage, I handed out tongue depressors for the title and ideas to be written on. Years later someone showed me their tongue depressor and commented on how much it had meant and that they continued to carry it with them in an effort to be careful how they talked to and about people.

The next time you prepare a presentation be creative and think of an object you can put in the peoples hands that will carry your message from their hands to their imaginations.

Craig Wagganer is a Keynote and Motivational Speaker specializing in Public Speaking.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-ideas-audience-participation-adds-impact-part-one-touch/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/10-year-old-keynote-speaker-to-dallas-isd http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/10-year-old-keynote-speaker-to-dallas-isd#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:34:38 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=173

This 10 year-old kid is going to go far.  Very inspirational keynote speech deliivered to his teachers and administrators at a Dallas ISD convention.  You’ll love this.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTY03nrkJo8]

Posted by Doug Staneart, Keynote Speaker and author in Dallas, Texas

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/10-year-old-keynote-speaker-to-dallas-isd/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-tip-narrow-down-your-topic http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-tip-narrow-down-your-topic#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:59:17 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/?p=166

“Narrow down your speech to five or fewer key points and use examples and stories to validate your points. This makes your presentation easier to deliver and easier for your audience to agree with you.” — Doug Staneart, Fearless Presentations Bootcamp

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-tip-narrow-down-your-topic/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-tip-memorize-your-speech-no-dont http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-tip-memorize-your-speech-no-dont#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:38:44 +0000 Connie Timpson http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/public-speaking-tip/

By Connie Timpson/ Sr. Instructor at The Leader’s Institute

“It’s not that long. I can memorize it.” Maybe. But why would you? Memorizing speeches sets you up for anxiety and possible failure. It robs you of spontaneity and creative thought. If someone interrupts your speech to ask a question, you may find that the tumblers on the memory vault have shifted and the words are locked up.

Nothing is worse that standing in front of an audience with panic threatening to knock you to your knees. (Although that might get you some sympathy.) As you search for the words, the audience searches for the exit.

If you accept a speaking invitation, use your intellect, expertise, a three-point outline and all the spontaneity and enthusiasm you can muster. Spontaneity, passion and enthusiasm all provide an instant connection to your audience, and an open door to information and ideas that you have stored in the bank vault. You could become known as an expert who dazzles audiences, rather than the speaker who lost his or her words.

To become a first rate speaker, join us at The Leader’s Institute for Fearless Presentations. Two days that will change your life as a speaker.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-tip-memorize-your-speech-no-dont/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/dont-faint-its-just-a-tv-camera http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/dont-faint-its-just-a-tv-camera#comments Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:40:23 +0000 Connie Timpson http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/dont-faint-its-just-a-tv-camera/

By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor/The Leaders Institute

 
Relax, Mike Wallace rarely does interviews anymore, and Nancy Grace is only interested in scandal. It’s just you, a camera crew, lights so bright that you wish you had worn shades, a microphone cord running up your shirt or blouse just to remind you, “Make no mistake. We’ve got you!” And oh did I mention a journalist, looking for the next big story that will punch his or her ticket to the next biggest market? Or at least get a good enough quote to put your face above the fold on the evening paper.

And by the way….it’s a bad hair day, and a bad color pantsuit for the camera. But hey…no pressure!

Okay, let’s roll people. The interview belongs to the 24-hour news media!

Now rewind the tape: You take control of the interview. That means understand their craft to better control your message. Today’s media has “next minute” deadlines, they are under a lot of pressure to fill many empty hours.

They key is – Do not let them push you. Give them what you want and can give them. When pushed – humor is a good push back.

Be Mentally and Physically Prepared

Ø Be confident – you have what they want – there is no story without you and your information.

Ø Be prepared to answer any question – know your subject in people terms. Tell “real people” stories to get the lead or be above the fold. Statistics are dry and boring, wrap them in graphic language that brings their findings to life. Or as Paul Brodeur of the New Yorker said, “Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped off.”

Example “22% of American women smoke.”
Or “If you stop to have a cigarette at the smoking lounge in Atlanta airport, look around. If four of you are women, smoking at the same time – one of you will likely die from a disease directly linked to smoking.”

Ø Set a goal for the interview – both for how you want to be perceived as a person, and what you are willing to say and what you want to cover.

You Keep Control Of The Interview

Ø Talk directly to the interviewer. Forget about the camera. You want to look calm and in control. It is a conversation, not a performance. The camera will follow you and record the best parts of what you say.

Ø Keep answers short to avoid being edited. Practice answering questions in a 10-15 second sound bite. If the journalist asks a follow-up question great. But it is far better to edit yourself. Your best words can be swept into the deleted bin by someone who has news timings higher on the “gotta have list” than getting all the answers.

A sigh, frequent blinking, licking your lips, shaky hands, pinched voice, the camera sees, hears and records all of it. Your goal is to let the camera see and hear someone who is composed, very smart and friendly.

Ø Watch Your Body Language Respond to the interviewer. Relate to the interviewer as if you have just made a friend. Even if it becomes combative you will look like the good guy.

Ø Sit naturally. That means, sit up straight so that you look confident and controlled, but not so straight that you look uncomfortable or “trying to perform for the camera.”

Ø Use your hands. The temptation is to clasp them or hold onto something such as a pen. Gesture as you would during a natural conversation. Be very careful not to let nervous gestures become part of your response to questions. It’s just a TV camera.

“What do you mean JUST a TV camera?” It feels like I am looking into a hungry lion’s mouth, with a pushy journalist telling it to eat me! It sees, hears and broadcasts even what I do not want to say or hear later. Just ask John Edwards, Mark Sanford, or even Caroline Kennedy. And High Def sees every flaw you have, oh yes, wrinkles, botox needle-marks or the spec of chocolate on your tie.

And did I say there are no do-overs and second takes? If you can’t breathe, your lips won’t move, you stumble or…fall, it makes you look more human. And television producers love a good human story.

 

Connie Timpson is a keynote speaker based in Jacksonville, Florida. Her keynote speech, Don’t Faint, It’s Just a Camera is a light-hearted and fun keynote presentation where Connie uses her experience as a TV journalist, news director and trainer to help the audience understand that the camera is just an electronic box. She will help you keep your wits and check your nerves, and keep your head off the floor and out of the lion’s mouth. She is available for association meetings, corporate meetings and conventions, and other keynote events and breakout sessions. To book Connie for your event, call The Leader’s Institute Speakers Bureau at 1-800-872-7830.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/dont-faint-its-just-a-tv-camera/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/enthusiasm-can-turn-boring-material-into-exciting-material http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/enthusiasm-can-turn-boring-material-into-exciting-material#comments Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:01:44 +0000 Connie Timpson http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/enthusiasm/

Enthusiasm Can Turn Boring Presentation Material Into Exciting Presentations
By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor The Leader’s Institute

Chris Martin of Coldplay believes that enthusiasm is more important than just about anything when it comes to wowing crowds.”  We rely more on enthusiasm than actual skill,” he told 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft. “Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically and people will like it more. “I can’t dance like Usher. I can’t sing like Beyonce. I can’t write songs like Elton John,” he said. “But, we can do the best we can with what we’ve got. We just go for it .” And repeatedly, Cold Play brings the crowd to its feet.

Enthusiasm, however, is not owned by performing artists. Bring it to your work, your presentations. You say “I can’t do that.” And I say, “Yes you can.”

All you have to do is follow the advice of my favorite English Professor. Professor Chase turned “Old English” into vivid, memorable stories, by using speed, changes in volume lively movement, bigger gestures, and altering the tone to fit the emotion of the message. Oh, did I mention that he jumped on his desk hypnotizing us with soliloquies from Mc Beth?

Professor Chase gave students information and told stories like they should be told; lively, with gestures that matched the story, change of tone and volume. And he used the whole room to tell his tales. The bad guys sounded really bad and the mysteries he told, pulled you right into the land of bards and wizards.

Like Chris Martin, Professor Chase understood the power of enthusiasm. Like all good communicators, both men bring life to words. Use these five tools to turn an okay performance or presentation into a presentation that your colleagues and boss will envy.  You can learn how to put enthusiasm into your presentation and become a first class speaker in Fearless Presentations a two day course with The Leader’s Institute.

• Speed – put your foot on the gas to create interest and drama

• Volume – get your audience to listen by raising & dropping the volume

• Movement – create interest and energy by moving

• Bigger Gestures – go on, give up a little control. Talk with your hands. Keep your audience’s attention through bigger gestures that have impact and drama; and keep your audience’s attention.

• Tone – change the tone to stress main points of your presentation. Put emphasis on the points that you want your audience to remember.

The best information can be no better than the presenter.

“You” bring the magic to your presentation.

Go on, be an enthusiastic presenter of information.

Make people say, “wow!”

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/enthusiasm-can-turn-boring-material-into-exciting-material/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/top-5-myths-about-public-speaking-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/top-5-myths-about-public-speaking-fear#comments Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:40:32 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/top-5-myths-about-public-speaking-fear/

The Top Five (5) Biggest Myths about Public Speaking Fear and Stage Fright

By Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader’s Institute(R)

It’s time to set the record straight. ANYONE can be a fantastic, world-class speaker with a little bit of training, a little bit of coaching, and a little bit of practice. It doesn’t take years of study and practice, and it doesn’t take thousands of dollars of investment. One of the hardest things to get across to new presenters is the immutable fact that just about everything that you have ever learned about public speaking and creating good business presentations is flat out WRONG!

The following are some of the biggest myths about stage fright and public speaking training:

Myth #1: Good Speakers have a Natural Talent (Born Speakers)

This one always makes me laugh because no one comes out of the womb speaking. In fact, for the first couple of years, our entire speech is “Goo goo gaa gaa”. Granted, if you have a nice sounding voice, you might have an advantage in front of a group, or if you are stunningly good looking, you might command attention better. However, most great speakers become great at presenting because they really work at it. Here is the real secret that the academics, the toasting clubs, and the seminar leaders won’t tell you. Public speaking is an EASY skill to master if you practice the right way. However, instead of doing things to decrease their nervousness, most new speakers work really hard to try to hide their nervousness. What tends to happen is that the tricks and gimmicks that we use only make us more nervous.

Myth #2: I’m Way More Nervous than Everyone Else

Surveys show that 95% of the population admit to feeling public speaking fear or stage fright. Surveys also show that over 45% of the population admit that the stage fright that they feel is so great that they avoid opportunities to present in front of groups. One of the first things that we share with people when we coach them as speakers, or when they come through one of our public speaking classes or presentation seminars, is that most of the stuff that happens to us when we get nervous is invisible to the audience. For example, just before we start to speak, most of us will start to feel our heart beating more quickly and forcefully. Some people will get sweaty palms or feel the butterflies in their stomach. We might feel light headed or even lose our train of thought. What do all of these things have in common? They are things that we FEEL, but are absolutely transparent to the audience. The problem that typically occurs, though, is that when we feel these symptoms of nervousness, we sometimes panic, and we might begin to feel even more nervous. What you want to remember is that other people who are presenting feel nervous too. You’re not alone. The good news is, that if you reduce your nervousness, you will have a distinct advantage over the other 95% of presenters.

Myth #3: Constructive Criticism (Critiques) is the Best Way to Improve

Ever since that first oral report or book report that we each gave in high school, we’ve been told that constructive criticism or critiquing our speeches will improve the way the we speak in front of groups. It was reinforced in speech class, communications class, or whatever your High School or University called it. It was reinforced again when we went to that Toastmasters group and the grammarian and another speaker-in-training gave us constructive feedback. However, this particular technique has never, ever worked. Here’s why. The only way to get constructive criticism is to first have a failure — and if you don’t have a failure, then the job of the critic is to find something wrong with what you did. Anytime we do something for the first time and have a failure, we get more nervous the next time that we attempt it (if we have the courage to do so). A good coach won’t use this technique much. Instead, the coach will show the person how to succeed in public speaking, and then praise the presenter as he/she moves toward that goal.

Myth #4: Video Tape Feedback for Presentation Skills Training is Valuable

Okay, this one is somewhat true, but in a lot of cases, watching yourself speak on video when you are nervous will just make you more nervous. However, watching your video with a coach who will help you see improvements along the way will improve your confidence exponentially. Most of us are very critical of ourselves, so we will nit-pick our presentation nine ways to Sunday if we review it alone. So get a good coach before you start trying to use video tape as a tool.

Myth #5: It Takes Years to Become a Great Speaker

Public Speaking skill is just like any other skill in that when you practice and have a success, you feel more confident about yourself and you get better next time. So the key to becoming a great speaker fast is to have a series of successes quickly. Toastmasters is a great organization, but a lucky speaker might get a chance to give five speeches in two or three years, and there is a good chance that not every one of those speeches are going to be winners. So, after a couple of years, a Toastmaster won’t see a great growth in public speaking skills. When you go to a class at a University or Junior College, you might get to speak three times in a 12 week class, and after each speech, you’ll get the dreaded constructive criticism. So that way will take a while as well. However, if you want gain presentation skills quickly, find a way to deliver four to six presentations with a really good coach in a short period of time. Ideally, if you can do it in a couple of days, you’ll grow quickly. However, I’ve seen people have a lot of success by setting up a series of weekly speeches at the office or as a guest speaker at a Rotary Club or Chamber of Commerce meeting to get practice.

If We Used “Normal” Presentation Skills Teaching to Develop Other Important Skills

Here’s an example of another type of training that would be ridiculous if we tried it the way that most people attempt to gain public speaking skills. Let’s say that we use “normal” public speaking techniques to teach someone how to drive a car. (You can insert any skill into this example, by the way — learning to ride a bike, operating a computer for the first time, building something, baking a cake for the first time, etc.)

Myth #1: Good Drivers have a Natural Talent. If we sent every 16 year-old kid out onto the freeway with no training. A few of them might do well, but most are going to have crashing failures. The few that do well will be seen as “Born Drivers,” but the rest would be scared spitless of driving.

Myth #2: I’m More Nervous than Everyone Else. If you’re one of the 95% who had a failure on the freeway, but you still see a lot of people driving, you might believe you are the only one who is scared.

Myth #3: Constructive Criticism is the Best Way to Improve. Again, you’re still one of the 95% who just had the hair-raising experience on the freeway. Now you sit down in a classroom as one of your peers (or a teacher) rips apart your experience and tells you every little thing that you did wrong. Feeling better about the experience now?

Myth #4: Video Tape Feedback for Driving is Valuable. Now you go back and watch the video of your fiery crash. I wouldn’t blame you if you never drove again.

Myth #5: It Takes Years to Become a Great Driver. If, after you had the above experience, you only attempted to drive once every three months or so for about two minutes at a time, guess what? It will take a LOOOOOONG time to get better. Sadly, you probably never will.

Instead, get a good coach who you trust and conquer the fear now — just like you did when you were 15 or 16 years-old and you took driver’s education. Remember the techniques that we used back then? We got a little training and practiced with a coach right away, and we didn’t move on until we had a success. Remember, you couldn’t leave the school parking lot until you got really good at pulling in and out of a parking space.

Doug Staneart, is CEO of The Leader’s Institute, Small Business Workshops. He can be reached toll-free at 1-800-872-7830.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/top-5-myths-about-public-speaking-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/stories-the-magic-elixir-for-stage-fright http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/stories-the-magic-elixir-for-stage-fright#comments Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:13:18 +0000 Connie Timpson http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/stories-the-magic-elixir-for-stage-fright/

Stories – The Magic Elixir For Stage Fright

By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor/The Leaders’ Institute

We’ve all been there. You know the material. You have practiced and practiced. You are confident in the power of the message, yet there is a knot of nerves in your stomach threatening to knock you to your knees. Suddenly what you wanted to say has left your brain, and all you can think of is sitting down.

Now rewind. How can you eliminate this stomach wrenching, knee knocking fear before it starts? Tell more stories. Real life stories. Tell stories that paint a picture of your objective. As the story unfolds, your nerves will fade. You know your own stories so they are easy to tell. They add drama, humor and understanding. And for you, the magic elixir of the story soothes your stage fright.

Why put in a story when you have prepared a whole Power Point filled with impressive numbers. Because numbers are boring! Numbers are only impressive if you bring them to life. A statistic or finding is just that, a data set, unless you wrap the numbers in the power of a story. Any number can become a story or analogy that persuades an audience.

Example: Miami Herald – One in every 14 homes, or 7.2 percent of total housing units, was in some stage of the foreclosure process in the Cape Coral area on Florida’s west coast, compared to Las Vegas where the number was one in 13 homes, or 7.45 percent.

Turn those numbers into a “real life” story. Yesterday morning, I was walking around my neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida and I started counting the “distressed” sale signs on the houses. Three years ago there were none. I used to count birds. Now when I walk into any cul-de-sac in the area and count off 14 homes, at least one of them will have a “distressed sale” “short sale” or bank repossession sign on the lawn. The reason is simple, a family took a gamble on an Adjustable Rate Mortgage, and it backfired on them.


Make boring statistics come to life
and your audience will “appreciate” not “tolerate” your presentation.

You can capture the attention of an entire room by telling a “a really good story.” Drawing on shared emotions and experiences, stories create rapport, interest in your subject, and buy in. The more stories you tell – the more lively your speech becomes, and the more relaxed and powerful you become as a speaker. Stories are the elixir to boredom, disinterest and most importantly, stage fright.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/stories-the-magic-elixir-for-stage-fright/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/toastmasters-can-actually-cause-stage-fright-presentation-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/toastmasters-can-actually-cause-stage-fright-presentation-fear#comments Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:18:30 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/toastmasters-can-actually-cause-stage-fright-presentation-fear/
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Toastmasters is a great place to practice presentation skills but can also cause public speaking fear. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

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Toastmasters is a fantastic platform to practice public speaking, but unfortunately, Toastmasters can often fall short in helping participants eliminate stage fright and public speaking fear.  In fact, most of the people who go to a Toastmasters group or attend speech classes in High School or at a University come out with more public speaking fear than what they had before they attended the program.    Doug Staneart is a keynote speaker from Dallas and CEO of The Leader’s Institute and in this short video, he’ll show you how to get the best out of public speaking coaching and Toastmasters programs. 

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/toastmasters-can-actually-cause-stage-fright-presentation-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/invest-in-presentation-skills-training-to-make-more-money http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/invest-in-presentation-skills-training-to-make-more-money#comments Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:04:28 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/invest-in-presentation-skills-training-to-make-more-money/
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Invest in Presentation Skills training because good business presentation delivery will make you money. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

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When You Make Good Business Presentations with Confidence, You will Personally Make More Money.   Doug Staneart is a keynote speaker from Dallas and CEO of The Leader’s Institute.  In this video, he shows how investing in presentation skills training for yourself is the single best investment that you can make in your future. Your peers, your company leadership, and your customers will judge your COMPETENCE by how much CONFIDENCE that you show when you communicate –especially when you are speaking in front of a group. People who present well get promoted faster, command higher salaries, and are esteemed more by their colleagues. A small investment in your communication skills can generate higher incomes for you for the rest of your life.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/invest-in-presentation-skills-training-to-make-more-money/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/advantages-of-traveling-to-attend-a-training-seminar http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/advantages-of-traveling-to-attend-a-training-seminar#comments Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:06:00 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/advantages-of-traveling-to-attend-a-training-seminar/
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http://www.leadersinstitute.com The return on investment for traveling to a presentation skills training seminar far outweigh the expense? Visit the link for more free presentation training videos.

 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1IS2BJFqEI]

 

Is it Cost Effective to Travel to Attend Training Seminars?   Doug Staneart is a keynote speaker from Dallas and CEO of The Leader’s Institute.  In this video, he shows how to determine if your return on investment from attending training workshops out of town is large enough to justify the extra travel expense. When you travel out of town to go to a workshop, you are less distracted and can focus better on the material being taught in the seminar. You also get to utilize the skills covered in the training much FASTER. A small investment in time and airfare can generate higher incomes for the rest of your life.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/advantages-of-traveling-to-attend-a-training-seminar/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/reduce-public-speaking-fear-by-showing-up-early http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/reduce-public-speaking-fear-by-showing-up-early#comments Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:52:03 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/reduce-public-speaking-fear-by-showing-up-early/
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Show up early to reduce presentation fear and stage fright. Other presentation tips as well. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePn_DAAJV0Y]

Fearless Presentations Presentation Tips.   Doug Staneart is a keynote speaker from Dallas and CEO of The Leader’s Institute.  In this video, he gives public speaking tips from his Fearless Presentations class that helps viewers become more prepared for their presentations by arriving to the presentation early.  The hour before your speech is critical to your confidence.  Making sure that your visual aids (PowerPoint Presentation) are set up properly well before you begin to present will reduce public speaking nervousness.  If you great your audience as they enter the room, you can also reduce some of the jitters.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/reduce-public-speaking-fear-by-showing-up-early/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-presentation-tips-and-presentation-skills-training http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-presentation-tips-and-presentation-skills-training#comments Sun, 09 Aug 2009 09:58:52 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/powerpoint-presentation-tips-and-presentation-skills-training/
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http://www.leadersinstitute.com PowerPoint Presentation Tips and training to create good a PowerPoint outline. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

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PowerPoint Presentation Tips.   Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader’s Institute, gives PowerPoint tips from his Fearless Presentations class that help viewers more easily design PowerPoint Presentations and more easily write speeches and deliver good business presentations.  Most PowerPoint Slideshows are BOOOORRING!  The main reason has little to do with the presenter, but has a lot to do with how the presenter writes his presentation and even more to do with how the speaker prepares for the PowerPoint presentation.

 

 

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/powerpoint-presentation-tips-and-presentation-skills-training/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-skills-training-can-eliminate-public-speaking-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-skills-training-can-eliminate-public-speaking-fear#comments Sun, 09 Aug 2009 05:22:05 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/presentation-skills-training-can-eliminate-public-speaking-fear/
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http://www.leadersinstitute.com Developing Presentation Skills with a good presentation coach can eliminate stage fright. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

There are no born speakers.  Presentation Skills are a learned skill set just like riding a bicycle or driving a car.  If, when you deliver business presentations, you experience stage fright or the fear of public speaking, you can easily reduce your nervousness by investing in an experienced presentation coach.  Fearless Presentations is a presentation training course offered in major cities all over the world, and here is a video from Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader’s Institute, who gives a few ways that a little training can eliminate stage fright.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-skills-training-can-eliminate-public-speaking-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-tips-how-to-show-less-public-speaking-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-tips-how-to-show-less-public-speaking-fear#comments Sun, 09 Aug 2009 05:12:04 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/presentation-tips-how-to-show-less-public-speaking-fear/
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http://www.leadersinstitute.com Presentation tips to help reduce public speaking fear and design a good business presentation. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

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Presentation Tips from the Fearless Presentations Public Speaking Seminar.   Keynote Speaker Doug Staneart, the CEO of The Leader’s Institute, begins a series of presentation tips from his Fearless Presentations class that helps viewers reduce public speaking fear and turn a good presentation into a world-class business presentation.  This video identifies ways to keep the audience from seeing your stage fright.

 

 

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-tips-how-to-show-less-public-speaking-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/should-i-travel-to-attend-a-presentation-training-course http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/should-i-travel-to-attend-a-presentation-training-course#comments Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:19:47 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/should-i-travel-to-attend-a-presentation-training-course/
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http://www.fearlesspresentations.com Does the return on investment for traveling to attend a presentation skills training outweigh the extra expense? Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1IS2BJFqEI]

Should I Travel Out of Town to Attend a Training Seminar? Doug Staneart is a keynote speaker from Dallas and CEO of The Leader’s Institute.  In this video, he shows how to determine if your return on investment from attending a training program out of town is large enough to justify the expense of the travel. The advantages to traveling out of town are that you are less distracted and can focus on the material being taught in the program better. You also get to capitalize on the skills developed in the training program much FASTER. A small investment in travel can generate higher incomes for the rest of your life.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/should-i-travel-to-attend-a-presentation-training-course/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/making-effective-business-presentations-will-make-you-money http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/making-effective-business-presentations-will-make-you-money#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:45:54 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/making-effective-business-presentations-will-make-you-money/
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w9Yq_jU3bA]http://www.fearlesspresentations.com Invest in Public Speaking Skills because effective business presentation delivery makes you money. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

 

Making Effective Business Presentations will Make You Money.   Doug Staneart is a keynote speaker from Dallas and CEO of The Leader’s Institute.  In this video, he shows how the single best investment that any person can make into his/her future would be to invest in public speaking training or developing presentation skills. The people around us judge our COMPETENCE by how much CONFIDENCE that we show when we communicate –especially when we communicate to groups. People who speak well get promoted faster, generate consistently higher salaries, and are esteemed more by their colleagues. A small investment in yourself can generate higher incomes for the rest of your life.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/making-effective-business-presentations-will-make-you-money/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-tips-show-up-early-to-reduce-public-speaking-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-tips-show-up-early-to-reduce-public-speaking-fear#comments Sat, 01 Aug 2009 08:41:16 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/presentation-tips-show-up-early-to-reduce-public-speaking-fear/
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http://www.fearlesspresentations.com Presentation tip to arrive early to reduce public speaking fear and stage fright. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePn_DAAJV0Y]

Fearless Presentations Public Speaking Tips.   Doug Staneart is a keynote speaker from Dallas and CEO of The Leader’s Institute.  In this video, he gives public speaking tips from his Fearless Presentations class that helps viewers become more prepared for their presentations by arriving to the presentation early.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-tips-show-up-early-to-reduce-public-speaking-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/toastmasters-does-toastmasters-reduce-public-speaking-fear http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/toastmasters-does-toastmasters-reduce-public-speaking-fear#comments Sat, 01 Aug 2009 04:27:49 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/toastmasters-%e2%80%93-does-toastmasters-reduce-public-speaking-fear/
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http://www.fearlesspresentations.com Toastmasters can be a great way to practice public speaking skills but can also cause stage fright. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BhjixcpMo0]Toastmasters is a fantastic organization, in theory, but unfortunately, in practice, Toastmasters can often fall short.  In fact, most of the people who go to a toasting club or speech class in High School or College come out with more public speaking nervousness than what they went in with.  Here is a video from Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader’s Institute, who explains how this happens and why.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/toastmasters-does-toastmasters-reduce-public-speaking-fear/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-training-free-powerpoint-presentation-tips-outline http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-training-free-powerpoint-presentation-tips-outline#comments Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:33:02 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/presentation-training-free-powerpoint-presentation-tips-outline/
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http://www.fearlesspresentations.com Presentation training with Free PowerPoint Presentation Tips and a PowerPoint outline. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI14eaLjpEE]Fearless Presentations Public Speaking Tips.   Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader’s Institute, gives public speaking tips from his Fearless Presentations class that help viewers more easily design PowerPoint Presentations and more easily write speeches and presentations.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/presentation-training-free-powerpoint-presentation-tips-outline/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-tips-less-speaking-fear-in-a-good-presentation http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-tips-less-speaking-fear-in-a-good-presentation#comments Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:20:16 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/public-speaking-tips-less-speaking-fear-in-a-good-presentation/
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http://www.fearlesspresentations.com Public speaking tips from to help reduce public speaking fear and design a good presentation. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3o2plVZXOM]Fearless Presentations Public Speaking Tips.   Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader’s Institute, begins a series of public speaking tips from his Fearless Presentations class that helps viewers reduce public speaking fear and turn a good presentation into a world-class presentation.

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/public-speaking-tips-less-speaking-fear-in-a-good-presentation/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/stage-fright-eliminate-public-speaking-fear-in-business-presentations http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/stage-fright-eliminate-public-speaking-fear-in-business-presentations#comments Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:14:03 +0000 Doug Staneart http://leadersinstitute.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/stage-fright-presentation-skills-can-easily-be-developed-and-eliminate-public-speaking-fear-in-business-presentations/
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http://www.fearlesspresentations.com Stage Fright can be Eliminated by developing Presentation Skills with a good public speaking coach. Visit our website for more free presentation training videos.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YtHIviqoQw]Presentation Skills are a learned skill set just like riding a bicycle or driving a car.  If you experience stage fright or public speaking fear, you can reduce your nervousness by investing in an experienced public speaking coach.  Fearless Presentations is a presentation training course offered in major cities all over the world, and here is a video from Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leader’s Institute, who gives a few ways that a little training can eliminate stage fright. View video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YtHIviqoQw

]]> http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/stage-fright-eliminate-public-speaking-fear-in-business-presentations/feed 0 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/chapter-1 http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/chapter-1#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2005 01:25:58 +0000 admin http://www.leadersinstitutebootcamp.com/?p=494

Chapter 1 Follow-Up Activity and Additional Reading

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  Stories and Examples Reduce Public Speaking Fear The fastest and easiest way to eliminate public speaking fear is to insert more examples and stories into your formal presentations or PowerPoint Slideshows. When participants in public speaking classes are first introduced to this technique, many of them will often resist the advice thinking, “My presentations are

• VIDEO-Stories Reduce Public Speaking Fear

  Public Speaking Tips Video: Stories Reduce Public Speaking Fear One of the easiest ways to reduce the fear of public speaking is by inserting stories or examples to reinforce or back-up facts or statistics in your presentation. Stories are easy to deliver, and you don’t have to memorize them, so they reduce public speaking fear.

• Public Speaking Fear-The Quick and Easy Way to Fearless Presentations

  The fear of public speaking is still one of the biggest and most debilitating fears. Public speaking fear causes competent professionals to miss out on fantastic opportunities to persuade and win people to their way of thinking. So where does this fear come from? Better yet… How does the average person get rid of it?

• VIDEO-Public Speaking Fear Grows with Constructive Criticism

  A new video about how helpful coworkers, supervisors, even spouses who give us constructive criticism to help us reduce public speaking fear actually have an opposite effect. Constructive criticism causes public speaking fear!

• VIDEO-Reduce Public Speaking Risk and Reduce Public Speaking Fear

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• Stories and Examples Reduce Public Speaking Fear

  The fastest and easiest way to eliminate public speaking fear is to insert more examples and stories into your formal presentations or PowerPoint Slideshows.  When participants in public speaking classes are first introduced to this technique, many of them will often resist the advice thinking, “My presentations are technical (or numbers oriented or academic) so

• Video: Where Does Public Speaking Fear Come From?

  Public Speaking Fear: New video Where does public speaking fear comes from? This video is a preview of a series of 30 public speaking tips videos that we are creating that will accompany 10 chapters of our new public speaking book that will be published in the next few months. This first video explains where

• Presentation Skills Class can Build Self-Confidence in Other Areas as Well

  Public Speaking Confidence is Seen by Others as Competence Public speaking skills or presentation skills will often lead to greater esteem from coworkers and peers, so when up-and-coming leaders and managers focus on building self-confidence in public speaking, that same confidence often spills over into other areas as well. When a person speaks with poise

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