The beginning of the presentation is your prime real estate. It’s when your audience decides if you are worth paying attention to or not. In my workshops, I call this the HOOK. You can do this by either asking a question, making a bold statement or telling a story that relates to your topic.
In the last few weeks, our homes have become our offices and virtual meetings have replaced the boardroom and other face-to-face encounters.
MAXIMIZE YOUR ON SCREEN PRESENCE: Tips and techniques to ensure you come across with confidence and competence in your virtual meetings. (Now also available as a virtual keynote, webinar and individual coaching).
We now see our colleagues not as life-sized but as heads and shoulders in a boxes on our screens.
There’s no question that all of our lives have been disrupted in a myriad of ways. The question is how are we all coping? What do we need to be doing to ensure that we are as well prepared as possible to deal with the situation we find ourselves in? In other words, how given the challenges are we resuming our work and lives to deal with the new normal?
Have you ever had something really difficult and disappointing happen? Were you retrenched, or passed over for the promotion you had been promised. Did someone else get the job you really, really wanted?
I know you can relate because life is imperfect and disappointment is part of all of our realities.
When you look back at that situation with hindsight,
One of the maxims I live by is, never take your network for granted. Building a long-term, collaborative network is a daily activity that requires you to both consciously cultivate and nurture your existing relationships and develop new ones. In fact, the best time for you to work on maintaining the contacts you have and developing new resources is when you already have a job and are in a good place emotionally.
If I were your guest and you were having a party, hopefully you would welcome me and then introduce me to your other visitors, right?
You would do your very best to make me feel comfortable and welcome.
The ability to do this even when you are not at your own home and it is not your party is a superb skill — and one that can enhance your personal and professional life.
In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Steven Covey proposes a quite unusual thought experiment that he terms “beginning with the end in mind.” What he actually suggests is that you write your own obituary! While this may seem to be somewhat macabre, it is actually a brilliant exercise, in that in forces you to think about your legacy and how you would want to be remembered.
Give it a try: as you embark on a new year and new decade,
I recently spoke to the finance group at one of the biggest global brands in the world. The topic was Unleashing your Financial Superhero, which started me thinking more broadly about how one goes about identifying his or her superpowers. And, for that matter, what exactly are “superpowers?”
Your “superpowers” are the strengths and unique abilities you possess that set you apart. And the reality is you can’t ask others to identify your superpowers until you have identified them for yourself.
We all live in dread of “dead air” – those awkward moments when you find yourself face-to-face with the need to have a conversation with someone you have just met. What follows are some tried and true conversation tips to keep in mind:
“Everyone you meet knows something you don’t”
Approach every conversation with the wonderful sense of having something to learn. As Bill Nye, the science guy says,
