In today's difficult economy, audiences are more sceptical than ever. So this means that authenticity has become an important attribute. When a speaker has it, he/she can inspire the audience to make important buy-in decisions. 1. Match the Verbal with the Non-verbal: If your verbal message does not match your body language the audience will usually respond and believe what the non-verbal message is saying. To match both elements ... rehearse. 2. Prepare: Know exactly what you want to say and say it. By 'winging' the presentation your body language will most certainly undermine your credibility. Find out what the audience' needs are and only then incorporate the content that matches. 3. Be yourself: When you rehearse specific gestures, it leads to a 'canned show' that screams out loud "This is not you". Audiences subconsciously become aware of this insincerity and consciously start looking for other signals that confirms their suspicions. They then come to the realisation that the speaker is not authentic and the result of this - no buy-in. 4. Rehearse: Never rehearse in front of a mirror as your image will become a distraction. Rather video yourself and review after each rehearsal. Focus on your casual spontaneity that reflects your authenticity. Feel your presentation and allow it to come from deep within as this will be mirrored in your body language. 5. Create openness: Rehearse with someone you are completely relaxed with and make a special note of what it feels like and how you are coming across. Continue practicing this and remember these feelings. The more comfortable and relaxed you become, the more authentic you will come across. This is what the audience look for. 6. Create audience connection: Rehearse the presentation again with the same feelings, but this time focus on the need to engage the audience. Your goal is to keep their attention. Modulate your voice, project it further, speak with the intensity the presentation deserves, use more natural and appropriate gestures, move closer to the audience, etc. 7. Authenticity is passion: To create the passion, you must first discover how you really feel about the content. What excites you about the subject? How desperately should your audience want what you are offering? Focus on why you are presenting this subject rather than the content itself. Allow your emotions to show with each word and memorise this intensity. 8. Create audience attitude: During the last few rounds of the rehearsals, focus on imagining the audience's attitude towards you, your company and your presentation and imagine looking for signs of their response towards you. Continue focusing on this as you want to enhance this emotional state throughout the actual presentation. 9. Authenticity control: During the actual presentation, put into practice the feelings, emotions and attitudes you developed during the various rehearsals. Try taking control of the audience's responses by reading their body language signals and then asking impromptu questions, alter your pace, vocal quality, language patterns, etc. To deliver on time, your team need to work together. With effective teamwork one can achieve a common goal: 1. Define Expectations: The Team leader must clearly communicate the expectations regarding the Team's performance and its expected outcomes. Each team member must fully understand the purpose of the Team and its functions. 2. Commitment: Allow each team member to feel that they are an important element to the Team to ensure their full and eager participation. They must be aware that they need to be committed to accomplishing the Team mission and expected outcomes. Allow the Team to create its own mission, vision and strategy to accomplish its task. 3. Develop Competence: Create a Team whereby each member has the required knowledge, skill and capability to address issues related to their tasks and the Team itself. Where this is not in place, ensure they have access to the help they need. 4. Empower the Team: Give the Team enough freedom and empowerment to feel the ownership necessary to accomplish its tasks. They must, however, clearly understand their boundaries and how far they may go in pursuit of solutions and decision making. 5. Accountability: The Team's reporting process and accountability must be understood by all members. The organisation should clearly define the Team's authority to make recommendations and to implement its plan. Team members must hold each other accountable for project timelines, commitments and results. 6. Communication: Ensure that team members are clear about the priority of their tasks and that there is an established process for the Team to give feedback and to receive honest performance feedback. Continually provide important business information to the Team on a regular basis and that there is a platform whereby they too can communicate clearly and honestly with each other and with management. 7. Create Innovation: If the organisation is really interested in change, reward those who fit in and maintain the status quo. Provide them with the necessary training, education, access to books, films and field trips that are necessary to stimulate new thinking. 1. Let them do all the thinking
One of the keys to transforming performance is allowing your people to find their own answers. Let them think through their own issues rather than telling them what you think the solution is and what you think they need to do. 2. Focus on solutions Although problems can certainly be interesting to discuss, focusing on solutions is more useful. If you catch yourself focusing on a problem or the drama in a situation, or even getting bogged down in detail, refocus your attention on identifying and planning the way ahead. 3. Remember to stretch Quiet-type leaders and/or comfortable-making-people leaders, make others feel uncomfortable. Great leaders stretch people to make them feel positively challenged and generate growth, and in growth there is aliveness, engagement and passion. All of these are necessary for achieving great performance. 4. Accentuate the positive By continually providing positive feedback in as many forms as possible over time helps to validate, confirm, encourage, support and believe in people's potential. As people start to see themselves in a new light, reality starts to change as well. 5. Put process before content Be highly disciplined in all of your conversations and diligent in ensuring every conversation is as productive as possible. Get the process of any conversation right before getting into any of the content. Having a good process includes establishing clear expectations so you know at every moment exactly what you're talking about, and why, and where you're trying to get to. 6. Listen for potential If we're not measuring and monitoring how people are growing, we can easily fall into the trap of focusing on their problems. Listen for where people are heading rather than for what might not be working and see people for their potential. 7. Speak with intent Be succinct, specific and generous. Being succinct requires you to decide on the essence of what you want to say and say it in as few words as possible. This will keep people's attention and interest. It also allows people to create their own mental models that correlate to the ideas you are trying to share. Being specific means paying close attention to what others say so we can be accurate and detailed in our responses. Being succinct and specific together means including everything that's relevant in a dialogue, and nothing irrelevant. Being generous is a subtle thing - it's about being committed to the other person understanding your message. It means putting yourself in their shoes when you're speaking and taking care to use words they will connect with. Being generous is also a way of showing you care about the other person and it helps to build trust. This invites the other person to take the conversation to a deeper level and in so doing, opens up the possibility of change. 8. Dance toward insight This step involves asking people the type of question that will help them think more clearly and identify their own 'aha' moments or insights. To get this dance right, first ask permission before getting personal or taking a conversation to a deeper level, then make sure you're on the same page, and then ask your question. As you facilitate this dance, you'll see people's faces change as they move from the awareness of a dilemma, to reflecting, to having an illumination and then being ready to take action. 9. Create new thinking Quiet leaders do this by starting the conversation by identifying the current reality of the other persons thinking, exploring alternatives for action with them and then tapping into their energy and motivations. 10. Follow up To help people recognise and further embed any habits they're developing or to ensure that their new thinking becomes a reality, it's important to follow up with them. By doing this in a positive and supportive way, we give them the encouragement they need to turn their delicate new circuits they've created in their brains into full-blown hard wiring. Remind yourself how to be that well respected Leader. 1. Create a Workable Plan: Leadership is all about being proactive, rather than reactive. Good leadership is analysing and planning and adapting these plans to every circumstance and opportunity. This almost guarantees our ability in crisis situations and resolving issues before they reach crisis proportions. 2. Have a Vision: Vision is the key to good leadership. Vision and planning go hand in hand - vision creates direction while planning is about reaching that visual destination. No business can exist without it. So if your business or department or team does not have a Vision Statement, take your first Leadership step by creating a new one now. A Vision Statement encapsulates your dreams and your passions, and this should flow into your leadership role. 3. Share your Vision: By sharing your leadership vision with others, strengthens your own belief in your vision and gives the motivation to achieve it. Those whom you share it with will recognise you as a person who knows what you want and will assist in helping you in achieving it. 4. Take Charge: With a good plan in hand, you are the only one who can drive it. If your plan requires you to respond to a crisis or improving the profit margins, the decisions and the appropriate actions are left to you. To be a good leader, you need to 'walk the talk' and be seen to take the necessary effective action that is relevant to your business. 5. Inspire the Team: When one thinks of a leader who inspires you, you would automatically think about the things these people did or are doing. People define a leader by their actions, so to develop your own leadership skills; you need to act in ways that are fitting to your Leadership Vision and your self - all the time. There may be numerous actions of other people whom we admire, but what inspires us is the integrity that gives these actions meaning. 6. Focus on Reality: Many leaders become convinced that they know what's right in every situation and every time. They at times ignore reports and analysis, dismissing them as missing the mark in this particular situation. In many cases, they have done well by trusting their instincts (which is a necessary management tool); nothing can offset the value of solid data and hard research. 7. Eliminate Emotions: People who use emotion by shouting, sulking, crying, whining, etc., or are too focussed on feelings; results in turning off the people who are well situated to help them succeed. People do not want to spend time with a supervisor or manager who can't be level-headed in difficult times. This behaviour increases resignations and general mistrust whenever things go wrong. Demonstrate to the team that you can deal with the bad situations as well as the good. Let them see that you are evenly balanced at all times. 8. Make the Decision: Less confident managers are experts at delaying hard decision-making; whilst other mistakes are equally made by over-confident managers who think that quick decisions need to be made at every turn. Use the facts and data that are available to make more accurate decisions. Asking others for assistance in making a decision should not be viewed as a weakness. 1. Enthusiasm: Enthusiasm is so often associated with a positive state of mind, yet we can use enthusiasm so negatively - and not realising we are doing so. How often do you hear people saying, "Well that is the way it is and I can do nothing about it". Wrong, we can always do something about anything. We may not say such statements with pride or enthusiasm but we certainly say it with conviction and belief. These strong feelings often come from disappointment in ourselves, our companies, our product, our management or top level decisions. When our team feel that they are being coerced by a system every time they want to contribute to feel part of the system, or what they believe is right, fighting for this right and getting nowhere just leaves them disillusioned. This attitude and feeling forces us to become part of the negative, pessimistic and rigid culture in the workplace. And enthusiasm dies. And along with it, the drive to succeed.
2. Challenge the Status quo: The systems we create are so often based on our thinking, desires, insecurities that are transformed into company structures and policies, procedures, rules, software programs and systems, which then become forced agreements about how things should be done. The next step is to ensure that everyone abides by them and so we create managers with limited powers to police the workforce. So where a manager has no choice (in his/her mind) to accept the status quo, a leader (in his/her mind) will challenge it. The more leaders we create in the workforce the stronger and more progressive the business. 3. Challenging our Assumptions: To archive this is no easy task. The easy path is to accept what is thrown at us and go with the flow. A leader will see no other way but to challenge authority about the system that was created or decisions made. This is why leaders are able to learn and develop the skills of diplomacy, daring and determination. Managers revert to arrogance in order to hide their apprehensiveness. We are the ones who can make the difference to those around us. A leader will never dive in feet first; rather gather facts and information beforehand to give us the power of strength. 4. Follow your Instincts: We all strive to feel motivated by freedom and a good leader will challenge how far he/she can trust others and themselves. If you continually seek challenges you will find the best in yourself. One such challenge would be what we identify as an unwanted status quo in our company, ourselves, systems etc. Some values that can be challenged are:
To manage one project is not very different than managing multiple projects. The process remains the same:
1. Identify each Project: Begin the process by getting a clear idea of what each project entails; the scope and what has to be delivered and the timeframes. If you have not been given independent detailed Charters, start creating them. Remember to get these signed off before you proceed to the kick-off stage. 2. Develop a workable Plan: Ensure that your Plan lists all of the phases, activities and tasks for each project. Your plan should show all the dependencies between projects and reflect all of the milestones necessary for each individual project. Develop an Organogram that shows all the individual subprojects of each project as well as a Milestone Schedule. Incorporate all the information from both charts into a Gantt Chart to assist you to maintain control of each project on a daily basis. To assist in decision-making and Change Management create a PERT Chart. These schedules will help you to compare your progress against your overall Plan to see where you're slipping and where you're ahead. 3. Control Staff-effort: If one person is required to perform several tasks on multiple projects, plan very carefully that you don't assign tasks that may overlap. To prevent this, check your resource allocations, so you can monitor daily the total number of hours that each person is working. Keep a track record of this on a daily basis. Teams can only work more effectively if their tasks are evenly assigned. 4. Keep your eye on the ball: You must be in control of what's happening in your projects at all times. Keep monitoring that every task is on time, that your Milestones are adhered to, they fall within budget and check your resources are balanced. Check that parts, equipment and materials are readily available when the time arises. Keep control of any risks that may arise and that any requested changes are monitored on a daily basis in order for you to be proactive if a slip occurs. 5. Communicate, Communicate: The art of managing multiple projects is communication. Ensure that everybody on the team and anyone connected with the projects are communicated with and that they know exactly what is happening at any given time. When a slip occurs, this needs to be communicated with those concerned. When a deliverable is completed earlier than planned, check with the Pert Chart to see if other deliverables can be brought forward. The kingpin of these multiple projects is you, the Project Manager, who is responsible for holding everything together. The best way of achieving this is by communication. So have a plan on how you are going to communicate with everyone. To be successful takes a great deal of effort and willpower. To fail is the easiest thing to do: do nothing! Here are a few tips to get you to do it: 1. Organise emails: Process information as quickly as possible and turn it into actions. Start by organising your emails into various file folders. If the message needs to be actioned, move it to a 'To-do' file. If it is for reference, print it out immediately, file it and delete the email. If it is a meeting, move it to your calendar. Take the To-do emails and plan to action them in your diary. Let your diary tell you when to action the email. 2. Plan when to read emails: Plan in your diary when to check on emails. The human mind is an inquisitive mind. As soon as an email arrives, we are tempted to read it. Not only does this distract us from what we are working on, it also wastes unnecessary time responding to something that may not be important. When someone emails you, they are not necessarily expecting an immediate response, rather a proficient response. If they require an urgent response they won't have any difficulty in reaching you by any other means. 3. The Important task rule: Plan in your diary what the Important tasks are and deal with them first. An Important task is not always urgent. If you focus on Urgent tasks only, your life becomes stressed and your function takes on the role of 'putting out fires' and losing focus on what is really happening around you. 4. One task at a time: It is one thing to be able to multi-task, but can you focus effectively on all these tasks at the same time? Productivity may decrease and quality affected. The saying is true, "You can only sit on one seat at a time". 5. Set deadlines: When you have one particular task that you must accomplish, don't leave it hanging. Give yourself a firm deadline that you must adhere to. When you waste time at the beginning, you will increase your stress levels as the deadline approaches. 6. Do it now: When it comes to the little things, take on the "do it now" attitude. All those little things can add up to major stress if you continue to procrastinate. This just means that if you receive a bill in the post, go online and pay it. If you find something out of place around the house, put it away. Stop allowing yourself to save additional tasks for later. 7. Break up tasks: All of us at times procrastinate due to the task being too large and in our minds insurmountable. For example, packing up boxes when we move home. There may be numerous boxes to pack and just the thought of it is daunting. Tell yourself that you're going to pack one or two boxes per day and before you know it, the whole house is packed up and ready to be transported. 8. Make it easy to get started: The problem is not finishing tasks, so often we have a problem starting them. Never dive into a task with all that enthusiasm without first knowing where and how you are going to start. Visualise how the completed task will look, then start by breaking it down into manageable chunks. Plan which chunk you will complete first and by when, and then only move onto the next chunk. 9. Get someone to hold you accountable: It is easy to feel alone when snowed under by many tasks, but when it comes to overcoming procrastination there are probably many people that would want to offer you their assistance. When you have a particular task that you need to accomplish, ask this person to check up on you at certain intervals. This will assist to help you to hold yourself accountable and become a master at overcoming procrastination. 10. Give yourself a reward: Give yourself a small reward after you complete a specific task or milestone. If you know a coffee break is waiting for you when you are finished doing something tedious, you will be inspired to get it done. |
Ana & Andre Schoonbee God uses us to motivate and encourage the body. Authors
All
Archives
June 2015
|