[Advice] Leadership Through Pitching and Presenting

There are two times a leader has to be persuasive, has to pitch and present and leaders are typically good at one and poor at the other:

In a small group: Small groups (anywhere between 2 people and 10 people) are groups where leaders can either shine or fail based upon their own personal hang-ups, tics, and character traits. If a leader connects warmly with a handshake (increasing cooperation) and makes eye contact (in the Western world at least) they tend to be able to navigate the small group interactions and can easily dominate the conversation.

In a small group though, the delicate balance is between speaking too much (pitching) and not listening enough. This is a discipline that bears out its presence in the ultimate small group presentation, the meeting. Most meetings represent a poor use of organizational resources because the same traits that guided the leader in even smaller groups, fail when the group grows larger.

In a large group: Large groups (anywhere between 10 people up to massive stadiums of people) are the places where leaders (like many other folks) sometimes try to “scale up” the skills that make them formidable in a one-on-one environment and they fail. This is also the place where leaders lean in on using tools to mask their inexperience, their nervousness, or their lack of knowledge/interest/passion about a subject. The reason that political leaders do well at presenting to large groups and many corporate leaders don’t is that political leaders are naturally able to “fake it until they make it” and project that passion onto the crow. Whereas hard charging, revenue-generating executives are secretly wondering why they have to do this “presenting thing” at all in the first place.

In a large group, the delicate balance is between presenting with passion and rambling on about a point. Presenting with passion is a discipline that can be coached, but the real problem is getting the leader’s ego out of the way, getting the leader into a stance of learning and then preparing the leader to succeed. And letting the props, the slides, and the crutches fall by the way side.

Ever manager, supervisor, and even employee should be taught how to connect in a small group to other people, by using the skills of active listening, active engaging, eye contact, and paraphrasing. Every manager and supervisor and even employee should be taught how to connect with a much larger group (either a meeting sized group or a larger group) by using the skills of tapping into their passion and energy, knowing their subject inside and out and using tools like Powerpoint as aids, not crutches.

But too many organizational leaders don’t spend time preparing for presentations, don’t think that such preparation is necessary (except at the point of actually having to present) and many organizational leaders look at such training as another “nice to have” but not a “critical to succeed.”

In a world of instant information (and sometimes instant wrong information about organizations) leaders need to change their thinking, or someone else will change the audience’s thinking about their organization, for them first.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] On Preparing for a Podcast

Choosing equipment, editing the sound, uploading the audio file and choosing the distribution platform are not the hardest decisions to make when starting podcasting.

On Preparing for a Podcast

The hardest parts of the podcasting process are two-fold:

Finding interesting guests

AND

Making the guest interesting.

Finding interesting guests does not mean finding guests who are personally interesting to the host. Finding interesting guests means thinking of the demographic, the audience and the listener to the podcast. Radio broadcasters and TV hosts have struggled with this throughout time.

Making guests interesting does not mean manipulating the interview, the questions, the conversation or the process, to transform the person from an audial scullery maid, into an audial Cinderella through some form of spoken magic. Making guests interesting means thinking of the questions to ask that will cause the guest to engage in conversation with the host (us) to get to a larger point.

Getting caught up in decisions around equipment, distribution systems and platforms, uploading processes, and on and on, is thrashing and avoidance, based in fear.

Engaging with the podcasting process requires the same internal capacity to go for it and abandon the fear of performance and perfection that curating, blogging, speaking and presenting require.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] Preparing for a Keynote

Preparing for a speech—any kind of speech—is something that is conceived of as so challenging that very few want to do it.

#FakingIt

But here’s a few tips to get started:

Don’t start with the speech.

Instead, start blogging. Once you get into the habit of publishing written content everyday (or every other day) then you’ll be able to work through arguments that you may want to use for developing a speech later on.

Listen to podcasts from people in parallel industries.

You know who are good presenters?

Comedians.

Forget the funny jokes for a moment.

There is nothing more nerve wracking than standing in front of a crowd of intoxicated people at nine o’clock at night and having to tell them jokes.

Podcasting is a way to discover beats, pauses and the power of the human voice. Also process and procedures. Jay Mohr’s podcast as well as Marc Maron’s are good ones to begin with.

Write the way that you watch a movie or a TV show.

Your speech should be in the form of a three act structure. Just like a film or a TV show:

  • Act One: Introduce the problem.
  • Act Two: Expand on the problem.
  • Act Three: Offer the solution and summarize.

Don’t give it all away. Lead your audience into the problem, but know what you’re speech is for.

A call to action should be obvious, but should also exist in the “white spaces” of people’s perceptions about what you said.

The best orators, from dictators to corporate titans, allow the listeners in the crowd to “fill in the blanks” and empower them to take the action that the speaker wants them to.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Presentation Tips and Tricks

Presentation is the most nerve wracking thing for many conflict engagement professionals, as it is for many other professionals in many other fields.

Death_by_Powerpoint
Many presenters forget a basic fact: meetings, workshops, seminars, classes, podcasts, pitches, elevator speeches and even 1-on-1 conversations are presentations.

Any time that you stand up in front of somebody else and use your words, your voice and your presence to transpose information from your brain to another person’s brain, that’s a presentation.

With that in mind, here are three tips to keep it fresh:

  • Remember the audience: The average attention span is down, and there are plenty of distractions in the world, so remember that the audience is whoever is in front of you right now.
  • Lose the crutches: Images and slideshow are too often used as a crutch to support the presenter, rather than as an addition—like spice on food—to the actual meat of the subject matter. The bravest presentations that you can do are those that don’t involve images and a slideshow. This is why the only difference between a 1-on-1 conversation and a 25 person breakout session is scale.
  • Don’t get intimidated by size: When speaking, people are really comfortable 1-on-1, but the sweat level goes up as the size of the audience increases. Why is that? Why do we get intimidated by size so often? Scale scares us, because it seems as though the risk level increases along with the size. But we’ve got it backwards.

The risk level decreases as the size of the audience expands, but the importance of what you are presenting should increase, rather than your nervousness level.

Any time that you’re in front of a person, that’s an audience, and the real risk is not getting your point across the bow.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] Presenting to the Audience You’ve Been Dealt

Consultants and coaches never really choose the audience in front of which they will present.

CRaaS for Your Organization

It is impossible to go inside the mind of each and every individual in the room and determine their motivations, needs, desires and wants.

For the professional consultant or coach—at a certain point—you’re always kind of just winging it.

In fact, the smaller the room, the more intimate the setting, the more winging it looks like a lack of preparation, concentration and expertise.

Which, of course, has the effect of reducing trust and increasing the likelihood that the audience will turn on you.

Don’t worry about the audience that was chosen for you. Worry more about developing the tools to present effectively no matter who—or how many—show up to see you present.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] Gatekeepers’ Dent in the Universe

Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides to say “no” to the next big idea.

People wake up in the morning and decide to go to their jobs as secretaries, executive assistants, Vice-Presidents and others, and do their job as best they can.

For them, that’s making a dent in their universe.

And, when a “no” falls from their lips about the big idea that you want to pitch to their boss who signs the check and makes the decision to go forward, they are making a dent in your universe.

Their dent doesn’t match your dent, but it doesn’t mean that their dent is any less valuable, interesting or relevant.

It just feels that way in the moment…

To join our email list, please, head on over to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/hsct-offers  page and sign up today. After you do that, download our two FREE offers: [download id=”2414″] and [download id=”2390″]. 

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] Not Boring People to Tears

When presenting, varying pitch, tempo and word order can help a consultant or coach not bore the audience to tears.

So can having a really awesome twist on a really boring and basic idea, concept or problem solving approach.

The first approach takes time to develop and cannot happen without a good deal of self-critique and continuing training and improvement, on the part of the individual presenting the information.

The second approach involves employing an angle that—once the audience is no longer amazed—can lead to even greater boredom as the thrill of the initial spectacle wears off.

A professional will focus on both of those areas, but there is also a third area with which even the most seasoned professional may struggle:

Being tuned into the emotional vicissitudes of your audience through being aware of body language, micro-expressions and other nonverbal cueing can create the daylight between the presenter who arrives in spectacle and leaves in boredom; and, the presenter who gets invited back time after time.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/