Leadership can be looked at from two perspectives. The first is you – do you see yourself as a leader? The answer is yes or no. The second is your followers (staff, superiors, market etc). Do they see you as a leader? Again it’s yes or no.

If your followers see you as a leader, and you carry yourself as one, they will perceive you as a Leader. It’s a case of your followers saying that they want someone else to take control and make decisions. You see yourself as that someone and fill the need they have. This is what everyone wants.

If you’re not in the Leader quadrant you will have trouble.

If your followers see you as a leader, but you don’t carry yourself as one, they will perceive you as an Imposter. It’s like the team leader who has been promoted from within but won’t take charge for fear of not being liked. The Imposter is the sales person who goes to see a customer but won’t lead the sales call. The customer is not interested in doing the sales person’s job and won’t see them the next time they come back.

Where you have real problems is when the followers don’t see you as a leader.

When the followers don’t see the person in charge as a leader, but that person carries on as though they are, then they are seen as the Enemy. It’s the motivational speaker who comes out after lunch and says, ‘We’re having a great time – let’s do some star-jumps’ and the audience thinks, ‘No – you’re a tool!” It’s the sales manager who declares, ‘This month we’re going to get budget! Why? Because we’re just going to get it!’ There is no grounding in reality and you get lots of push-back. This is the most dangerous place to be.

The final place is where no one sees the person in charge as a leader. Here they are simply perceived as a Loser. It’s a case of the followers saying “I don’t want to listen to a message you don’t want to give’.

Levels of Engagement

The Loser has to deal with disengagement. No one is listening – but that’s not usually a problem as the person in charge is not speaking.

The Enemy has to deal with disinterest. They could be giving out next week’s PowerBall numbers but the followers don’t care because they think the leader is an idiot.

The Imposter is dealing with disillusionment. The followers want to follow or buy but are not getting the guidance and leadership they want. This is why good staff leave poor managers and reliable customers start looking elsewhere.

It is only when you are perceived as the Leader that you get engagement. Here people want to listen to what you have to say. In this position you have influence and can sell more. This makes your life easier. You’re happy because you’re getting budget. Your superiors are happy because you’re doing your job. Your followers are happy because they are getting the leadership they want.

From Imposter to Leader

Over the last dozen years of working with senior managers I have seen that about 90% of people hold themselves in the Imposter position. They want to be the leader, but are afraid that if they step up they will be seen as the enemy.

The key to stepping up from Imposter to Leader is courage. Do you have the courage to take the next step in the process? Don’t look for confidence and that is often too far down the track. Have a plan to follow and have the courage to take just the next step in the process.

How have you found working for Leaders, Imposters, Enemies and Losers? Leave your comments below.

Cheers

Darren

The post How Your Leadership Style is Perceived: Leader, Imposter, Enemy or Loser? appeared first on Executive Speaking.

It is only the application or sharing of information that gives power. When you apply information it shows your level of knowledge/expertise. Sharing information shows you are an insider – a very powerful position.

From a power perspective, the fatal mistake is to share information when it can’t be applied – this is simply giving away your power to show you are an insider. But giving it away makes everyone else an insider to – or you an outsider.

But the paradox is that unless you share information, others don’t know you have power. If they don’t know you have some power, do you really have it?

True power is about knowing that you have information that gives you power yet refraining from sharing it.

That’s why people let secrets slip, leak information and like to gossip. It’s how they show they have information and therefore power.

The irony is that when they share the information they lose any power that it had given them.

Become comfortable holding information that gives you an edge on others without giving into the need to share it. This will be true power.

Would love your thoughts on this.

The post Information Is Not Power appeared first on Executive Speaking.

Google has democratised information. The exclusive knowledge that you gained at university is now available to anyone with just a few clicks. The process knowledge that you have on how to fix something is now redundant because there is a video on YouTube that shows me how to fix it myself.

If you’re in sales, this spells danger if you’re simply selling based on your knowledge. You need something more. That something more is what will set you apart from your competition, and allow you to have a value-based conversation as opposed to a price based one.

This change in mindset is part of the Simple Sales module in the iLead program. You can get the details on how to move beyond knowledge-based selling by clicking here or on the image below.

You can get the details on how to move beyond knowledge-based selling by clicking on the image below.

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Transcription of iLead Leadership Skills

Here’s a technique from the Simple Sales module that will help position you as a leader that others want to follow.

The ninth module of the iLead leadership skills program is Simple Sales, and what that looks at is, how do you sell your message in a simple way so others want to buy. There’s no trickery or anything like that.

Ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, an expert could sell because of the knowledge they had. Then Google came along and destroyed the power position that someone with knowledge had. You can get just about any piece of information you want from Google in a couple of clicks.

Leadership Skills: It’s About what You Predict and See

If you want people to follow your message, it’s no longer about what it is that you know, it’s about the future you can predict and that you can see.

When you have a future that others can see, a vision that others want to follow, and it makes sense to all the facts and data that’s available on Google and what it is we know, we’re more likely to get on board with your message, and follow, and buy from you. This has the power of attracting people to your message. This means you can get away from being a price-based conversation and head more towards a value-based conversation. We all know the value of that in the sales world.

Leadership Skills: Sell From A Vision

When you speak from a vision, it becomes unique – no one else can have your vision and your insight, and that gives you a unique selling point within your market.

Sell from a vision, not from what it is that you know, and people will come to your message.

iLead Leadership Skills: Discussion

What I’d love is for you to pop in a comment below about those people who have had a vision that you have followed, and what the effect of that vision was on you, how it changed you, and how you bought into what it is they were saying.

Simple Sales is just one of the many modules in the iLead leadership skills program that helps your organisation develop stronger leaders, better salespeople, more effective workers at all levels, so your organisation can achieve more and hit the goals that it needs to.

Would love to read your comments and to continue the conversation below.

The post Leadership Skills iLead – Simple Sales – Sell with a Vision appeared first on Executive Speaking.

Setting goals is something that we know we should do. However, most people either don’t set goals or if they do, they don’t stick to them. There is a reason for this.

As part of the corporate leadership training program iLead, the module 20:20 Vision shows you how to find corporate and personal goals that will excite you to achieve. These goals then drive decisions, actions and behaviours for the next 12 months.

You can get the full details on how to do this by clicking on the image below.

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Transcription of iLead Corporate Leadership Training

Here is a key corporate leadership training technique around goal setting and vision setting that will help you and your organisation.

Finding Goals And Setting An Organisational Vision

20:20 Vision is a great module to help you, and your organisation set a vision that is going to be visceral. And it’s going to be something that bonds with your organisation. It’s a key to corporate leadership training.

Many people, when they set goals, they set, “Yes, we know we should have a goal around money, we need to know we have a goal around growth.” In personal life, it might be a goal around relationships. We know we need that. We need a goal around sporting and health etc.

The problem is we set goals we shouldn’t set.

Why? Because we don’t know where it is we want to set them.

Negatives Produce Positive Goals

The greatest way to find out where it is you want to set goals, and where you can find the biggest achievement, is to sit down and look at your life, look at your business, and identify the areas that you don’t like.

There’s a reason you don’t like them – it’s because they’re not where you want them to be. And, you have a vision for where they could or should be.
It’s these areas that you identify as ‘not liking’ that produce your strongest and most powerful goals.

So if you look at your bank account and go, “Well, I don’t like where my bank account is,” it means you have a goal for it to be something better, and that is an area for goal setting.

If you look at your health and you go, “Well, I’m actually quite happy with my health,” it means setting a goal for health, other than maintaining status quo, is not going to drive you. Why? Because you’re happy with it.

iLead Corporate Leadership Training

Looking at the negative areas of your life to create positive goals is part of the process of corporate leadership training that I teach in the 20:20 Vision model of iLead on how you can set more powerful, more dynamic goals.

Please, pop in a comment below about how it is that you use goal-setting, and how this technique of finding the areas that you’re not overly happy with in life, how that can drive goals and growth for the next 12 months.

The post Corporate Leadership Training iLead – 20-20 Vision – Finding Goals appeared first on Executive Speaking.

What a week it has been in politics! What a last couple of months!

We’re seeing first-term governments turfed out on their ears in Victoria as well as Queensland, and Tony Abbott nearly lost his leadership position in a party room shakedown.

This is unprecedented in Australian politics, where, for almost a hundred years, we enjoyed stability. Even John Howard through his most hated times was not torn down by the party, even when, prior to his loss in 2007, he was facing what was going to be looking like electoral disaster – which it turned out to be.

Why is this happening?

There’s No Such Thing as a Mandate

Well, first of all is the concept of mandate. Parties that come to power believe that they have a mandate to implement their policies. Well, the reality is – and most voters would agree – the Australian public votes out a government, they do not vote in an opposition. So to say that a party has a mandate – well, the only part mandate they have is to not be the previous government.

Where is the Leadership Message

That leads us into the second point, which is the message. The message needs to be sold.

Just because you’re the Prime Minister, just because you’re the Premier, or just because you’re the division head doesn’t mean people will blindly follow what it is you’re saying. The message must be sold, and it must be sold over and over and over again. This is what leadership is.

If we look at McDonald’s – they spend close to a hundred million dollars a year in Australia alone advertising their product. Yet we know them. Politicians need to continually sell their message so people, their public, can get on board with it.

The Right to Question Our Leaders

The third area is accepting the right to be questioned. Politicians are interviewed by the journalists, the journalist asks a question on Topic A, and the politician gives answer for Question B. They don’t answer the question. And what happens is we hear the answer, we don’t believe what’s being said, we see the politician as dodging, and they are lowered in our expectations, and our respect for the politician is reduced. We then stop listening, and then we vote them out.

What are the implications of this for the workplace?

Well, the first is – this is big if you’re in the world of change management, it’s big if you’re in the world of pushing your staff to achieve some more – the first is mandate.

Just because you are the boss, just because you have the directive from the CEO interstate or overseas or wherever, doesn’t mean that people will automatically follow you just because you have the title. You need to get people on board.

The second is the message. You need to continually sell a message. What is in the change, what is the benefit, what is the outcome, what is the long-term consequence, good or bad, of actions being taken or not being taken? It needs to be explained over and over and over again.

The third is accepting that the people have the right to question your message.

You have decided to take certain actions; well, I am going to have to implement those actions, I have the right to question what it is you’re saying, what it is you’re doing. We don’t live in a dictatorship, and hopefully, businesses aren’t run as one. When people have the right to challenge, right to question, they feel stronger and more bound to your message if they have been able to challenge it.

A week is a long time in politics. We’ve seen some amazing changes happen, and we can take lessons from these and apply it to our work, and become stronger and better leaders as a result.

Cheers!

The post Political Leadership in Australia – What a Joke! appeared first on Executive Speaking.

Those with strong leadership skills know that there are three levels of information that your audience could hear.

• Level 1 – Content (What)
• Level 2 – Process (How)
• Level 3 – Context (Why)

You need to pitch the level of information to the right level of audience. This video will  give you the insight on how to use this information, and what happens if you get it wrong. When you get this right, you will have quicker meetings that produce better results, shorter conversations that lead to outcomes and team members that can contribute even more.

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Leadership Skills Development Transcript

G’day! Darren from executivespeaking.com.au.

I’ve got a technique here that I want to share with you that will help you position yourself as a leader, as someone who should be listened to, and someone of influence. It’s great for developing leadership skills. Stick around.

Today I want to share with you a technique on how you can share your ideas so people want to get on board with what it is you have to say and put you at the right level for where it is that you are – are you a leader or are you one of the people implementing the tasks that the leaders have.

There’s three types of information you need to be aware of. The first is content, the second is process, and the third is context. Now, what are these about?

Content is about what it is you’re going to do. For argument’s sake, in the business world, it might be we’re going to open a new warehouse in western Sydney. We’re going to capture that market. The second type of information, process – how are we going to do it? Well, if we’re going to open a warehouse in western Sydney, we need to find a site, we need to get feasible rental agreements, we need to look at purchasing, we need to have our supplies etc put into place so they know where we are.

The what – the content – and the how – the process, how are you going to do it.

The third type of information is the context. What is it all about? In this instance, it might be about being more efficient, it might be about saving costs, it might be about capturing a market or preparing for a strategy. That’s what it’s about.

Now, when you get these three types of information confused, it lowers what people think of you and your idea. When you should be talking context and you’re bogged down in content and processes, those that will need to be sold context don’t hear it, and they start thinking, “Well, this guy knows how to do it on the ground but he shouldn’t be up here speaking at this level.” When you get it wrong, you can find yourself feeling a bit odd and a bit out, and here’s a great example of how that happened.

Tony Abbott:       The other reform that has proven very, very difficult for us is to try to inject more price signals into our health system. We would like to see a $7 co-payment for people who are going to see the doctor… But it is proving to be massively difficult to get this particular reform through the Parliament. I don’t have any magic answers to the problems that we face… But the more gatherings like this can affirm the importance of good policy… Then I think the easier it is for all of us to deliver good policy to the people of our countries.

Tony Abbott had the world’s most powerful leaders in the room with him, and what he was there to do, and what everyone was there to do was to talk about context. But what he did was dragged it down into content and process, and that’s why he was rightly lambasted by just about everyone in the Australian media.

Understand that it’s content, process, and context.

This is just one of the many techniques that I share in the Language of Leadership module, part of the iLead program.

What I’d love for you to do is, first of all, like this video and share it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, and also pop a comment down below so we can continue this conversation and help you position yourself as a leader that others want to follow.

Cheerio!

Speak to you next time.

Cheers.

The post Leadership Skills – Information appeared first on Executive Speaking.

Communication is a major problem in organisations. People don’t deliver the right message in the right way at the right time. if you get this wrong, it makes public speaking more difficult.

My friend Matt Church speaks of the three primary channels through which you can share a message. These are Tell, Show and Ask. The channel you use will determine the outcome you achieve. You can tell people what you want, show people what you want or ask people what you want.

You tell people when you need to lead. You show people when you need to train and you ask people when you need to collaborate. If you choose the wrong channel you make communication difficult for yourself.

If you’re presenting the final pitch to win a tender, the audience wants you to lead – so you need to be telling. If you start your pitch by asking, your audience will switch off. If you’re brainstorming at an offsite meeting, you need to be mostly asking with a good helping of telling as well. A brainstorming session without sufficient direction does not achieve anything.

The model above shows the channels, why you would use each of them the allocation of time that I believe you should spend in each.

Next time you need to communicate, determine what you are trying to achieve and allocate the appropriate time to the channel you use. Keep this in mind with any amount of public speaking you do.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this idea. You can send me an e-mail to let me know.

Cheers

Darren

The post Tell Show Ask | Public Speaking Tips appeared first on Executive Speaking.

When Joe Hockey said that poor people don’t have cars and don’t drive as far he was technically correct. But that doesn’t mean he will win the argument.

The way you structure your message to market will determine if you are successful or not. Joe leaves out the most important element and therefore will never win. This is important in any public speaking situation, and even in one-on-one communication situations.

See what he does wrong and how you can avoid it in your marketplace. Full details below…

Transcript

G’day! Darren from executivespeaking.com.au.

Joe Hockey is on a hiding to nothing when he pushes his line, “Rich people will pay more through the fuel excise tax than poor people because poor people don’t have cars and they don’t drive very far.” The reason he is going to lose has massive implications for you trying to get your message out to your marketplace or through to your staff to motivate them on to your way of thinking. It’s important if you want to be a great public speaker.

If you’re not familiar with the statement that the Federal Treasurer of Australia made, have a look at this short bit of footage.

Joe Hockey:         They say you’ve got to have wealthier people or middle-income people pay more. Well, the change to the fuel excise does exactly that – the poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases.

There’s three elements you need when you want to persuade and influence an audience. As I mentioned, this is important in any public speaking or presentation situation. The first is what’s known as your stance – your authority, who are you and what are you trying to push across. Being the Federal Treasurer of Australia, he has great authority to speak from where he’s coming from.

The second area is logic. You need logic to push your argument forward so people can follow what it is you’re trying to put across.

The third area though – and this is where Joe Hockey is massively falling down, and why he will never win this argument – is pathos, appeal to the emotions. If you want to persuade an audience, you have to appeal to an emotion within that audience. And Joe Hockey simply is not doing that. By putting forward the logic “rich people will pay more in fuel excise because they have more cars and drive further” – that is true – but the logic of pushing that argument introduces the class warfare, which is emotion, of “low people, well, they don’t have cars.” When you start introducing negative emotions, you’re never going to win an argument.

How does this affect your business? Well, with your business, what’s the personality and stance of your business? Are you a professional outfit? Are you seen well in the market? What is the logic, the logic of the message that you’re putting across? And finally, how are you emotionally engaging your customer base, your database, so they want to be part of your message? This is where things – simple things such as being able to deliver your message in a professional and concise manner – mean so much to your marketplace. If you’re thinking, “We’ve got a great product, yes, that’s awesome, we don’t need to have the message sold really well,” well, that’s going to tear at your authority. If you’re not engaging your audience through emotions and what’s possible to solve their issues when you’re speaking, well, that’s appealing to emotion. And if you don’t have the authority because you don’t look the part and you’re not emotionally engaging them, it doesn’t matter how good your product is, it doesn’t matter how good your message is – your audience won’t buy into it, and they won’t buy your product.

That’s what I teach my clients how to do – how do you sell yourself, position yourself so your audience want to buy your message in any public speaking or private conversation setting? If you’re having trouble getting cut-through in your marketplace, give me a call, send me an email. When done correctly, public speaking allows you to position yourself as a leader. Have the logic, and then finally, emotionally engage them. And then you will see a lift in your sales.

Give me a call, send me an email, and I can show you how to do it.

The post Joe Hockey and Poor People: Why He Can’t Win! – Public Speaking Tip appeared first on Executive Speaking.

This video on public speaking will show you have to add impact, believability and conviction to your next foray into public speaking – in under three minutes.

G’day. Darren from Executive Speaking here.

I want to give you one public speaking secret that’ll help you lift the style and the quality of your presentations so they’re easier for you to listen to and they’re easier for your audience to engage with and understand.

I was in Sydney recently working with some gun sales people. The state manager had brought me in because these people, they were smart, they knew their material, they had a product that was just smashing the market – but yet the sales team weren’t getting the cut-through that they thought they should – their public speaking and presentations were just not up to par. So he brought me in, and we were looking at some of the presentations, and what I realised is that they were lacking one vital ingredient – and this is the tip for you.

This sales team, they weren’t giving themselves permission to be great when speaking in public. They were sort of being a bit timid, and they weren’t putting their best foot forward to give a presentation that they knew they could give. An exaggerated example of how it comes across in some settings is you see the people, they walk out and they say, “Uh, please bear with me, I’m not very good at public speaking. Please bear with me while I present.” That’s an example of someone who doesn’t give themselves permission to speak.

When you give yourself permission to speak well in public, it’s easier for you to walk out, stand there in front of the room, and speak as the leader that you are. It also makes it easier for your audience to hear the message, get on board with what it is you’re saying, and adopt it from the position that you have, of authority.

When you do this, public speaking becomes so much easier. It is easier for you to remember the message, it’s easier for your audience to receive it. It also becomes a lot more fun, because you’re the leader, you’re in charge, you’re out the front. Next time you got to give a presentation, give yourself permission to give a great presentation. This one technique alone will help you lift the standard and the style of your presentations.

This is step three of the public speaking training I show my clients. This is something that I teach my clients when they want to go out and give greater presentations.

Would love your thoughts on it below – pop some comments in – how does this tip work for you, how do you go about giving yourself permission to give great presentations. Speak to you soon.

Cheers!

The post How to Have Better Public Speaking Presentations in Under 3 Minutes. appeared first on Executive Speaking.

There are times in public speaking when you know making a request will only result in a refusal. It almost doesn’t matter what you want, it seems the answer is pre-programmed to come out as ’No’. It’s a killer for sales presentations, managers and anyone needing to influence at work.

But there is a way around this. You can bypass the automated answer and get the answer you need. You just need to think a few steps ahead. 

The Pique Technique

The pique technique is the use of an unusual request in order to obtain compliance. The idea behind this is that if you ask for something they are not expecting they will want to know why you are asking for it and therefore give you an opportunity to engage them further.

Once you have your audience engaged – there is more chance of them completing an action you request.

The Evidence

In 1994 a psychological experiment put this technique to the test. A beggar was given a task to ask members of the public for some small change. Originally the beggar asked them “Do you have any small change?” 44% of those he asked gave change.

Then the research team asked the man to ask those passing by for a specific amount, this time a quarter. The number of people who responded and gave the man money increased to 64%.

The homeless man was then asked to request a more precise amount, 17 or 37 cents. Again the number of those willing to give money increased to 75%. The unusual request was engaging the audience. (This experiment has been repeated a number of times under different conditions.)

The Reason

The reason why this worked is because the recipient disrupted their usual cognitive patterns of ‘say no to beggars’. This caused them to stop and think about the request and why the beggar was asking for it. This in turns makes them think about complying with the request.

Once your audience has been engaged you have a higher chance of further communicating and explaining the benefits to them.

The application

You can use this technique everyday in your leadership and presentations or any public speaking situation. Say for instance you are presenting to a potential client about your services. It is often the case you would demonstrate what benefits your service offers them. The figure percentage you use either ends in 0 or 5. They are nice round numbers which are better understood.

However, if you present it and said you could improve productivity by 17% it would make more of an impact. Your audience will automatically stop and think about the figure you are giving them. This allows for the figure, the vital benefit of your business, to be properly absorbed and understood by the audience – instead of being glossed over because that figure or one like it is to be expected.

The same can be said if you are talking to your staff to request a certain task to be done. Instead of asking them if they can complete the task, instruct them to complete a very specific but unusual task. For instance, “can you write 227 tweets for the marketing department?”

It is a very specific number, something which will have your audience concentrating on the number not on your request and have them stop to think about your request, instead of disregarding it automatically.

A common ask is also when giving a length of time for work to be completed. If you want to give a specific deadline, instead of saying the usual three o’clock or half past four try for something like ten past ten or ten to two.

Improving the Uptake

Once you have engaged the audience you can increase the uptake of your request and improve production within your business. An important aspect of this is ensuring you are giving a specific reason why you would like the work to be completed.

In the experiment, those that did not request any further information only complied with the request for some small change 23.2% of the time.

Those who were presented with a vague reason why the person needed the money complied with the request 71.4% of the time. If there was a very specific reason (i.e. I need the money to buy some food) the compliance was increased to 75.9%.

Therefore you should be prepared to have a very specific reason for those seeking further information. For instance, you need a certain number of tweets because that will give your marketing department six days worth of output, or you can promise to improve a client’s profits by a certain amount because no other client has received less than that amount.

Giving a reason why you need those tweets may have your team deliver even greater results than you requested.

By using the experiments and the thought processes above you can implement this to your leadership at work. This is done by having a process where you identify what task you want to have completed and then requesting it in a method that does not seem generic.

Once you have requested it, to ensure you have a higher uptake and your workforce give you more – have a very specific reason why you need the work to be done.

Conclusion

The pique technique is not always the best solution. Sometimes making too much of an unusual request may have your request rejected without question. For instance, requesting a 10,000 word report written within 2 hours 10 minutes is unlikely to have your team performing well.

However, making reasonable but unusual requests and statements, ones which your competitors and peers will be hesitant to make, will increase the uptake of the actions you want to happen. Try it next time you are in a public speaking or presentation setting.

This is one method in which you can achieve your business goals in less time because your work and that of your team is becoming more motivated and efficient.

The post An Unusual Request – Public Speaking tip appeared first on Executive Speaking.