Leadership Skills iLead – Total Trust – How to Read Other People

When people find out I have a degree in psychology, they always want to know if I can read their mind. The surprising answer is – yes I can. In many instances I can read other people’s minds…and so can you.

This is not a trick. This is real, and I want to show you how to do it.

Total Trust is the second module of the iLead program and looks at building trust within teams and the market. I’ve placed mind reading in this module.

If you want to know how to read someone’s mind, just click on the image below.

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Transcription Leadership Skills iLead

Here is a technique on how you can read the mind of the people you’re dealing with.

iLead Leadership Skills: Getting Accurate Insight

In the iLead leadership skills program, the Trust module looks at ways that you can build trust within your organisation, within customers and marketplace in general.

One of the ways to do that is to get an accurate insight into what other people are thinking – maybe it’s your customers, maybe it’s your staff.

The easiest way to do this – on the phone, when you’re talking with someone, when you put the phone down, what are your first thoughts and feelings? You know how you have that special ability to pick up on the vibes that other people are sending you, how you can read people, and you just get this gut feeling on what it is they’re thinking about you?

Well, I hate to break it to you – you’re not alone.

Trust Your Gut To Read Others

Everyone has these leadership skills. So if you want to know what the people at the other end of the line are thinking about you when they put the phone down, simply reflect on what it is you’re feeling about them. If you’re feeling as though “That person is doing me over,” there’s a good chance they’re feeling that about you. If you’re putting the phone down thinking, “This is awesome, it’s going to be a great deal,” there’s a good chance they’re thinking that about you as well.

When you have the constant feeling of “This is a positive,” put-down of the phone, “This has been a good conversation,” this is how you build trust. This is how you get people to join your cause, whether that cause is to build an organisation, sell products, or take over a new market.

Leadership Skills: You Have The Ability To Read People

We all have the leadership skills to read each other’s minds, and we do it all the time. We think that we have this special ability that no one else has, but the reality is we can all do that. What are the people, when you put the phone down, saying about you?

More importantly, your staff that you’re trying to build up to make better, to make productive – have a look at their reaction when they put the phone down, and what the reaction will be of the person at the other end.

What I’d like you to do is, below, pop in a comment of what you have seen your staff, in your organisation, do – or potentially, you do – and how that is reflecting on the trust that’s being built within your organisation.

Leadership Skills iLead – Personal Positioning – Breathing

When we look at our leaders we look for a number of signs so we can be reassured that they are a strong leader. The more of the signs we see, the more confident we are in following them.

One of the elements we look for is the physiology of the leader. I’ve put together a short video that will show you how to improve your physiology and appear as a more confident, competent and effective leader. It comes from the Personal Positioning module of the iLead program.

You can see the video by clicking on the image below.

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Transcription Leadership Skills iLead

Here is a technique on how you can position yourself as a leader. The right leadership skills allow you to control your physiology so people look at you and say, “This person’s in charge.”

How To Control Your Physiology

One of the modules in the iLead program on leadership skills is about positioning. How do you position yourself so others want to follow you? One of the ways you can do that is controlling your physiology – the way you react, the nervousness, the anxiety, the stress, and the confidence that you show.

One simple way to control your physiology is to take a deep breath. Now, what I want you to do is right now, take a deep breath – in. Now, where did your stomach go? Did your stomach come in or did your stomach go out? When I run this program right around Australia, every time I ask someone to take that deep breath, their stomach always comes in – which is crazy!

Proper Breathing: Stomach Out

Our lungs are not a muscle. Our lungs are organs. For them to move, they need to have the diaphragm below go down and out. Yet, when we breathe, we take in, lungs coming in, and up. What that does is that contracts the lungs – we can’t get as much air in, and therefore energy out. What that does is that speeds up our physiology. Increasing the physiology speeds up the psychology, and ruins the phraseology. So when you stand to speak, you can’t get the words out that you want.

iLead Leadership Skills Training

Part of the iLead program and this module on leadership, positioning, is how do you control your physiology under stressful situations: when you’re pitching to major customers, when you’re going for job interviews, or training your team. Because as an audience, we look to our leaders and expect them to have the leadership skills, the physiology and control that a strong leader has.

Pop in a comment on where your stomach went. Did it come in? Did it go out? And how do you find it different when you do take those deep breaths, and how does that build your energy?

Leadership Skills iLead – Language of Leadership – Strength of Your Stance

I’m often asked what is the one thing that a course participant can do to ace that next job interview.

It’s a great question.

There is one technique that I share as part of the Language of Leadership module in the iLead program that will give you greater authority and confidence when you speak. You can get the details here or by clicking on the image below.

You can get the details by clicking on the image below.

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Transcription Leadership Skills iLead 

Here is a technique on how you can increase your presence, your authority, when you’re in any interview-type situation.

The Language of Leadership module is the fifth module in the iLead leadership skills program, and it shows you and gives you techniques on how you can be a stronger leader through individual techniques of why you say it the way you say it.

Leadership Skills: Your Stance

How do you stand? How do you sit? Do you fidget? The strength of your stance shows the strength of your message. If I’m talking to you here and I’m standing nice and solid and strong, it gives you a reassurance.

You may not even notice it, but if I don’t stand still and strong, if I talk about how you need to sit still and that will help you get your message across while I’m talking and moving so much, it makes it difficult for you to follow.

The strength of your stance shows the strength of your message. Be aware of how you’re sitting, how you’re standing. Is your weight evenly balanced or are you sitting around like this?

iLead Leadership Skills: Let’s Discuss

What I’d love – below, can you pop in a comment or a message on how you have seen people fidgeting and looking nervous and moving around, and how it affects your feeling of what it is that they are trying to get across.

The strength of your stance is just one of the exercises and techniques I teach in the Language of Leadership module as part of the iLead leadership skills program. This program helps your organisation develop leaders at all levels, so you can go out and achieve more, and there’ll be greater career and job satisfaction within all your organisations.

Leadership Skills iLead – Bullet-Proof Belief – Personal Alignment

We all have personal values that we hold dear to ourselves. For some it’s fairness, others it’s doing what is right and for others still it is about something completely different.

It’s the variety between us that makes the world interesting.

When our personal values align to organisational values there is a click that makes it easier to do our job. It enables us to go that extra step to achieve a budget, keep a customer happy or to stay back late to complete a task so you don’t let the team down.

But what happens when personal values don’t align to organisational values? How can your values and a person whose values you don’t like both align with the same organisational values?

I’ve put together a quick video that shows you how personal and organisational values can be aligned, and what to do if they don’t.

You can get all the details by clicking the image below.

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Here is a great technique about belief and belief in yourself and how you can help build that within yourself.

The fourth module of the iLead leadership skills program is a powerful module. It focuses on belief and how you can lift your own belief. The old saying of “Fake it till you make it” gets a bit of a bad rap. But I encourage you to try it, and there are a couple of reasons for that.

Leadership Skills: Let Yourself Succeed

First, we hold ourselves back. We don’t think we’re as good as people around us think. Why? Because society makes feel as though we need to buy something to be better. So we hold ourselves back.

If you fake it till you make it, there’s something that happens. We operate here, and we say, “Okay, I’m going to take a step forward and work here.” And you think, “Oh, my goodness, I’m faking it! Don’t people know what I’m doing? I’m pushing myself and faking it,” And then you try the next level because no one’s noticed.

So then you try stepping out, faking it a bit more, and you say, “My goodness! Nothing’s happening, no one’s noticed! But I’m faking it!” And so you go, “Well, I’ll try it another level.”

When you try it a third or fourth time, what happens is you are so far beyond your comfort zone, but no one’s noticed. Then you’ll try it one more time, and those around you will go, “Ah! Finally! This person’s operating at the level we want them to! Ripper! Now, push yourself!”

Even though in our own mind, we’ve been pushing ourselves for quite a while.

iLead Leadership Skills: Push Yourself To The Next Level

The ability to have the belief in yourself is about knowing you have the leadership skills, and then pushing yourself further forward with those skills. This is just one of the many techniques that I share on how to build confidence within yourself, build confidence within your team so they can go off and be the leaders that you need and want them to be. When they are, they will achieve more; they will produce more and become more effective salespeople, admin officers, market leaders, organisational leaders.

What I’d like you to do is, below, share the technique that you find most useful for building self-belief. Love to continue the conversation just below.

Leadership Skills iLead – Authenticity – How to Give Feedback

The annual feedback session from manager to staff is often awkward. No one likes situations that could include confrontation. If there is a tough message to be delivered, it’s even worse.

Most managers use the sandwich method to deliver feedback. This is where you give something positive, an area for improvement and finish with something positive again. This is a great structure to follow, but it is only part of the story.

As part of the iLead Leadership program I teach managers how to give feedback so it is helpful to the person receiving it. I’ve put together a short video on how to do this.

You can see it by clicking on the image below.

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Transcription Leadership Skills iLead 

If you’ve ever had to give feedback to somebody, you know how daunting it can be – the once-a-year performance appraisals.

Here’s a technique that will help you give better feedback so it’s easier for you to deliver and better for your audience, the person you’re giving the feedback to, to receive.

iLead Leadership Skills: Authenticity

The seventh module of the iLead leadership skills program is about authenticity.

How do you be authentic to who you are and what it is that you stand for, and how do you give authentic feedback and deliver your message in an authentic way so people want to hear it, want to listen, and act on what it is you have to say?

The once-a-year or twice-a-year feedback sessions where you have the manager and the staff comes together for the feedback session are often awkward for both sides. What are they going to say? And how am I going to say this?

Whilst there should always be strategies in place to ensure that nothing new comes out in these meetings, delivering that new message at any time of year can be difficult.

Leadership Skills: The Why

Most people are familiar with the sandwich method or the commend-recommend-commend. Start off with something positive, something that can be improved, and finish with something positive. It’s a nice way to sandwich the recommendation or the area for improvement. That works, but how do you give the commendation and the recommendation so they are listened to?

In the commendation, it is: what was good and why it was good. We need to know why what it is that I’m doing works.

Leadership Skills: The How

For the recommendation: what can be improved, why it needs to be improved, and here’s the part that you need to include – the how. If you don’t include the how, and you give me “I need to improve,” well, how am I going to do that? And to simply say, “You need to do it better” is not going to work, because I would have done it better if I could.

This is just one of the many techniques I share in the Authenticity module of the iLead leadership skills program. It helps staff give authentic messages and be who they are, so they are more likely to turn up to work and be involved in the message.

What I’d love you to do if you can is below, pop in a comment about your favourite time giving feedback, or, god forbid, the least favourite time giving feedback – or receiving feedback – so we can continue this conversation about authenticity and help you become a more authentic person in your roles, and help your organisation achieve more.

Leadership Skills iLead – Confident Communication – Cognitive Structures

Just about every meeting these days has a death-by-PowerPoint session included.

This is terrible as no one likes having slides read to them.

But it’s understandable why it happens – we simply don’t have the time to prepare.

To help you, I’ve put together a short video on how to use cognitive structures to enable you to step away from reading slides to your audience. This is just one of the techniques in the iLead program.

You can get the details by clicking on the image below.

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Transcription Leadership Skills iLead 

Leadership Skills iLead – Confident Communication – Cognitive Structures

Here’s a tip that will help you and your organisation get away from the death by PowerPoint presentations that are so common.

Confident Communication is the eighth module in the iLead leadership skills program, and what it’s designed to do, is show you and your staff how to communicate in such a way so people are joined to the message.

Status Quo: Death By PowerPoint

In organisations these days, when you come together for sales meetings, briefings, whatever the message happens to be, you’ll normally find the PowerPoint, and it’ll have the death by PowerPoint slides, with the bullet point, text, bullet point, bullet point, slide, the new logo, and another new slide with the logo on it.

These disconnect the audience big time. They have an effect that sedates the audience.

Death by PowerPoint.

Why does this happen? Well, we’re all very busy at work, we don’t have time to sit down and rehearse presentations, put half a day into this one-hour presentation to all the staff. You just don’t have the time.

So you put the notes up on the screen that you want to talk to, and then you end up reading those notes. The fact is, though, the audience reads them as well.

Leadership Skills: Cognitive Structures

A more engaging way for your audience is to set up the cognitive structures within your mind – and this is what the program Confident Communication teaches – on how to talk about Idea 1, and how Idea 1 leads into Idea 2, which leads into Idea 3.

When you have these cognitive structures – and they’re very simple to apply – what you’ll find is you’re able to produce longer presentations in a much shorter period of time, you have more confidence delivering them, you’re more engaging for your audience, and your audience wants to listen.

It’s a win on all fronts – there’s no death by PowerPoint.

iLead Leadership Skills: Discussion

This is just one of the modules, the Confident Communication module, that I share with my clients in the iLead leadership program so they can produce leaders who can get their message across in a way so audiences, the staff, internal, marketplace, customers, external, want to listen.

Please, below, pop down comments about some of the greatest speakers you’ve heard – not only the professional motivational speakers, but also bosses and leaders that you’ve had, and how they were able to engage you in their message with their leadership skills.