Posts Tagged "Leadership Training"

The Spot Light of Your Message

October 22nd, 2015 |no comments

Where you focus your message, lets people know how aware you are of other their perspective.

When most people stand up to speak, they speak from their own perspective, and they sell their message in terms of what it means to them. The audience though, only care about themselves. They will only take action in a way that’s going to improve their lives. If you want to be seen as an influential person, you need to structure your message in terms of what is of benefit for your audience. In the world of sales, it’s known as the WIFM – “What’s In It For Me?”

Next time you are speaking, assess your message to see what perspective it comes from.

  • For whom are you framing it?
  • Are you framing it in terms of “what I want to do; what I want to achieve?” (e.g. I’m just calling you to see if you have done….”?)
  • Or, are you framing your message for your audience so it is all about them?

After you have spoken, you will do some dynamic reflection. You will reflect on how you conducted yourself during your encounters with others (e.g. meetings, phone calls, presentations etc).

Was your conversation focused on you, or was it focused on the person you were having a conversation with? This is a powerful technique that, once you get control of and understand, you can apply this technique, and you can structure your message so it fits with your audience’s world very quickly. This is how you will increase your influence.


Why Would They Listen?

October 19th, 2015 |no comments

Just because you’re the boss, the supplier or the paid consultant, it doesn’t mean your audience will listen to you. You have to give them a reason to listen.

My friend and Thought Leader Matt Church speaks about the three questions all audiences have at the start of any presentation. If you don’t answer these questions, the audience won’t listen.

  1. Why this? Why should I stop what I am focused on and pay attention to what you have to say?
  2. Why now? Why do I have to listen to this today? Can’t you come back next week?
  3. Why you? Why are you the person to be speaking to me about this?

Unfortunately, most people start with question number three; Why you? This is wrong, as most audiences don’t even know why they should be listening to you at all. As a result, they won’t hear the reason you give for being so awesome.

You see this a lot in sales situations where sales reps will tell you how good their company is before telling you why you would want to know that.

If you have any sales reps who call on you and tell you why they are awesome before explaining why you should care, please send me their details. If you have staff who do this, give me a call.

As always, would love your thoughts on this, please leave a comment in the comment section below.


Depth of Understanding

October 11th, 2015 |no comments

When speaking to an audience you need to understand them on three levels.

Level 1 – Logistical – Who are they and what do they do?
Level 2 – Motivational – what do they want?
Level 3 – Behavioural – what will they most likely do before, during and after your presentation.

Level 1 determines what you could sell to your audience, but it’s levels 2 & 3 that are important for influencing.

Level 2 tells you why they will listen, and buy from you. It will help you identify their trigger points so you can hone in on them.

Level 3 will guide their actions. What they will do once you’ve spoken to them?

If you are presenting to sell your services, it is important to know what your audience will do, after you have finished speaking to them. Are they likely to give an order number on the spot or will you have to wait a week? If you have to wait a week, how will you stop that blowing out to two weeks, then three, then six…?

Having a strategy in place to understand all three levels will make your job of speaking to sell easier.

As always, would love your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment below in the comment section.


Currencies That Convert

October 5th, 2015 |no comments

There are only five currencies that people care about and they are:

  1. Time
  2. Money
  3. Happiness
  4. Health
  5. Legacy

Everything you sell needs to address one of these currencies. Every time you speak, you need to address how your audience will benefit from these currencies. If you cannot address these currencies, you’ll find it difficult to get your message across.

While there is no hierarchy to the currencies, most people default to money as it is the most tangible. This is wrong.

The most powerful one to sell on is time. It is the only currency you cannot get more of.

Would love your thoughts on this, leave a comment below in the comment section.


How to Write a 10-Minute Presentation in Under 2 Minutes

September 14th, 2015 |no comments

Many people spend time agonising over the preparation of their presentations. They do this because they don’t know the correct way to prepare. They write out their message on slides so they don’t forget a thing. Then they read the slides to their audiences.

2015-09-14_0806Unfortunately, this bores the audience. You can see and feel this as the eyes of the audience glaze over and they start to nod off. There is a technical word for this Phenomena – it’s called ‘feedback’.

There is a more efficient, productive and interesting way to prepare and deliver a presentation. But there are some rules to follow:

  • You have to change the way you prepare – the old way takes too long.
  • You have to change the way you deliver your presentation – the old way bores your audience.
  • And, you have to change how you deliver your message – the old way made you look weak.

I’ve written the book ‘How to Write a 10-Minute Presentation in Under 2 Minutes‘ to help busy people prepare great messages. You can check it out here.

It covers what you need to do, and how you need to think, so you can speak without spending ages preparing.

As an introductory offer, I’m giving away free shipping right across Australia.

You can check it out here.

This is a limited time offer only.

Cheers,

Darren


No Such Thing as a Benign Word

September 10th, 2015 |no comments

Every word you say either strengthens or weakens your message. If you want to have a stronger message you need to ensure that every word is helping you out. This is a small technique, but it has a massive effect on your message.

Adverbs
Today we’re looking at adverbs, and in particular, adverbs ending in -ly. Many people include adverbs ending in -ly into their message to make them more powerful, make them seem more sincere, and give themselves the emphasis and strength that they’re after. The irony is, that they reduce their strength as a leader, as someone who has authority, and someone who has influence.

Below are a number of excerpts from the media. Read them, and then read them again with the -ly adverbs taken out. You’ll see that when they are removed the message is stronger, has more focus, and is more believable. In essence, they have more influence.

What
When you’re going about your activities, pay close attention to what you are saying. When you hear yourself using –ly adverbs, just don’t say them. Don’t look to replace them – just leave them out.

This will increase your influence.

WORDS TO LEAVE OUT
• Interestingly
• Basically
• Firstly
• Secondly
• Thirdly
• Clearly
• Hopefully
• (I) personally
• Potentially
• Really
• Essentially
• Obviously

Cheers
Darren


Corporate Leadership Training iLead – Authenticity – Say Look Sound

March 16th, 2015 |no comments

Corporate Leadership Training iLead – Authenticity – Say Look Sound

One of the many questions I get when helping people become better leaders is how do they develop the leadership skills they want, but yet still remain authentic to who they are.

It’s a great question.

Module 7 of the iLead program shows you how to remain authentic to what it is you stand for. One of the areas we examine is what you say, how you look and how you sound. I’ve put together a short video that shows you how these three elements come together to be the leader you want to be. You can get full details by clicking on the image below.

[leadplayer_vid id=”54B88709BAF1A”]

Transcription Leadership Training iLead

Here are three areas where you can look to improve your authenticity, so people want to follow you and get on board with the message you’re sharing.

Authenticity is the 7th module of the iLead corporate leadership training program, and it looks at how you and your team can be seen as people who are authentic, genuine, and worthy of following.

There are three areas we look at for authenticity: are you authentic in what it is that you say, how you sound, and how you look.

This is so important, because you know that sixth sense we have when we listen to a politician or listen to our boss, and we just get that feeling of, “I don’t think this person’s got my best interests at heart.” This is authenticity coming through, and it’s what we teach in the corporate leadership training.

Corporate Leadership Training: Be Authentic In Everything You Do

The way you look comes into the way that you carry yourself. Are you comfortable with yourself and your message? The way you sound – does your voice convey confidence and assurance and what it is that you say? Is your message internally consistent? Are you contradicting yourself from one paragraph, one comment to the next?

When you have these sorted, and they’re consistent, your audience, your marketplace, your staff, your team will want to follow you. They’ll want to get on board with what it is that you say, and it’ll be much easier for you to lead.

And if you lead people when they are authentic to their staff or the market, it makes it easier for them to sell their message and sell products, and your organisation achieves its goal.

iLead Corporate Leadership Training: Discussion

This is just one of the many modules of the iLead corporate leadership training program that helps every individual team member within your organisation become more effective at being a leader in their role, so they can achieve more.

What I’d love to do is – below, pop down your favourite example of when you’ve seen someone who hasn’t been authentic with their message. Might be a politician, it might be someone you once worked for. It might even be yourself.

Pop it in – I’d love to continue this conversation about authenticity.


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