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Communication Skills for Leaders – Part III: Presenting

April 8, 2015 By Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

In this three part series we’ll look to cover one of the most feared skills that a leader can possibly look to exhibit: Communication. Get communication skills for leaders right, and the world can be your oyster. Get communication skills for leaders wrong, and you’ll get nowhere near the results you could have achieved (Read that as NO oysters!) In Part I, we took a look at planning your presentation, in Part II we delved into proper practice/preparation you should undertake, and lastly here in Part III we’ll tackle presenting… Enjoy!

Communication Skills for Leaders – Presenting Your Presentation

When was the last time you witnessed a presentation and you had to actively think about what the speaker was saying? If you’re like most of the leaders that come to a “Communicate with Influence” workshop as part of their leadership development training, you probably can’t remember (sigh!) The reason why this is unfortunately the case is that most presentations are better cures for insomnia than they are for providing you with actionable information.

So what does it take to convey/share/discuss actionable information? The answer lies in asking questions. Let’s take a look at three (3) different types of questions you can ask your audience to keep engagement levels high and results-focused.

Ask a Rhetorical Question

A Rhetorical Question is a figure of speech in the form of a question that’s asked in order to make a point, rather than to elicit an answer. There are times when rhetorical questions are so repugnant that a question mark doesn’t need to end the statement (Remember, it’s implied).

Here’s a great question that was asked at a recent communication skills training for leaders session: “Can you imagine a world that never had been touched by Steve Jobs?” The question in and of itself opens itself up to multiple interpretations, and as such requires each of the members of the audience to ponder their own response. Better yet, each member is awaiting what/where you’ll go next (High engagement).

Polling Questions for Instant Feedback

I love polling questions, and it’s a good thing! When I was pioneering webinars I found that a virtual audience is much more vocal than one that is sitting in a room with you. Why? I have a lot of hypothesis from these early communication skills training for leaders examples, but the one that I keep coming back to is the nature of the polls and the medium through which they communicated (i.e., the computer).

Important to remember here that you must establish ground rules regarding how you want participant responses (“Raise your hand if you…” if live and “Use the Chat area to tell me…” if virtual).

The great aspect of polling questions is that you get feedback immediately from your audience. Important to note that you should consider all variations of answers when preparing your presentation, or have facts on hand regarding how population segment at large answered similar questions which you can share.

What? Where? When? Who? and How? Questions (But NEVER Why?)

In my executive coaching sessions, I fall back on my training with Marshall Goldsmith and the International Coach Federation. It was drilled into my head that I should never, never, never begin a line of questions that began with the word “Why?” The logic for this, and try it for yourself as a leader, is that when asking a question with “Why?” will drive the participants to think logically, and absent of all emotions. As a result, think of the next time when you are about to use “Why?” and substitute it with any of the other W’s and the one H.

5 Presentation Habits that Should Be Avoided

While I’ve tried to present you with focused/results-oriented content here, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share some habits that will simply ruin your presentation. Stay away from these five bad habits:

Ummm – Toastmasters counts them, and so does your audience in a presentation. Say one and you may be Ok depending on who’s in the audience. Say more than one, or allow them to be periods between your verbal sentences and you will lose your audience!
Hands – If you’re like me, you are passionate when you speak. As a result, you not only move your hands, but your entire body! Do your best to limit movement of your hands. Keep the “I’m a Little Teapot” nursery rhyme in mind regarding what not to do.
Braggadocios – Keep bragging to a minimum… You’re audience will immediately hate you if they catch on (and yes, they are smart enough to catch on!) I once was an audience member with someone I really respected. They began the presentation with the “I got in late last night as a result of speaking in another city on the other side of the country and catching the last flight in…”Spare me, and your audience.
Slang/Jargon – If no one knows what you’re referring to when you speak in acronyms, then don’t! I know as well as you do that each company needs their own Rosetta Stone to decipher their own jargon, but please keep these comments to a minimum especially when dealing with external agencies to the organization.
Q&A – I could write an entire blog post on answering questions (If you’re interested, drop me a line). Here’s the bottom line when it comes to questions: If you’re going to open yourself up to taking them, you’d better have considered all that will/could/are asked of you. If you don’t prepare not only the questions, but most importantly the answers to each of them in advance you are setting yourself up for disaster!

SUMMARY

In Part I of this communication skills for leaders presentation series, we took a look at planning your presentation. In Part II of this series we looked at proper practice/preparation you should undertake. In the final part of this series (Part III) we’ve tackled presenting. We investigated asking rhetorical questions, how to leverage polling questions for immediate feedback, effective ways to start your questions (What? Where? When? Who? and How? Questions… But NEVER Why?), as well as 5 presentation habits that should be avoided.

Sincerely yours,

Sam Palazzolo

PS – You may also enjoy some of the other recent posts I wrote:

Sam Palazzolo is the Managing Director at Tip of the Spear Ventures, an agile Venture Capital and Business Advisory Services firm specializing in Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, and Communication Skills Training for Leaders.

Communication Skills for Leaders – Part II: Practice/Preparation

April 7, 2015 By Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

In this three part series we’ll look to cover one of the most feared skills that a leader can possibly look to exhibit: Communication. Get communication skills for leaders right, and the world can be your oyster. Get communication skills for leaders wrong, and you’ll get nowhere near the results you could have achieved (Read that as NO oysters!) In Part I, we took a look at planning your presentation, here in Part II we’ll delve into proper practice/preparation you should undertake, and lastly in Part III we’ll tackle presenting… Enjoy!

Communication Skills for Leaders – Presentation Practice/Preparation

Think back to that presentation you participated in as an audience member that was fantastic… Think about what it was that made it fantastic. Got it? If you’re like most of the leaders that come through a “Communicate with Influence” workshop you identified “engagement” as the that key to success.

So if you know that engagement is the key in your presentation, how will you practice, or prepare? Your engagement goal is (should be?) to get your audience if sitting to creep towards the edge of their seat (front edge that is). If they are standing, for them to get on the balls of their feet leaning forward. In order to accomplish this, you’ll want to vary your presentation pattern.

Variation of Sights, Sounds, and Content

If members of your audience are like typical audiences we prepare for in communication skills training for leaders, they have a certain threshold at which their attention span deteriorates rapidly. Typically, you have twenty (20) seconds to grab your audience’s attention from the beginning of your presentation. Thereafter, every three (3) minutes you should recapture their focus (Otherwise, they’ll get distracted, and a distracted audience is one that has “left the building” along with Elvis!)

Varying your speaking volume and rate are other techniques certain to engage your audience. Speaking from a position of passion can also further your variation. But how you relay content should be from the audience’s perspective (In other words, what is it that the audience desires in order to fully understand/act on what’s being presented? Again, this should be accomplished through their desires, not what you like or how you like it!)

Your PowerPoint Sucks!

We typically spend no less than an hour in communication skills training for leaders discussing the do’s/don’ts of PowerPoint presentations. While “death” by PowerPoint is never a desired outcome, unfortunately this typically is the destination for many a leader… and deservingly so! When was the last time you were an audience member and saw firsthand a PowerPoint presentation that was engaging? If you’re like most of the leaders I encounter, your slides are so chock-full of information/data that there is little/no whitespace left on the slide!

So what’s the poor leader to do but create slides that have a plethora of data so as to choke the slide, and leave the audience member reeling because not only can they not read the slide but have little/no recourse thereafter? The answer is to create a PowerPoint slide with simply a title and an image… That’s it!

How to Practice Your Presentation

They say that practice leads to perfection. However, what if you are practicing wrong? Only “perfect” practice leads to perfection. I bring this up because there typically is little/no practice involved in the majority of leadership presentations (and that’s a HUGE mistake!) So if you’re going to practice, at least make an attempt to practice with the goal of perfection.

So what is perfect practice? Consider it a mental exercise where you will see the presentation from front to back, then back to front, and finally diagnosed from a side-angle. In Part I of this series (Planning), we discussed planning out your introduction/conclusion statements and simply putting together a bullet-point list of body content. At a high-level, practice your presentation by seeing those structured moments front to back, then back to front. Seeing your presentation from this perspective will allow you to effectively navigate (or develop) your strategy effectively from your audiences point of view. Viewing your presentation from a side-perspective allows you to detail not only what you will say, but how you can be most persuasive in delivering the message.

Let’s Get Physical!

I’d be remissed if I didn’t mention the primary medium of communication, that being you and your body. Before you say a word, your audience has already judged you. Yep, that’s right… Before you say word one your audience has already determined the outcome of your presentation. If earlier I mentioned that you have 20-seconds to align your audience around your message, you had better look the part as a leader before you even begin.

So what does it take to effectively communicate by looking the part? The majority of audiences want their leader to have confidence (think of this as communication content on steroids). In addition to this key mental characteristic, audience members will also diagnose how you are dressed as well as your physical presence. While dressing for success can largely offset some of these physical moments, it’s important to do the best you can with what you’ve got. Whether you like it or not, we all have a choice (read that as in you’re in CONTROL) of how we look and what we eat. Choices that look to leverage your leadership persona should be carefully considered.

SUMMARY

In Part I of this communication skills for leaders presentation series, we took a look at planning your presentation. Here in Part II of this series we’ve taken a look proper practice/preparation you should undertake. We investigated your variation of Sights, Sounds, and Content, how to avoid having your PowerPoints suck, effective ways to Practice your Presentation, as well as how to get the Physical Edge when Communicating. In the final part of this series (Part III) we’ll tackle presenting.

Sincerely yours,

Sam Palazzolo

PS – You may also enjoy some of the other recent posts I wrote:

Communication Skills for Leaders – Part I: Planning

April 6, 2015 By Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

In this three part series we’ll look to cover one of the most feared skills that a leader can possibly look to exhibit: Communication. Get communication skills for leaders right, and the world can be your oyster. Get communication skills for leaders wrong, and you’ll get nowhere near the results you could have achieved (Read that as NO oysters!) In Part I, we’ll take a look at planning your presentation, Part II we’ll delve into proper practice/preparation you should undertake, and lastly in Part III we’ll tackle presenting… Enjoy!

Communication Skills for Leaders – Planning Your Presentation

Think back to your last communication moment as a leader and ask yourself the following questions:

What was my point?
How effective was I at delivering that point to my audience (scale of 1-10, 1 being “I didn’t” and 10 being “I’m a regular Dale Carnegie!”)
What action did my audience take based on our conversation?
What should I do different next time I communicate with the same/different audience?

If you’re like most leaders, the pursuit of perfection is never complete. The perfection “carrot” is perpetually dangled ever so close, but always out of reach. When it comes to communication skills for leaders, consider yourself as a participant in a two-way interview. On side one (1), you are the interviewer loaded with your interview questions and on the other side two (2) you can play the role of interviewee.

What is Your Point?

Important to identify is what you want to discuss. Your focus on this primary point(s) can tighten your conversation. Typically, in executive coaching session after executive coaching session, I hear leaders mention that their communication isn’t driving results that they intended. When I ask them “What was your point?” they typically begin rambling. “No wonder!” is my response. If you can’t surmise your communication point into a Twitter Tweet (140 characters) then your audience will probably be lost.

If That’s Your Point, What Do They Need To Hear?

After identifying what the point of your conversation is, you need to identify what your audience will need to hear in order to do three things: (1) Understand, (2) Identify direction that should be taken, and (3) Know what successful implementation looks like (or the end destination you intend to arrive at).

With these three points in mind, craft your presentation so that you deliver on what it is that your audience needs to hear with an outline for your presentation. Important to now regarding the presentation strategy is to fully write out what you intend to say as an opening/closing statement(s). Keep these paragraphs tightly focused around your point! The body of your presentation should act so as to support the point you are delivering, provide direction, and share successful implementation. Body discussions should be captured with short/bullet-point lists (No need to fully craft exactly what you are going to say, instead look to capture the essence of the points as well as pro/con stance on them if necessary).

Audience Emotions – Will They Care?

After you’ve knocked out your communication skills for leader presentation planning outline, you’ll want to identify what emotions your audience will have from three (3) perspectives: (1) What is their emotions heading into the conversation, (2) What emotion do you want them to have at each section of your presentation, and finally (3) What emotion do you want them to have as they depart towards implementation/execution?

Typically leaders do a lousy job of not only identifying intended emotions audience members should/will have, but emotional perspective is often off-base (i.e., wrong). No this much, if you’ve never planned the emotional angles for a presentation, this will come as a strong, sometimes confusing aspect of your presentation. If you mess/miss this aspect, your presentation is likely to miss the mark!

Structure Your Presentation

If you go into a conversation without any direction, any outcome will do. However, if you properly structure the conversation your audience members will have a greater chance of retaining the information relayed (Some studies show that audience members retain upwards of 40% more content when the presentation is conducted in a structured manner, and that manner is explained/discussed at the beginning of the conversation).

Here are a few presentation structures that you may want to experiment/explore, keeping in mind your point (message) as well as audience:

Problem – Solution
Pros – Cons
Chronological Logic (Past, Present, Future)
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
What’s Wrong? What’s Right?
If – So – Then

SUMMARY

In Part I of this communication skills for leaders presentation series, we’ve taken a look at planning your presentation. With proper identification of what your presentation point is, focusing what your audience needs to hear, considering emotions for your communication, and properly structuring your presentation you will be able to lay the groundwork for an effective presentation. In Part II of this series we’ll take a look proper practice/preparation you should undertake, and lastly in Part III we’ll tackle presenting.

Sincerely yours,

Sam Palazzolo

PS – You may also enjoy some of the other recent posts I wrote:

What You Should STOP Doing As A Leader – Part VII

April 3, 2015 By Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

The Point: While there are a gluttony of behaviors/actions you should be doing as a leader, we thought it would be interesting to take a typical Tip of the Spear contrarian view of what you should STOP doing as a leader. As such, the following seven (7) part series was developed based on executive coaching conversations had with leaders. In reviewing these leadership behaviors/actions, see if you see a little bit of yourself in the examples provided (No doubt you know several leaders besides yourself guilty)… Enjoy!

Leadership Winning – The Double-Edged Sword

As we head into this, the seventh and final post on “What You Should STOP Doing as a Leader” I thought that it would be appropriate to share why we’ve come on this journey. This series was developed as a result of an interview I participated in recently for a leadership publication. During the interview, I was asked one question that really resonated with me: “What’s the number one (#1) problem that you see universally when you work with leaders?” Keep in mind, I’m fortunate to work with some very bright/focused individuals (You might want to call them Type “A”). My answer was a leaders misguided notion of “Winning” at all costs.

Regardless of the situation/context/stakeholders present, the number one (#1) issue I see is leaders that want to win all the time. Not win as in baseball one out of every three… Not win as in the lottery one in a bazillion… But to win each and every time. This obviously is a leadership double-edged sword moment! By wanting to win, inevitably someone else loses. There is no “win-win” only“win-lose.”

As a Leader… You Make the Call!

Here are two scenarios of Leadership Winning, and I want you to make the call (reminiscent of the old ABC Monday Night Football spots):

Scenario 1: You and a group of colleagues are flying into San Francisco for a pitch presentation. In making the reservations, you’d like to rent a vehicle through Hertz (Yes, you are a Hertz Gold Plus member, and membership has its privileges!) However, your entire team has been traveling to/from San Francisco for the last several months, and along the way they’ve had several “bad” customer moments with Hertz, so they want to use Avis instead. You succumb, allow Avis to be the rental car choice for the trip, and sharpen your vision in preparation for why this should not have been the groups choice. The check-in at Avis goes fine, a little slow for your taste, but fine nonetheless. Likewise, the vehicle is nice, not super clean or dirty, but just fine. The car gets you from point A to B, and back to the Airport (point C). Return happens again just fine (But a little slow for your taste). So what do you do? You make the call!

If you’re like most of the leaders I work with in executive coaching, you’ll nit-pick the entire experience for flaws. “Fine” in your leadership definition playbook is kind of non-committal… It’s neither great nor poor, but in the purgatory of suspended judgment (i.e., Bad in your book… After all, you’re in search of excellence!)

Scenario 2: Here’s another example, perhaps a bit more closer to home if you’re a leader that is kept awake at night because of work. You’ve had a less than stellar night of sleep (Read that as less than your typical 3-4 hours of sleep. You do only get 3-4 hours of sleep, right?) Rather than toss and turn, you get up and start working on several initiatives. In the morning, which ultimately comes hours later, your spouse/significant other/friend/roommate awakens and tells you how tired they are. What’s your reaction? You make the call!

If you’re like the leaders I work with as an executive coach your response is probably something along the lines of “You’re tired? You are tired! I’ve been up since 1AM, and you’ve been sleeping like a baby… What do you have to be tired about?”

In your drive to “win” at all costs as a leader, in both professional and personal settings you are out of order/balance/looking at things wrong (Are there really any boundaries that separate your professional and personal lives? No wonder you have no balance!). But ask yourself… “Exactly what am I winning at here?”

Can You Win as a Leader by Losing?

The moral of these examples, and this series for that matter, is for you as a leader to achieve victory more often than failure… To win more than you lose. Key to achieving that goal is to recognize that sometimes, you may very well be more successful (read that as you’ll win more) if you lose on purpose. A loss or failure is a prime opportunity to quality control your processes, insure measurements along key performance indicators are taken/are accurate, and course correct as appropriate. If you’ll take the time to stop, breath, and think before you act you’ll still maintain your power position, be in better control of yourself, and achieve more of your goals.

SUMMARY

So in this post, the final post in the series “What You as a Leader Should STOP Doing” we covered leader’s desire to win, which may/may not always be the best option. Think of it this way: Have you ever won the battle, but still ended up losing the war? With “big picture” focus and end-game results in mind, determine your course and prepare to course-correct. One of the clients I worked with was famous for saying “I know that I want to depart from here, and get to there… But I’m not exactly certain with 100% accuracy where ‘there’ will end up being. What I do know is that it won’t be here.” Remember to stop, take a deep breath, and think about your true direction forward for ultimate results!

Sincerely yours,

Sam Palazzolo

PS – You may also enjoy some of the other recent posts I wrote:

What You Should STOP Doing As A Leader – Part VI

April 2, 2015 By Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

Crushing Creativity

An associate comes to you with a “new” idea that they want to implement. This idea represents their view on how things could be better (Read that as reflecting operational improvement efficiency, higher revenues, decreased expenses, increased customer advocacy, etc.) When this new idea is presented to you, what do you do? If you’re like most leaders, you ask the question “Why?”

In Centered Executive Coaching sessions I frequently talk with leaders about how it is that they cultivate creativity. After all, you do want new/exciting ways to do things in your organization, right? In session after session, conversation with leaders across borders/cultures, typically the response comes back regarding the first question asked as “Why?” While you’re attempting to get to the heart of the matter, or reasoning, what your stakeholders hear instead of the curiosity of your question is “Defend yourself and your position which isn’t good.”

Implementation Effectiveness

Implementation effectiveness is a simple mathematical formula I developed that has (A) the quality of the concept/idea multiplied times (B) the commitment level to implement. Now the quality of an idea can be quite difficult to measure, but let’s base success criteria off of key performance indicators that have traditionally working in the past as well as other items that need to be considered because of the innovation. Commitment level consists of the individual’s ability to see things through to implementation/feedback loop. Keep in mind that this too can be challenging, primarily because implementation may/may not consist of the individual alone (in other words, there might be actual “leadership” moments where they’ll have to get others to follow along!)

Leadership Pause – Stop, Breath, Speak

So if your stakeholders are put on the defense immediately through your use of the question “Why?” what should you do? In researching the effectiveness of interviewing questions, the suggested decreased use of “Why?” should be replaced with anything but! Try using any of the other 5 W’s and H instead.

Along with this new interviewing style, as a leader it is important to break, or pause, take a deep breath, and think before you speak.

Too often I encounter leaders that simply want to rush to judgment when it comes to creative ideas that are submitted. Part ego driven (As a leader, you do have your ego under control don’t you?), and part “best interest” focused moments of creativity soon become disengagement areas for your stakeholders, and a “Why bother?” attitude prevails.

SUMMARY

So in this post we covered that leaders should stop crushing their stakeholders creativity through asking questions that rob the individual. Instead, encourage creativity through the proper use of interviewing and implementing the Leadership Pause – Stop, Breath, Speak (Don’t forget to Think before speaking!)

Sincerely yours,

Sam Palazzolo

PS – You may also enjoy some of the other recent posts I wrote:

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