“I didn’t have time, I can do this” through to “it’s only my team, they will understand”. 

Your reputation, your credibility is impacted by how effective you can communicate.  Don’t make the mistake of underestimating this.

If you are nervous then I would advise that you memorize your opening. This will help ensure that you can run on ‘auto pilot’ in those early moments as you calm your nerves and settle into your stride. This is assuming that you are able to take notes to use for the remainder of your presentation. However the goal is to refer to these only as necessary, not to read them, you need to know the remainder of your presentation well, but you don’t need to commit to memory.

Presentations and public speaking are AUDIBLE activities. In order to practice effectively you do need to talk out loud. You cannot practice by simply reading your script in your head.

You need to

• Practice out loud…in the car, in the office, in the shower, where ever the opportunity presents itself.
• LISTEN to yourself. You need to be comfortable with how your voice sounds, you need to listen to what you are saying – does it still make as much sense spoken out loud as it did on paper? If necessary don’t be afraid to re edit your content.
• Practice in a room similar to the one you will be delivering in, your voice will sound different in a larger room and you will likely have to practice projecting your voice, especially if a wireless mic is not provided.
• Practice with an audience – get feedback on style and content.
• Practice

Get the picture? I have made the mistake of practicing in my head – it doesn’t work – presentations are about talking out loud – so make sure you do

We all know that practice helps us to build our confidence and capability no matter what the skill or behavior we are trying to master.  Yet, despite the best of intentions, many of us leave a workshop or leadership development program with the best of intentions to practice the new skills, only to allow the real world overwhelms us and to continue as before, with one new ring binder on our shelf as a shiny memento of the time spent in the workshop or program.

I really like the following quote

Leadership Is A Contact Sport – Marshall Goldsmith

In the article, Marshall Goldsmith talks about the importance of including others in your development plans.  Whether it be following a 360 Feedback process or attending a workshop.  Share your insights and the implications for your own behavior and approach going forward.  Don’t promise to transform yourself, but do ask for help in ‘catching you being you’.  Maybe you are working on developing collaboration and team work and in the past your approach (and natural style) is to step in with the ‘answer’ before anyone has had a chance to draw breath.  You leave the program determined to ‘ask first and tell second’.  Sharing this with your team and requesting in the moment feedback when you forget not only helps you to apply the new learning, but sends a clear message to your team.

The article goes on to show that where people share their learning goals and ask others for their help in reaching them achieve a greater reported improvement in leadership and management skills than those who don’t. Ask for help, ask for feedback, it is this guided practice that will generate the greatest benefit for you (and those around you).  In the same way as people seek coaches to improve their sporting game, a trusted adviser or business coach can help you to prepare and practice your business skills, whether it be delivering an effective presentation, building a high performing team or delivering tough messages. The trusted adviser you choose could be a friend, family member, work colleague or trained coach. Ensure that who ever you choose can tell you what you need to hear vs what you want to hear.

I recently came across an recent article that reports the results of a recent University of Colorado study which shows how practice can not just make perfect… but that more practice may make you more efficient. Where some of us tend to sit back and relax when we feel we have mastered a new skill this article demonstrates that practice beyond perfection leads to efficiencies that may not immediately be apparent.  When we practice beyond perfection our brain and body is able to respond more efficiently requiring less oxygen and energy to complete the task.

What do you need to practice or keep practicing?

I am just finishing up a successful week, working with three senior level teams to build their team and individual effectiveness.

Throughout the sessions the same challenge kept cropping up – what do I do when I am triple booked for meetings?  How do I manage competing priorities / requests for my input and contribution? How do I manage my time?

For me, time management is on a par with Unicorns and Mermaids – a topic of myth and legend.  The fact is we all get 24 hours in a day, and no matter how much we may wish it otherwise, this is not going to change.   You cannot manage time; you can only manage the STUFF that you try to fit into the time available.

This is where the comment ‘time spent vs. time well spent’ came into the discussion (thank you Mark E.).  Managing the stuff, the competing demands for your attention requires a proactive, thoughtful and deliberate response.  If you simply react then chances are you will end the day with an ever growing to-do list, overflowing in-box and a sense that you are swimming through quicksand, as opposed to progress against key priorities, a manageable communication flow and a sense of progress.

Let me share some examples of time spent vs. time well spent:

Time well spent is about paying attention to what and how we respond to each request for our input.  Stepping in or pushing back where necessary.

Think back on your week – time spent or time well spent?  If it is the former, what will you do next week to change your approach?

As I reflect on my week it was definitely time WELL spent.

Research from the The Gallup Organization identified 12 questions that if employees can answer agree or strongly agree to, have an impact on an organizations success. One of these questions is whether or not you have a best friend at work.  Tom Rath from Gallup and author of  ‘Vital Friends: The People You Can’t Afford to Live Without’   says

“that people who have a “best friend” at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their work.  They may have fewer accidents, they have more engaged customers and are more likely to innovate and share new ideas”.  

Think about it.  You spend hours at work each day.  Do you have someone that you can rely on?  To vent at and know it will go no further?  To share the successes with? Who listens to your concerns and challenges and then helps you to find your answers and next steps?  Who acts as a sounding board for your ideas?  Who will take you to one side and give you the difficult messages and feedback that are designed to improve your success?

In Skye Associates’ program Cultivating Winning Relationships™ we provide a language and framework for assessing the quality of your working relationships.  We discuss the impact of having an Ally (a best friend) and tactics to cultivate winning relationships that ensure MUTUAL success.

The goal is to create at least one relationship, based on trust that enables you, and the other person, to thrive.  Knowing that you have that support, letting the other person know that they have your support is hugely powerful.  I would encourage you to think about who you can be for others and who that person could be for you and the ACTIVELY work on building that relationship.  Ally relationships don’t just happen by accident.

To my best friends, in and out of work, thank you

Much has been written on the attributes of an effective leader, however a simple exercise is to think back over your working life and identify those people (not just managers) whom you would jump at the chance to work with again.  List out the attributes, characteristics that make them memorable.

Each time I ask individuals to complete this exercise invariably they are surprised at the attributes that they list.  I remember one person commenting

“I knew that these 3 people were important in my life, in influencing me and the direction I took.  What I hadn’t appreciated was that I have listed similar reasons for each”.

What are the attributes that the people on your list displayed?  Chances are its not about how smart someone was, or the technical skills they brought to the table.  Most of the lists I have seen and discussed with participants on our programs are heavily focused on the PEOPLE skills.  The ability of that person to build effective relationships at all levels in the organization.  It is about trust, communication, encouragement, feedback (both tough messages and positive messages) connecting with me as a person.

Don’t get me wrong, technical skills are important, they are what get you in the door, the entry level criteria that build credibility, you need to be able to talk the language of your business.  However, long term success is more about your ability to develop the effective working relationships with those around you, your boss, your peers, your direct reports.  Relationships that will ensure success, not just you, but for others as well.

You can try the reverse exercise, think of the people you would run a mile from, rather than have to work with or for them again.  What makes it onto that list?

Here is the punchline:  If I were to ask those around you to identify the people they would want to work with again.  Would they be thinking of you?  What do you need to do more of or different to improve the success of those around you and the legacy you are leaving behind.

Who would want to work with you again?

We teach a number of high impact classes, and as with most events there is an activity where participants are in groups of three, in this case one acts as the role of coach, one as the employee and one as an observer. It’s an ideal opportunity to put into practice the theory and concepts discussed during the class.  The last 2 hours of today’s program have been about the importance of making a connection, listening to the other person’s perspective, asking questions to seek more information, to better understand their point of view and then looking for solutions and a way forward.  (You may have been through a similar exercise, maybe it was about coaching skills, giving feedback, setting goals.  The focus doesn’t matter, it is the steps you go through that are the learning point.)

And in this case this was so.  We had discussed the importance of starting, not with our thoughts, but seeking out the other persons starting point.  The exercise went well.  The coaches remembered, and were able to apply the techniques in their ‘role play’, you could see the confidence of the participants grow.  We then switched to the observers.  They were now to ‘coach the coach’ and provide feedback on what had been observed, what went well, what could the person have done differently.

And that’s where everything changed.  The observers started out with something along the lines of

“Well you did this well, but I would have done this different” or “You didn’t do…”

Do you see what was missing?

Starting from the other persons perspective isn’t difficult.  They all knew that was what was where they were supposed to start, but when they weren’t aware of being in a ‘role play’ or classroom activity, the knowing was forgotten and the doing didn’t happen.

As with most things we learn in order to improve our effectiveness, to increase the value we bring, the concepts aren’t that difficult, we quickly get to ‘knowing’ the challenge is in making these new ideas into habits, ‘doing’ can be hard.

The advice? remember that life is a ‘role play’ – there is no predefined script (as much as we may wish that others would follow one!).  If you want to improve then you need to practice.  You have to decide to change how you behave, to learn new habits.

How could the observers have approached this exercise?  By starting with

“how do you think that went?” or “what would you do differently if had the opportunity”.

If you can start from the other persons perspective you will find providing ongoing feedback and support so much easier and likely to be less confrontational – for you or them.

As to our original question… there are still four birds sitting on the wire!

Learning: The act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge or skill.

As we move into the New Year there is a great opportunity to focus on learning – what has been learned in the past year and what needs to be learned in the year ahead- to ensure success in your role, career and life.

A few questions you may wish to consider and answer -

• What have you done in the past that has worked well?
• What have you done well that you should recognize and celebrate?
• What achievement (s) are you most proud of and why?
• Which areas would you like to improve?
• What skills or knowledge are you developing?
• Which new or improved skills would enhance your work performance?
• How will you monitor/measure your learning?
• What are you planning to stop doing, start doing, keep doing, do differently?
• What didn’t work out for you? What were the reasons?
• What is your learning focus going to be?

As well as taking into account your own input, another way to improve learning is to actively seek feedback. This can be from managers, peers, colleagues and even  family.

There is a saying in NLP that there is no such thing as bad feedback – there is only feedback. It’s all about taking the learning opportunity from feedback rather than viewing the feedback in a negative light.  With this in mind, it’s about taking the feedback, learning from it and making the necessary changes to address any limitations that may be highlighted.

It’s also important to define and look at your learning in a positive manner using positive language. It’s traditional at the end of a year for people to set New Year resolutions. These tend to be framed in negative language – I want to STOP smoking, I want to LOSE weight. It’s not surprising that the majority of these resolutions are never achieved.  Success would be more likely if they were set as, for example – I want to ACHIEVE a healthier lifestyle, I want to IMPROVE my appearance by wearing more fashionable clothes.

Once you have decided on your learning targets you may want to reinforce them by setting SMART Goals in order to achieve them.

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic Timely

Goals are a way of measuring progress and evaluating the effectiveness of your actions. If you do not reach your goal by your target date, it is an opportunity to look and see if:

• You are truly committed to that goal
• The actions you have taken are appropriate

It is also important to set goals that are compelling and will allow you to stretch and grow. These goals are more than a glorified to-do list.

There are a number of other factors that need to be taken into consideration around goals, objectives and on-going learning, particularly as business and personal circumstances/situations constantly change and evolve.  “A week’s a long time in politics” could be rephrased “24 hours is a long time in business” particularly in the current economic climate. How do you deal with that evolution and change?

Other questions that need to be asked and explored in order to enhance learning include;

1. Are your objectives current and still relevant?
2. What were the issues in terms of skills, knowledge that prevented you achieving your objectives? Similarly, what were the issues in terms of resources, support, dependencies, blockers, other?
3.  What do you need to do, or what support do you require to overcome these issues?
4. What have you learned that has helped you and could help others?
5.  How could this learning, knowledge or experience be shared?
6.  What else do I need to do? Networking? Reading? Courses? Other?

Finally, if you pursue a strategy of learning and improvement for yourself, it might even encourage those around you to do the same thing. Imagine the possibilities if this were to happen!