While everyone needs to be aware of their personal presence, as we take on more influential leadership roles, we  need to be even  more conscious of establishing our presence.

 The key to it is simple…..or is it?

Seek first to understand

The message isn’t new:  Great personal presence requires us first to simply be present to others – by listening to them very carefully. Steven Covey sums it up well with his quote: ‘Seek first to understand before being understood.’

This seems very straightforward, but most of us tend to go into conversations focused much more on our own point of view – what we find interesting, what we want to talk about and so on.  This approach certainly establishes presence, but of the wrong sort!  To develop a strong positive presence, we need to focus first on understanding where the other person is coming from in the conversation.  

 Active listening is the key communication tool for keeping ourselves present.  There’s a challenge though, because while listening appears to be simple, it isn’t often easy.  The process requires commitment and real discipline of our conscious thought. Sometimes we have to keep repeating to ourselves: ‘I really want to listen to this person.’  When we manage to focus in this way, we are truly present. There is a very powerful story that captures the magic of this combination in The Power of Presence and Listening: A Fellow’s Narrative by Musharraf Navaid MD, in the Journal of Palliative Medicine.

Aside from images providing faces and names, briefly explain why each person is included in the panel. Each panel member’s expertise needs to clearly add something special to the occasion and to fit with the whole.   As you introduce each person,you explain why Person B follows Person A and so on. In your introduction make sure you answer the following questions:

1. Why we are covering this specific subject, as part of the whole presentation?
2. Why we are covering this aspect now?

If you would like some more tips on other aspects of leading or convening a panel, there are some useful ones in Presentation Pointers

We often get asked the broader question: How can you assess audience’s reaction? There are the obvious responses of people falling asleep, looking angry, or walking out. But what about the more subtle responses? Usually if people are fidgeting or looking down most of the time, they are bored.

It can be hard to tell. In smaller centres in NZ, often audiences don’t interact much, but will stay on to discuss things  afterwards. In bigger cities, they may interact so much that you think you have made a whole lot of NBFF; then as soon as you finish, they leave!

Individuals within an audience may have unusual reactions.  Recently a client told me about a presenter who just used slides, each containing a great deal of information.  The presentation involved the audience reading them. Sounded tedious to me, but my informant said the presentation was fascinating, because of the interesting slide content. 

It is very difficult for a presenter to accurately read audience reaction.   You might think the whole thing was a disaster because you missed an important point, yet the audience may have liked it. At other times some of the audience may have looked grumpy and yet come up afterwards to say they thought it was great.

Some tips:

1. Ask someone before your presentation to give you feedback afterwards on the level of audience engagement.
2. Know your material very well, so you can stay mentally free enough to focus on audience reaction. 
3. If what you are doing is boring your audience, change it!

Recently a client was in a final interview and planning to make a senior  job offer to a highly suitable candidate.  Everything appeared to be going well, except that my client suddenly  became aware of a growing sense of uneasiness about the preferred candidate.

Follow up on that intuition

 They had conducted extensive interviews with the person; the referees were all glowing; when my client checked back with the rest of the recruitment panel they couldn’t understand his sudden wariness…but unease it was. Should he insist on pulling back, when up till then everything had checked out well; or should he trust their thorough process?

We discussed what had  happened at the two or three points when he got his gut feel. The comments were: ‘Oh, there was some  slightly negative body language in the candidate that didn’t align with what was being said…nothing much really…’  ‘Later on, I guess I just wondered whether the candidate would be as committed as we thought.  I don’t know why’  

We could call that unease ‘intuition’, but was it?  Gut feel or whatever you call it, I have learnt in positive and negative ways the value of trusting it.  Some years ago a searing recruitment experience decided me that if I ever felt a deep unease that didn’t relate to the evidence, I would at least carefully follow up on that unease.  In my coaching of a very wide range of people, I have found awareness of my intuition to be a very reliable indicator of what is really going on.

 I am very suspicious of ethereal versions of ‘intuition’.  I suspect so-called ‘intuition is just a bunch of minute clues that only we pick up subconsciously – then they build until we notice them as intuition. For more explanation of this, check out: Lifehack.  

If we define intuition as ‘perceptive insight’,  there some useful things for a practical person to tune into:

1. In an intense discussion, we unconsciously pick up very subtle changes in facial expression, skin colouration and nuance of tone.  These are only minute clues until they cluster around a stronger general impression that we then experience as ‘unease’.  Don’t jump to conclusions, but trust the feeling and follow up on your concerns.
2. When you notice a gap between the message communicated in the body language and the message in the words, look carefully at that gap. There are a lot of unsubstantiated claims about the messaging in body language, but research warns us to be alert around this type of misalignment.
3. We also bring to the communication our experience in similar situations.  A relevant but past experience might be almost forgotten yet still trigger an alarm bells in the present. When we think about it afterwards, we will usually remember exactly what that experience was…and its lesson!

Obviously you have to observe the other person very carefully. The weird thing is though, that  to develop your perceptive insight, you have to listen very carefully to yourself.  Be  very alert to your own reactions.  Trust them. Don’t jump to conclusions, but do follow up on your instinct, by asking questions.

 There are some really good tips on listening to your own awareness at a blog with the appealing name of: hellomynameisblog  

So what happened in client’s case?   He decided to insist that the panel take the time to check up on his concerns. Having taken legal advice, they went back to the referees and that turned out to be a very good move.  Put briefly: They re-advertised!

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Well its Matariki now the Maori New Year and as it is in the middle of our very long wet and cold winter maybe its time to make some resolutions and call them choices.

We all can make choices .Whether it is to take a breath and count to ten before we say things that are best not said. or perhaps its time to make the choice of saying what does need to be said -the courageous conversation. And we can always make the choice to enhance our skills and develop our potential -find out what we ‘can do’ rather than what we can’t.

It is a great time to change just think of it as your new New Year-Matariki.

• Ask yourself regularly – Who do I look up to in the way of role models? How important is this to me?
• Don’t rely on others to help you achieve your goals – instead remind yourself that you are the key to making it happen!

He went on to achieve all his goals without the support and encouragement of a mentor and wowed us all when he presented the above learnings and the wisdom he had gained through his own reflection.   

Note: Project K is a youth development organisation working with 14-15 years old with a focus around maximising potential.  My association with Project K is in the role of a mentor – working with students for a 12 month period to support the in goal setting and achievement. For more information on mentoring in your area visit www.projectk.org.nz

Made to Stick

The authors are brothers.  Chip is a Stanford professor who researched and taught what made ideas stick.   Dan worked in the field of educational publishing and thus need to find out what makes great teachers great.  They realised they had both been focused on the same question: Why do some ideas succeed while others fail?

The result of their work is their book ‘Made to Stick’ and the ideas are enormously useful for presenting as well as many other fields. They have a blog at: Heath Brothers

They pin down six key principles of ’stickability’ and every single one is relevant to making your presentation engaging:

1. Simplicity: We need ideas that are simple but also profound – this is why the Tui ‘Yeah Right’ ads caught on so well.
2. Unexpectedness: We need to generate interest and curiosity: The Air New Zealand body paint ads are a case in point!
3. Concreteness:Ideas need to be conveyed in very concrete terms so they mean the same thing to everyone.  The concreteness gives us a hook to hang the ideas on. Years ago I was very thrilled that my son’s general knowledge when I discovered he knew the capitals of nearly all the states in the US.  It was only later I realised that actually he knew all the ones that had good basketball teams, but  none of the others! The concrete fact of basketball enabled him to easily memorise the city names.
4. Credibility: People must believe the idea. Sticky ideas are credible, but people don’t like lots of facts.  Something that appeals to our idea of common sense seems to work well, even if  it is wrong!  Fears about the risks of vaccination fall into this category.
5. Emotions: We must get people to care about our ideas.Obama’s presidential nomination speech tapped into an emotional surge of hope with the famous lines: ‘Yes we can!’
6. Stories: We need to get people to act on our ideas. Stories get us prepared to respond quickly and effectively. Stories are a major source of motivation for people in every walk of life. Stories can do 1-5 above as well as #6!

By the way, if you are on a school board, Lesley Moffatt provides excellent training and consultation for people working on school and other community boards. She has a blog at: Onboard with Lesley Moffatt

I found this link via Ellen Finklestein’s useful PowerPoint Tips blog