If you’ve been reading lately, you know that I’m doing a series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, my latest career success coach book.  I’m going to be sorry when this series is finished.  I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. 
 
Success Tweets has gone into its third printing.  That really pleases me.  It has become a greater success than I thought it would be.  I really appreciate your support.  You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 120…

Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.

By now it should be pretty clear that I think that practicing your presentations – out loud – is the most important presentation success tip.  I’ve mentioned practice in the last five success tweets.  Success Tweet 118 ends with three pieces of career advice on delivering dynamite presentations: Practice, Practice, Practice.

Here’s a recap of why I think it is really important to practice your presentations out loud.

Practicing your presentations out loud…

• Calms your nerves.  When you practice several times, the presentation is familiar and comfortable to you.  This makes you less nervous.
• Helps you edit your talk for impact.  There is nothing like saying it out loud to show you the rough spots in your presentation.  Once you identify these rough spots, you can correct them before you’re in front of an audience.
• Helps you get better.  The more times you repeat a talk out loud, the better it gets.  It’s almost impossible to be over prepared.  Practice does indeed make perfect.

These three reasons should convince you that it’s important to practice your talk out loud. 

Yet, I am always amazed that so many people don’t take the time to practice.  They have some great excuses…

• It takes too much time.
• I know what I’m going to say, I don’t need to practice.
• I feel foolish talking to myself.
• I won’t get any better.
• I’ve done this talk a million times, I don’t need to practice.

And I say, “WRONG!!!” 

Practice is the main ingredient of any successful presentation – not funny slides and animation – practice.  And it is the thing that many people refuse to do.  I don’t get it.

The common sense career success advice here is simple.  If you want deliver a great presentation, you need to practice it out loud.

Thomas Edison is famous for saying, “Many people miss opportunity because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.”  I am semi famous for saying, “Most people know the right thing to do in most situations, their common sense tells them.  They don’t use their common sense for a bunch of bogus reasons.” 

So don’t come up with bogus reasons for not practicing your presentations out loud.  If you want to become a dynamic communicator, and create the life and career success you want and deserve, you have to practice your talks – out loud.  That’s some of the most important career advice I can give you.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  If you want to deliever dynamic presentations you have to follow the career advice in Tweet 120 in Success Tweets.  “Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.”  Besides controlling your nerves, you’ll get better each time you practice.  Trust me on this career advice; time spent practicing a presentation is time well spent.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 120.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading – and commenting.

Bud

I’m continuing my series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, my latest career success coach book.  I’m going to be sorry when this series is finished.  I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. 
 
Success Tweets has gone into its third printing.  That really pleases me.  It has become a greater success than I thought it would be.  I really appreciate your support.  You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 119…

Discipline yourself to prepare for presentations.  Practice out loud until you are totally in sync with that you’re going to say.

Many people fear making presentations.  That’s why they’re not very good at them.  I subscribe to James Malinchak’s ezine.  It’s always full of interesting anecdotes.  A couple of years ago, James told a very interesting story about a conversation he had with Michael Jordan.  He posed the following scenario to Michael…

It’s Game 7 of the NBA Finals and your team is playing on the road at your opponents place. There’s 00:01 second left on the clock and your team is losing by 1 point. You’re at the free-throw line to shoot two shots.  This is literally win or lose time, and the ball is in your hands. If you make both free throws, your team wins their first ever championship. If you miss both, your team loses the championship.  How would you feel?”

Michael Jordan’s reponse…

That’s easy! That situation wouldn’t bother me because I would have already disciplined myself to make sure I had already prepared for success in that, or any other situation!
 
James went on to say…

Not the answer I was expecting, but it’s very profound when you think about those two words that most would rather simply skim over: 1) Disciplined; and 2) Prepared.  The more I thought about those two words, the more I began to realize just how important they are for becoming a succsessful speaker, author, trainer or coach.  Most people are not disciplined to prepare themselves for success.

James is on to something here.  Disciplined preparation is great career advce.  It is the key to not only becoming a dynamic communicator and great presenter.  it is the key to creating the life and career success you want and deserve. 

In the post on Success Tweet 118, I shared the five step model of presentation success that I teach my career success coach clients.  The fifth point is “practice, practice, practice.” 

I suggest not just practicine your talk, but practicing it out loud using your visuals.  Do this as many times as it takes to become 100% comfortable with what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.  Pay attention here.  This is important career success advice.

When I say this to my career success coach clients, I am often met with frowns and a lot of excuses about not having the time to do the kind of preparation I suggest. 

And that’s why many people suck at presenting.  In Michael Jordan and James Malinchak’s words, they don’t have the personal discipline to prepare for a successful presentation.  Without disciplined preparation it’s basically impossible to do a good presentation.  If you can’t good presentations, you’ll never create the life and career success you want. 

Cathy and I were in Florida last year to celebrate our niece’s wedding.  Cathy was hosting a bridesmaid luncheon.  The night before the luncheon, she practiced the welcoming talk she was going to give at the luncheon at least five times. 

And you know what?  It got better every time she practiced it.  She practiced one more time the morning of the luncheon, and she had it down cold.  She disciplined herself to prepare for her talk.  She was ready to do it.  And she gave a killer talk.  Good for her.

Cathy often accompanies me when I travel.  If I am doing a talk the next day, she knows my ritual before going to bed.  I will practice my talk – out loud – at least twice, or as many times as it takes for me to feel that I have it perfected.  It takes a little bit of time to practice like this, but the audience applause and, more important, my feeling of satisfaction after delivering a great talk are worth it.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are dynamic communicators.  Dynamic communicators are good presenters.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 119 in Success Tweets.  “Discipline yourself to prepare for presentations.  Practice out loud until you are totally in sync with that you’re going to say.”  As Michael Jordan and James Malinchak point out, disciplined preparation is a key to success in any endeavor – from basketball to business.  Disciplined preparation is especially important to becoming a great presenter.  If you want to become a great presenter discipline yourself to prepare for your talks by practicing – out loud and with your visuals – until you are totally in sync with what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 119 and on disciplined preparation and becoming a great presenter.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment.  Share your presentation victories and horror stories with us.  We can all learn from, and help, one another.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

If you’ve been reading lately, you know that I’m doing a series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, my latest career success coach book.  I’m going to be sorry when this series is finished.  I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. 
 
Success Tweets has gone into its third printing.  That really pleases me.  It has become a greater success than I thought it would be.  I really appreciate your support.  You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 118…

Presentations are easy to create.  Write your closing first, your opening next.  Then fill in the content.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice.

Writing your presentation closing first is the best presentation and career advice I can give you.

People remember two things about your talk.  How you begin and how you finish.  They really remember how you finish because that’s the last thing they hear.  You want to finish strong, reinforcing and highlighting the main points you want people to remember.  That’s one reason for writing your closing first.

Another reason for writing your closing first is because it will help you map out the rest of your content.  You’ll probably have more information than you need for any presentation you make.  If you write your closing first you can use it to help you decide what information to leave in and what to leave out of your presentation.

For example, when I do my talk “How to Create the Life and Career Success You Want and Deserve” I always end by saying something like…

And there you have it, my best advice on how to create the life and career success you want and deserve.

It comes down to Four Cs: clarity, commitment, confidence and competence.

If you want to create a successful life and career, you have to

a) Clarify the purpose and direction for your life and career.
b) Commit to taking personal responsibility for your life and career success.
c) Build unshakeable self confidence.
d) Get competent in four areas: creating positive personal impact, outstanding performance, dynamic communication and relationship building.

Hopefully, you know more about how to create the life and career success you want and deserve now than an hour ago.  But like the US Steel pencils my dad would bring home from work used to say, “Knowing is not enough.”  You’ve got to use the information you learned here today if you are going to create the life and career success you want and deserve.

As I leave you today, I want to challenge you.  I want to challenge you to take at one thing you’ve learned here today, and put it to work tomorrow.  Do the same the next day.  And the day after that.  Because remember, knowing is not enough.  You have to put your knowledge to work if you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve.

When I was writing this talk, I wrote this closing first.  I began by highliting the key points I wanted to make – in this case the 4 Cs of  career success.  Any time I was wondering if I should include a specific piece of information in the talk, I asked myself, “Does this information reinforce the point you want people to remember about this talk?”  If the answer was “yes,” I left it in.  If “no,” I took it out.

OK, got it about writing your closing first?  Good.  Now let’s talk about writing your opening second.

You want to accomplish two things in your presentation opening: 1) Capture the audience’s attention, and 2) Give them some idea of what you will be covering in your talk.

When I do my talk “How to Create the Life and Career Success You Want and Deserve” I always begin by saying something like…

Hello and thank you for coming.  Today, I want to dispel one of the biggest myths about life and career success.  And that myth is “good performance is enough to create the life and career success you want and deserve.”  Good performance, not only is not enough, it is merely the price of admission in today’s highly competitive world.

If you want to create a successful life and career, think C – no think 4 Cs…

Clarity, Commitment, Confidence and Competence.

If you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve, you have to:

a) Clarify the purpose and direction for your life and career.
b) Commit to taking personal responsibility for your life and career success.
c) Build unshakeable self confidence.
d) Get competent in four areas: creating positive personal impact, outstanding performance, dynamic communication and relationship building.

Over the next hour, I’m going to tell you more about each of these four Cs and show you how to put them to work to create the life and career success you want and deserve…

See what I mean?  I captured the audience’s attention by telling them that I was going to explode a myth about life and career success.  Then I shared the myth.  Then I outlined what I was going to come over the next hour.

This format is the golden rule of journalism: Tell them what you’re going to tell them.  Tell them.  Tell them what you’ve told them.

By writing your closing first and your opening second, you’ve done two of these, you’ve told your audience what you’re going to tell them, and you’ve recapped what you’ve told them.  Filling in the content becomes pretty simple once you’ve completed these two steps.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  If you want to create dynamic presentations that communicate and get you known as a high performer, follow the career advice in Tweet 118 in Success Tweets.  “Presentations are easy to create.  Write your closing first, your opening next.  Then fill in the content.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice.”  Writing your closing first gives you the direction you need to create a dynamic presentation.  Writing your opening next, helps you capture the audience’s attention and gives you an outline for creating the rest of your content.  I learned this bit of career advice early in my career – way back in 1973 — and have used it ever since.  It is powerful.  If you use it, you’ll be on your way to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 118.  What’s yours?  What presentation creation tips and tricks can you share with us?  Please take a minute to share them in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

If you’ve been reading lately, you know that I’m doing a series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, my latest career success coach book.  I’m going to be sorry when this series is finished.  I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. 
 
Success Tweets has gone into its third printing.  That really pleases me.  It has become a greater success than I thought it would be.  I really appreciate your support.  You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 117…

Presentation steps: 1) Determine the message.  2) Analyze the audience.  3) Organize the information.  4) Design visuals.  5) Practice.

If you want to become a dynamic communicator and career success, you need to become an excellent presenter.  Presentations are an important communication tool.  Many careers have been made on the strength of one or two good presentations.

A lot of people suffer from presentation anxiety.  Public speaking can be frightening, although it doesn’t have to be.  Presenting is like any other process, there are a series of logical steps to follow.  The career advice in the five steps to effective presentations in the tweet has served me well for over 35 years.

In this post, I’ll be sharing a very condensed version of the material I cover in a three day workshop on presentations skills. 

Breaking the presentation process down into the five easily manageable steps listed in the tweet is the best way I know to get over presentation anxiety.  Let’s look at them in some detail.

1. Determine your message.
2. Analyze your audience.
3. Organize your information for impact.
4. Design supporting visuals.
5. Practice, practice, practice.

Ask yourself these questions to help you determine your message:

• What do you want or need to communicate?
• What information does the audience need?
• Why do they need it?
• At the end of the presentation, what should the audience: Understand? Remember? Do?

Determine the best way to communicate your message by analyzing your audience.  Ask yourself these questions:

• Who is the audience for this presentation?
• Why are they attending?
• What is their general attitude toward you and the topic?
• What is their knowledge level on this topic?

Use the golden rule of journalism: “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, Tell them, Tell them what you told them” to organize your information.

• Begin at the end.  Prepare your presentation ending first.  This is helpful, because it keeps you focused on where you’re going.
• Prepare your presentation beginning.  A good beginning has two things: a hook, and an outline of your talk.
• Fill in the blanks with your content.

Design visuals to support and enhance what you are saying.  Good visuals support the points you are making, create audience interest, improve audience understanding, save you time – a picture is worth a thousand words, and are memory aids

Practice, Practice, Practice.  There is an old saying, “practice makes up for a lack of talent”.  Prior to getting in front of an audience say your presentation out loud – several times.  Listen to yourself.    Consider videotaping yourself.  If you don’t have the equipment, practice in front of a mirror, or you spouse, or your dog or cat – just practice.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are competent.  Dynamic communication is an important career success competency.  Dynamic communicators present with impact.  Many people are frightened by the idea of standing in front of a group of people and doing a talk.  Unfortunately, presentations can make or break your success.  You can conquer your fear of public speaking by following the career advice in Tweet 117 in Success Tweets.  “Presentation steps: 1) Determine the message.  2) Analyze the audience.  3) Organize the information.  4) Design visuals.  5) Practice.  If you follow the career advice in these five steps – especially number 5; practice – you’ll become a confident successful presenter and a career success.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 117 and importance of developing your presentations skills.  What’s yours?  Please take few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

If you’ve been reading lately, you know that I’m doing a series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, my latest career success coach book.  I’m going to be sorry when this series is finished.  I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. 
 
Success Tweets  has gone into its third printing.  That really pleases me.  It has become a greater success than I thought it would be.  You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 116…

Presentations are opportunities to shine.  Don’t let stage fright rob you of your opportunity.  Get control of your nerves.

The other day, I was at a workshop and one of the speakers was clearly nervous.  He began his talk by telling the old story about the survey that asked people to name their greatest fear. 

Public speaking came in first, by a large margin.  Death was fourth.  So, if you believe the results of this survey, most people would rather die than stand up and give a talk.  He was one of them.  He urged us to be kind to him because he was nervous doing this talk.

He was suffering from what is known by a number of names: presentation anxiety, stage fright, the jitters.  Whatever you call it, presentation anxiety can be the death knell for an otherwise great talk. We all get nervous before a talk, but being nervous doesn’t have to mean you’ll do a bad talk.  

Presentation anxiety is a response to fear of doing a poor talk.  It shows ups in a number of ways: blushing, shaking stuttering, preparing.  At its worst, it will lead you to feel as if you’re not making sense, or worse yet, to lose the thread of your talk.

I make speeches for a living, and I get nervous before every one of them.  In fact, if I’m not a little nervous, I start to worry that I will be flat and deliver an unenthusiastic talk. Over the years, I’ve developed a few tricks that I use to calm my nerves before a big presentation and make them work for, not against me.  Check them out…

Practice your talk out loud. This will help you get comfortable with your material and your delivery.

Think good thoughts.  Imagine yourself succeeding beyond your wildest dreams.  Imagine that you will get a standing ovation for your talk.  This is what visualization is all about.

Get there early. In this way, you’ll be able to set up your computer and run through your slides one last time.

Greet people as they arrive; exchange a few words with them. This will help you make a good first impression with members of the audience. It will also help you get control of your nerves, because you’ll feel more comfortable speaking to a group of people you know rather than a group of strangers.

Take a deep breath before you begin.  This will calm you, help center you and give you enough air to get through your opening.

Move. When you begin your presentation, move around. Use body movement to help release some of your nervous energy. Don’t get trapped behind the podium.  It can inhibit you from releasing your energy.

Just chat with the audience. Think of your presentation as a conversation. There might be 10, or 25, or 100 people in your audience. But in terms of real communication, there are only two people in the room: you and a single listener.

Tell stories to illustrate your main points.  People like listening to stories and they tend to remember points illustrated by stories.

Ask questions during your talk. This will help you build a dialogue and a participatory feeling. I try to make at least one quarter and as much as one half of my talk a discussion with the audience. In this way, it’s less of a speech and more of an expanded conversation with every person in the room.

Don’t worry if you make a mistake.  To begin with, most people won’t realize that you made a mistake.  Second, realize the audience is with you.  They’ve all been there and know that presenting can be nerve wracking.  Most people in the audience will be pulling for you to do a good job.

Last week I met a guy named Ron Balagot.  He shared his eBook, Public Speaking Fear Conquered: Your Fearless Presenter Within Unleashed, with me.  This is the perfect book for you if you suffer from fear of public speaking.  Its career advice is terrific!  You can get a free cop at http://www.publicspeakingtipsforyou.com.  You owe it to yourself to download this free eBook.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are dynamic communicators.  They understand and use the career advice in Tweet 116 in Success Tweets.  “Presentations are opportunities to shine.  Don’t let stage fright rob you of your opportunity.  Get control of your nerves.”  Presentations really are opportunities to shine – to demonstrate that you are a dynamic communicator.  Stage fright is the biggest enemy of presentation success.  Don’t let stage fright rob you of your opportunity to shine.  One good presentation can make a career.  Presentations are the best ways to get noticed and have your name at the top of the list when promotional opportunities come up.  There are several ways to deal with presentation anxiety: be prepared, know your stuff cold; think of your talk as a conversation with the audience; tell stories to illustrate your points.    However, there is one piece of advice that trumps all when it comes to delivering dynamic presentations: practice, practice, practice!

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 116, dealing with stage fright.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

I’m in the home stretch of a series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, my latest career success coach book.  I’m going to be sorry when this series is finished.  I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. 
 
Success Tweets is about to go into its third printing.  That really pleases me.  It has become a greater success than I thought it would be.  You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 115…

Become an excellent presenter.  Careers have been made on the strength of one or two good presentations.

Darren Hardy is the Publisher of SUCCESS Magazine.  I love SUCCESS.  It is full of very useful and usable information every month.  If you aren’t already a subscriber, go to www.success.com as soon as you finish reading this post and do so.  A subscription to SUCCESS will put you on the road to the life and career success you want and deserve.

Darren also sends very informative emails to subscribers.  A while back he posted a great piece covering his best tips for delivering dynamite presentations.  He was gracious enough to allow me to repost it here…

Darren Hardy’s 10 Tips for More Compelling Presentations

1. Prepare. Nothing beats great preparation. I usually write out a presentation word for word, then I reduce it to a skeleton outline, then bullet points, then just key words on paper in case I need to quickly glance down at trigger words to guide me along, but I will rarely use the notes. Just going through the process is my process for learning the presentation.

2. Know your audience. Find out the demographic mix of the audience. Find out who the key players are so you can use their names during the presentation. Understand core aspects about their company, cause, products, ideals, etc. Understand the trends, competition and key issues that the audience faces. If they know you know who they are in the first few minutes, they will be your ally for the rest of the presentation.

3. Sell it. Not necessarily you or what you are promoting, sell your presentation. Open up with an attention getter. Imagine the format of an infomercial. Explain the grand benefits they are going to get by listening raptly to the information you are about to share.

4. Package it. Tell them what you are going to tell them (through benefits, outcomes, the difference this information will make in their lives), tell them (deliver the goods), then tell them what you told them (post-sell the benefits so they know you have just given them great value).

5. Be entertaining. Yes, you need to be informative and enlightening, but you are talking to humans—they are bored easily. If people are entertained, they are engaged and are more apt to actually listen to what you are saying.

6. Be visual. I think in pictures, so I talk in pictures. I use visual aids and talk in word pictures and metaphors. People seldom recall words, but they do remember pictures.

7. Tell stories. I am not a natural storyteller. I have to force myself to break off and tell a story, but the best speakers, lecturers and influencers the world has known were all great storytellers. Collect them and get good at telling them. BUT, make sure they are relevant to the point you are making. I dislike gratuitous storytelling for stories’ sake in a keynote. I can read a book or go to a movie for that. Make sure the story is on point.

8. Overdress. My grandmother taught me this. People look at you before they listen to you. How you show up communicates 80 percent of whether someone should (or will) listen to you or not. During the first 5 minutes people will assess you up and down and draw all sorts of conclusions. Make sure the conclusions they draw are: professional, polished, credible and sensible (at least).  Whatever you think the dress code will be dress at least one or two steps above it. There is nothing worse than being underdressed—it’s disrespectful. You are going to be onstage; people expect that you respect that position and dress UP for it.

9. Be Yourself. Don’t try to be Zig Ziglar or Tony Robbins. Me? I don’t like beating on my chest and yelling, having the crowd jump up and down on their chairs, run around the stage or drop to my knee for dramatic effects. You will never see me do that; it’s not me.  My best advice for you is to be you. Be onstage as you are offstage. Be real, authentic and communicate through your true feelings and conviction—it is from that place you can be persuasive, rousing and influencing.

10. See the ‘O.’ I always spend a few minutes before each keynote visualizing the presentation and the audience response: the rapt attention, the awe-inspired looks on their faces, their laughing and having a good time, then the rousing standing ovation at the end. It helps me get into the ‘zone’ and raise my emotional energy before getting started.

Knowing your audience is Darren’s second presentation tip.  It is an important step in creating a memorable presentation that will get you noticed by the right people.  I saw a Dilbert cartoon a couple of years ago that reinforces the importance of audience analysis for creating and delivering great presentations.  Pay attention, the lesson to be learned here is some great career advice.

In the first panel, the boss says, “Dilbert is our next presenter.”  Standing in front of a screen with a PowerPoint slide projected on it Dilbert says, “Thanks for coming to my presentation.  I put in a lot of time creating it.  I hope you’ll like it and find it informative.  First, I’m going to run a little slide show and do a humorous rap to accompany it.  Then you’ll all get a chance to participate.  I’ll give you funny hats and you’ll put together some skits.  And then we’ll have fireworks in the atrium of our building.”

The last panel shows the members of the audience.  One of them says, “Can you cut it short, we allowed only three minutes for your talk.”

I know this sounds absurd, but one of my career success coach clients experienced an eerily similar situation.  His bosses’ boss asked him to prepare a presentation on what his department does.  This talk was going to be for the Executive Committee of his company – the 12 most senior people in the entire company – and this was a big company, over $20 billion in sales, so these were very important people.

He saw this as a huge opportunity – for himself and his department.  The presentation was a month in the future.  He spent most of that month working on the talk, developing about 70 nice looking slides with animation and a brief video.  There were no funny hats and fireworks, but the presentation had a lot of very cool graphics.  He practiced again and again making sure that he had it down pat.  The talk lasted about 90 minutes.

The day before he was supposed to do the talk, his bosses’ boss asked him to come to his office to do a run through of the talk to make sure that things would go smoothly the next day.  He, his boss and the big boss went into a conference room.  He hooked up his computer to the projector and began previewing his carefully thought out talk.  After about seven minutes, the big boss said, “How many more slides do you have?”

My client said, “I’m just getting started, I have about 70 slides total.”

The big boss said, “That’s way too many.  They only want a 10 minute overview of what your department does.  You need to revise your talk and cut down the number of slides.”

My client spent the rest of the day and most of the evening revising his talk, cutting out the graphics and animation.

When he and I next got together for a career success coach discussion, he was really frustrated.  He explained the situation to me and complained about the big boss.  “He never told me that all they wanted was a 10 minute overview of what we do.  I wasted a lot of time putting together this presentation.”

I said, “Did you ever ask him how long the talk should be?”

He said, “No.  I just assumed that the Executive Committee would want a very thorough understanding of what our department does.”

And that is the crux of the problem.  My client missed a really important step in developing a powerful presentation.  He did no audience analysis.  He assumed his audience would be as interested in his topic as he is. 

In this case, he failed to realize that the senior people in the company wanted a quick look at his department – not an in depth review of everything they do and how they do it.  If he had taken the time to ask the big boss a few simple questions, he wouldn’t have wasted his time developing an in depth presentation.  He didn’t really want to hear it, but this was the best career advice I could give him.

Analyzing your audience is an important first step in developing any presentation.  Here are a few simple questions you should ask and answer before you begin developing any presentation…

• Who is my audience for this presentation?
• Why are they there?
• What do they want or need to get from my talk?
• How much do they know about my topic?
• Are they familiar with any jargon I might use?
• What is there general attitude towards me and the information I’ll be communicating?

These questions will help you develop and deliver the kind of presentation that will meet your audience’s needs, help you shine as a presenter and get you on the road to the life and career success you want and deserve.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are competent communicators.  Presentation skills — along with conversation and writing skills — is one of the communication skills you have to master if you want to become a life and career success.  Follow the career advice in Tweet 115 in Success Tweets.  “Become an excellent presenter.  Careers have been made on the strength of one or two good presentations.”  Audience analysis is the first step in developing a compelling presentation.  You have to understand your audience’s wants and needs before you can develop a great talk.  Take a few minutes to think about your audience before you begin developing any presentation.  If you do, you’ll be more likely to deliver a great talk that will get you noticed in a positive way and put you on the road to the career success you want and deserve.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 115 and audience analysis for presentation success.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

I’m proud to say that my latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less is about to go into its third printing.  The other day, I got a big order from Toastmasters International.  You can pick up a copy of Success Tweets at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

I’m in the home stretch of a series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets.  Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 103…

Speak from your heart.  Show that you care about yourself and the people with whom you are speaking.

Occasionally I see a presentation that is really great.  That was the case a while back.  I was at a meeting at a very large pharmaceutical company.  This company is working hard to adapt to its changing business environment.  They are in the midst of massive organizational change. 

Nat Ricciardi is a senior leader at this company.  He embodies all of the five keys to success that I discuss in my book Straight Talk for Success.  He is self confident.  He creates positive personal impact.  He has been an outstanding performer over his entire 38 year career.  He is a dynamic communicator and one of the most interpersonally competent people I know.

That day, Nat was the last person on a very busy agenda.  He took the stage and immediately won over a tired audience.  He had to stop because he ran into the dinner hour.  But he stayed at the venue, eating dinner with the meeting participants.  After dinner, he continued with a Q&A session.  He didn’t finish until he made sure that he answered every last question.

Nat delivered a dynamic presentation for a variety of reasons.  He knew his material.  He knew his audience.  He was able to present his thoughts in a manner that addressed the audience’s concerns.  It helped that he was a senior executive presenting to a group of employees in a company that is in the midst of massive change.

However, there was one thing that put Nat’s presentation over the top.  He spoke from his heart.

It was clear to everybody in the audience that Nat not only knew his material, but that he really cared about what he was saying and how what he was saying impacted them.  He told personal stories about his life and career.  The strength of his talk was his willingness to share his humanity with the audience.

Nat Ricciardi is a great speaker and a dynamic communicator because he always speaks from his heart – whether he is speaking to one person or an audience of several hundred.  He is truly genuine.  You can’t fake his type of genuineness.  When you are in his presence, you know that you are with somebody who cares about what he does, and who cares about the people around him. 

And that’s the common sense career success coach point here.  If you want to become a dynamic communicator, follow the career advice in Tweet 103 in Success Tweets.  “Speak from your heart.  Show that you care about yourself and the people with whom you are speaking.”  Make sure that the person with whom you are in conversation or the audience to whom you are speaking knows that you care about them as much as you care about what you are discussing or the information you are presenting.  Here’s some important career advice.  Give people more than a glimpse of you as a person.  Let them see who you are.  Share your stories; your triumphs and failures, as well as your thoughts and feelings on your topic.  Show that you care – about yourself, your material and the people to who you are speaking — and other people will hang on your every word.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 103, and the importance of speaking from your heart.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts.  Also, please tell us about the best conversationalist you know or the best presentation you’ve ever seen – and what made it so.  As always, thanks for reading – and writing.

Bud

Today is Labor Day in the USA; the holiday that marks the end of Summer and the beginning of Autumn.  It’s back to school for kids and a time for success seekers to refocus on their career success goals.  Today also marks the 101st post in my series of posts about the career advice in my latest book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  You can pick up a copy on amazon.com or at your local bookstore.  Better yet, you can download Success Tweets for free at http://www.successtweets.com.

I have been writing this series for the past 20 weeks.  I have eight more weeks to go before it is complete.  This post is the beginning of 20 posts that deal with an important career success skills, dynamic communication.

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 101…

All dynamic communicators have mastered three basic communication skills: conversation, writing and presenting.

The life of a business traveler, especially one like me who travels to New York City regularly, appears glamorous at first glance. People always ask me if I’ve eaten at famous restaurants like “21” or the latest hot spot they’ve read about in Travel and Leisure. 

Most often when I’m in New York and don’t have a business dinner, I dine on Chinese food delivered to my hotel room from a local take out place.  Recently my fortune cookie read, “Your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded.” I was happy with this fortune, but it made me think.

My talents, your talents, everyone’s talents will be recognized and rewarded if we develop and use our communication skills. There are three types of communication skills critically important for career and life success: 1) Conversation skills; 2) Writing skills; and 3) Presentation skills. 

You need to develop each of these skills if you want to have your talents recognized and beocme the life and career success you deserve to be.  There are a few common sense career success coach points associated with becoming a dynamic communicator.

Become a good conversationalist by listening.  Take an active interest in other people and what they’re saying.  Show them you’re listening by asking appropriate follow up questions to what they say. 

Conversation skills enhance your networking ability.  Networking is an important but often overlooked communication skill. It is helpful when you are looking for a job, but it is even more important when you are happy with your situation. All people who are a career success build and nurture strong networks. 

Networking is an important skill. Successful people have large networks. They have people they can call to help them. They know they can call on these people because these people know they can call on them.  That’s the real secret of networking – look to help others, not just to find out how they can help you.

Write in a manner that communicates well.  In general, this means, being clear, concise and easily readable.  The best way to make sure your writing is readable is to read it aloud before sending it. 

When I was in high school, I was the editor of my yearbook. To raise funds to cover the cost of our yearbook, we sold ads. There were a lot of factories in the town where I grew up. In the past, the yearbook staff had never approached these factories to place ads in the yearbook. I wrote sales letters to all of the plant managers. We got several full page ads from those letters.

One of the plant managers wrote back, asking if I would come to see him. When I walked in to his office and introduced myself, he was surprised. He told me that my sales letter was so well written that he thought I was the teacher who was the yearbook sponsor.  Two years later, I was looking for a summer job after my first year of college. The market was tight. I called this man. He remembered me, and I got a job.

Preparation is the most important key to good presentations.  You have to analyze your audience, prepare a talk that gives them what they want, and practice your talk out loud if you want to be a great presenter.

Presentation skills may present the biggest opportunity for getting your talents noticed and becoming a life and career success. A couple of years ago, I did a talk for a local chamber of commerce. As it so happens, the Sheriff’s department is a member of this chamber. The Sheriff himself happened to be there that day. He liked my talk. About a week later, I got a call from his training office. The Sheriff asked him to get in touch with me to conduct some supervisory training for their sergeants. I never would have gotten this business if it weren’t for the notice I received from a talk at that chamber meeting.

The Dilbert cartoons often focus on poor communication.  I cut out the ones I really like.  Here’s one from a Sunday paper… 

Dilbert approaches his boss (you know, the one with the tufts of hair that look like devil’s horns) and says, “The security audit accidentally locked all developers out of the system.”  The boss says, “Well, it is what it is.”

Dilbert says, “How does that help?”  The boss replies, “You don’t know what you don’t know.”  Dilbert, obviously frustrated, says, “Congratulations you’re the first human to fail the Turing test.”  The boss says, “What does that mean?”  Dilbert replies, “It is what it is;” to which the boss says, “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

There really is such a thing as a Turing test.  Dictionary.com defines it as follows: “A test proposed by British mathematician Alan Turing, and often used as a test of whether a computer has humanlike intelligence. If a panel of human beings conversing with an unknown entity (via keyboard, for example) believes that that entity is human, and if the entity is actually a computer, then the computer is said to have passed the Turing test.”

This is pretty funny.  It is also kind of sad as it is indicative of the lack of communication in today’s business world.  Scott Adams, Dilbert’s creator, really gets it when it comes to workplace communication problems. 

Beyond Bullsh*t, by UCLA Anderson School of Management Professor, Samuel Culbert is an interesting little book.  Professor Culbert defines bullsh*t in the following way.

“It is telling people what you think they need to hear.  It may involve finessing the truth or outright lying, but the purpose is always self serving.  And while I appreciate the role of some b.s. in keeping the corporate peace, it makes people feel beaten up, deceived – even dirty.  When people talk straight at work, companies make out better because the best idea usually wins.  In contrast, when people are bullsh*tting, they hide their mistakes and the company suffers. Straight talk is the product or relationships built on trust.”

Phrases like “it is what it is” are not straight talk.  They are part of the inexplicable jargon that has overtaken us.  Dynamic communicators say what they mean, in an easily understood manner.  Effective communicators don’t show off their large vocabularies.  Instead, they choose words that are the most easily understood and still get across their point.

Dynamic communicators eschew, I mean don’t use, jargon.  They avoid meaningless phrases like “it is what it is” to explain something.  They use the simplest words possible to get across their ideas.  And they don’t bullsh*it.  They say what they mean.  Follow these rules in conversation, writing and presenting and you’ll become known as a dynamic communicator.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are dynamic communicators.  If you want to become a dynamic communicator, follow the career advice in Tweet 101 in Success Tweets.  “All dynamic communicators have mastered three basic communication skills: conversation, writing and presenting.”  You don’t have to be a career success coach to know that if you’re a great conversationalist, a good writer and an outstanding performer you will reach your career success goals.  Successful people communicate well.  The career advice here is simple.  Develop your communication skills if you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 101.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading.  If you’re in the US, I hope you’re enjoying this last holiday of the summer.

Bud