This is the third in a series of three blog posts I’m doing on presentations.  Today I want to focus on the importance of preparing for your presentations.  Tweet 119 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Discipline yourself to prepare for presentations.  Practice out loud until you are totally in sync with what 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 on speaking.  It’s always full of interesting anecdotes.  A couple of days 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 response…

“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 successful speaker, author, trainer or coach!  Most people are not disciplined to prepare themselves for success.”

James is on to something here.  Disciplined preparation is the key to becoming a dynamic presenter.  I teach my coaching clients a five-point model of presentation success.  The fifth point is “practice, practice, practice.”  I suggest practicing your talk out loud using your visuals.  I suggest doing 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.

When I say this 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.  And without disciplined preparation it’s basically impossible to do a good presentation.

A couple of years ago, Cathy and I were in Florida to celebrate our niece, Morgan’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, and 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.

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.

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.

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 career success coach point here is simple common sense.  If you want to be able to deliver dynamic presentations that will enhance your career success, you have to follow the career advice in Tweets 119 and 120 in Success Tweets.  “Discipline yourself to prepare for presentations.  Practice out loud until you are totally in sync with what you’re going to say.” (119) “Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.” (120)  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.  Besides controlling your nerves, you’ll get better each time you practice.  Trust me on this one, time spent practicing a presentation is time well spent.

That’s my career advice on the importance of practicing your presentations – out loud.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site last September.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  You can find out about the membership site by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

Yesterday I blogged about my five steps for becoming a dynamic presenter.  Here is some more career success advice on presentations.

Tweet 118 in my career success book Success Tweets says, “Presentations are easy to create.  Write your closing first, your opening next.  Then fill in the content.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice.”  Let’s look at this career advice in a little more detail.

Begin at the End

Writing your presentation closing first is some of 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 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.”

When I was writing this talk, I wrote this closing first.  I began by listing the key points I wanted to make – in this case the 4 Cs of 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.

Capture Your Audience’s Attention and Tell Them What You’re Going to Tell Them

You want to accomplish two things in your presentation opening: 1) Capturing the audience’s attention, and 2) Giving 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 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.

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 cover in 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.

In tomorrow’s post I’ll cover the importance of putting in the preparation time necessary to ensure you deliver a dynamic presentation.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  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.  If you use it, you’ll be on your way to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s my career advice on how to write a dynamic presentation – one that engages the audience and sells them on your ideas.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily thoughts on life and career success.  I really appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site last September.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  You can find out about the membership site by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

Tweet 115 in my career success book Success Tweets says, “Become an excellent presenter.  Careers have been made on the strength of one or two great presentations.”  This is true.  And here’s some more great career advice.  Stories are the best way to make your presentations come alive.  Stories are a powerful way to communicate. We all learn through stories. If you learn how to use stories effectively, you will become a great presenter – and get on the fast track to the career success you want and deserve.

I’ve come up with a simple three-step formula that anyone can use to create powerful stories that will help you make your point.

1. Identify your truth – something that in your heart of hearts you know to be “true.”
2. Think of the critical experiences you’ve had that have led you to this “truth.”
3. Shape those experiences into a story that you can tell at the drop of a hat.

Here’s an example of how I have used this formula. It’s a real story I often tell – especially when I am doing a talk on the importance of putting yourself in another person’s shoes.

“One of the things that I know to be true is that if I am going to be a good communicator, I must meet other people where they are, not where I would like them to be. Let me tell you how I know this.

“Several years ago, I had an assignment to conduct a team-building session for a manufacturing plant manager and his staff. The client was a friend of mine. I knew him well.

“I arrived at his office about 5:00 the afternoon of the day before our session. He said, “Do you have an agenda for tomorrow’s meeting?”

“I said, “Well, first we’ll do A, then B, followed by C. We’ll finish up with D.”

“He said, “Do you have an agenda?”

“At first, I thought he hadn’t been listening to what I just said, so I repeated myself: “First we’ll do A, then B, followed by C. We’ll finish up with D.”

“He said, “Yes, I know. That’s what you just said. Do you have an agenda?”

“At that point, it dawned on me that he was looking for a printed agenda. I said ‘No, but we really don’t need one. I’ve done a lot of meetings like this. It will go fine.’

“He said, ‘I’m not comfortable winging it.’  So we created an agenda using PowerPoint.

“The next day, the meeting went off without a hitch. We followed the agenda that I had in my head and he had on the PowerPoint slide. Everyone agreed that it was one of the best meetings of this type that they had ever attended.

“As we were debriefing I asked my client what he thought of the meeting.

“He said, ‘It was a great meeting, but I think we were lucky because we were winging it.’

“That frustrated me. I wasn’t winging it.  I had carefully mapped out the meeting in my head.  I knew what I wanted to accomplish and how I wanted to accomplish it.  I didn’t say anything to the client at that point because I didn’t want to damage my relationship with him.

“On the flight home, I thought about what happened. He thought we were winging it, and I thought we were following a well thought-out plan. The difference – he needs more structure than me. The piece of paper with the agenda was very important to him and his sense of order. To me, the paper wasn’t necessary, because I knew in my head what to do and how to do it.

“It became clear to me that if I want to influence not just this client, but anyone, I need to adapt my communication style to theirs.  From that day on, I modify my communication style to meet the needs of the other person.  I realized that I want to be influential, I need to adapt my communication style to others, not expect them to adapt their style to mine.

“This was a valuable lesson for me.  By adapting my style, I become more influential and powerful.  It may seem as if I’m yielding, when in fact, I’m taking charge of the situation,”

The story above illustrates how you can use my 1 – 2 – 3 formula to construct a story that you can use to make a point.  First, identify your truth – something that in your heart of hearts you know to be “true.”  Second, think of the critical experiences you’ve had that have led you to this “truth.”  Third, shape those experiences into a story that you can tell at the drop of a hat.

In this case, here’s what I know to be true – effective communicators adapt their communication style to their audience.  I know this to be true because of the incident I described above (as well as several other experiences I’ve had in my career).  I can tell this story any time I want to make a point about the importance of adapting your communication style to your audience.

The next time you are asked to do a talk, use this formula to illustrate the main point you want to make.  You’ll do a great talk and but yourself on the fast track to the career success you deserve.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  Successful people are great presenters.  As Tweet 115 in Success Tweets says, “Become an excellent presenter.  Careers have been made on the strength of one or two great presentations.”  Stories make presentations come alive.  They are not difficult to create.  Follow my 1 – 2 – 3 formula for creating and telling great stories.  First, identify your truth – something that in your heart of hearts you know to be “true.”  Second, think of the critical experiences you’ve had that have led you to this “truth.”  Third, shape those experiences into a story that you can tell at the drop of a hat.

That’s my career advice on how to create the stories that will brand you as a great presenter.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site last September.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  You can find out about the membership site by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

Tweet 115 in my career success book Success Tweets says, “Become an excellent presenter.  Careers have been made on the strength of one or two great presentations.”  This is true.  And here’s some more great career advice.  Stories are the best way to make your presentations come alive.  Stories are a powerful way to communicate. We all learn through stories. If you learn how to use stories effectively, you will become a great presenter – and get on the fast track to the career success you want and deserve.

I’ve come up with a simple three-step formula that anyone can use to create powerful stories that will help you make your point.

1. Identify your truth – something that in your heart of hearts you know to be “true.”
2. Think of the critical experiences you’ve had that have led you to this “truth.”
3. Shape those experiences into a story that you can tell at the drop of a hat.

Here’s an example of how I have used this formula. It’s a real story I often tell – especially when I am doing a talk on the importance of putting yourself in another person’s shoes.

“One of the things that I know to be true is that if I am going to be a good communicator, I must meet other people where they are, not where I would like them to be. Let me tell you how I know this.

“Several years ago, I had an assignment to conduct a team-building session for a manufacturing plant manager and his staff. The client was a friend of mine. I knew him well.

“I arrived at his office about 5:00 the afternoon of the day before our session. He said, “Do you have an agenda for tomorrow’s meeting?”

“I said, “Well, first we’ll do A, then B, followed by C. We’ll finish up with D.”

“He said, “Do you have an agenda?”

“At first, I thought he hadn’t been listening to what I just said, so I repeated myself: “First we’ll do A, then B, followed by C. We’ll finish up with D.”

“He said, “Yes, I know. That’s what you just said. Do you have an agenda?”

“At that point, it dawned on me that he was looking for a printed agenda. I said ‘No, but we really don’t need one. I’ve done a lot of meetings like this. It will go fine.’

“He said, ‘I’m not comfortable winging it.’  So we created an agenda using PowerPoint.

“The next day, the meeting went off without a hitch. We followed the agenda that I had in my head and he had on the PowerPoint slide. Everyone agreed that it was one of the best meetings of this type that they had ever attended.

“As we were debriefing I asked my client what he thought of the meeting.

“He said, ‘It was a great meeting, but I think we were lucky because we were winging it.’

“That frustrated me. I wasn’t winging it.  I had carefully mapped out the meeting in my head.  I knew what I wanted to accomplish and how I wanted to accomplish it.  I didn’t say anything to the client at that point because I didn’t want to damage my relationship with him.

“On the flight home, I thought about what happened. He thought we were winging it, and I thought we were following a well thought-out plan. The difference – he needs more structure than me. The piece of paper with the agenda was very important to him and his sense of order. To me, the paper wasn’t necessary, because I knew in my head what to do and how to do it.

“It became clear to me that if I want to influence not just this client, but anyone, I need to adapt my communication style to theirs.  From that day on, I modify my communication style to meet the needs of the other person.  I realized that I want to be influential, I need to adapt my communication style to others, not expect them to adapt their style to mine.

“This was a valuable lesson for me.  By adapting my style, I become more influential and powerful.  It may seem as if I’m yielding, when in fact, I’m taking charge of the situation,”

The story above illustrates how you can use my 1 – 2 – 3 formula to construct a story that you can use to make a point.  First, identify your truth – something that in your heart of hearts you know to be “true.”  Second, think of the critical experiences you’ve had that have led you to this “truth.”  Third, shape those experiences into a story that you can tell at the drop of a hat.

In this case, here’s what I know to be true – effective communicators adapt their communication style to their audience.  I know this to be true because of the incident I described above (as well as several other experiences I’ve had in my career).  I can tell this story any time I want to make a point about the importance of adapting your communication style to your audience.

The next time you are asked to do a talk, use this formula to illustrate the main point you want to make.  You’ll do a great talk and but yourself on the fast track to the career success you deserve.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  Successful people are great presenters.  As Tweet 115 in Success Tweets says, “Become an excellent presenter.  Careers have been made on the strength of one or two great presentations.”  Stories make presentations come alive.  They are not difficult to create.  Follow my 1 – 2 – 3 formula for creating and telling great stories.  First, identify your truth – something that in your heart of hearts you know to be “true.”  Second, think of the critical experiences you’ve had that have led you to this “truth.”  Third, shape those experiences into a story that you can tell at the drop of a hat.

That’s my career advice on how to create the stories that will brand you as a great presenter.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site last September.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  You can find out about the membership site by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

I had someone come to me and ask for help in developing her presentation skills recently.

She asked for my one best bit of advice when it comes to doing dynamite presentations.  I told her, “Practice out loud.”

Tweet 120 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.”  I think that practicing your presentations – out loud – is the most important presentation success tip.   Here’s 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.

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.”

Practicing your presentations out loud is common sense.  Don’t come up with bogus reasons for not practicing your presentations out loud.  There aren’t any.  The career success advice here is simple.  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.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  If you want to be able to deliver 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 one, time spent practicing a presentation is time well spent.

That’s my career advice on becoming a dynamic presenter.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with – and your presentation horror stories and triumphs – in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I really appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site on September 1.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  To celebrate the grand opening, I’m giving away a new career advice book I’ve written called I Want YOU…To Succeed in Your Corporate Climb.  You can find out about the membership site and get the career advice in I Want YOU… for free by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

As I mentioned yesterday, I recently launched a career advice membership site called My Corporate Climb.  It is dedicated to helping people create career success while working for a large – or medium or small – company.  The common sense, practical career advice inside the site is also helpful for people who work in non profit and government organizations.

The site covers seven keys to corporate career success:

1. Clarify the purpose and direction for your corporate career success.
2. Commit to taking personal responsibility for creating your corporate career success.
3. Build unshakeable self confidence.
4. Become a high performer.
5. Create positive personal impact.
6. Become a dynamic communicator.
7. Build solid, lasting mutually beneficial relationships.

Today, I’d like to offer some corporate career success advice on becoming a dynamic communicator.  All dynamic communicators are highly skilled public speakers and presenters.  But fear of public speaking is an affliction that is all too common in the corporate world.  Many people have conquered their fear of public speaking and have gone on to become dynamic speakers and a career success by joining Toastmasters International – a service organization dedicated to helping people learn to speak well in public.

I have done workshops for Toastmasters groups all over the country.  I always enjoy these workshops because I am dealing with a highly motivated group of people.  All of the Toastmasters I have met are interested in building their corporate career success.

Here are the Toastmasters 10 tips for successful public speaking.  Read closely, this is great career advice…

1. Know the room. Be familiar with the place in which you will speak. Arrive early, walk around the speaking area and practice using the microphone and any visual aids.
2. Know the audience. Greet some of the audience as they arrive. It’s easier to speak to a group of friends than to a group of strangers.
3. Know your material. If you’re not familiar with your material or are uncomfortable with it, your nervousness will increase. Practice your speech and revise it if necessary.
4. Relax. Ease tension by doing exercises.
5. Visualize yourself giving your speech. Imagine yourself speaking, your voice loud, clear, and assured. When you visualize yourself as successful, you will be successful.
6. Realize that people want you to succeed. Audiences want you to be interesting, stimulating, informative, and entertaining. They don’t want you to fail.
7. Don’t apologize. If you mention your nervousness or apologize for any problems you think you have with your speech, you may be calling the audience’s attention to something they hadn’t noticed. Keep silent.
8. Concentrate on the message — not the medium. Focus your attention away from your own anxieties, and outwardly toward your message and your audience. Your nervousness will dissipate.
9. Turn nervousness into positive energy. Harness your nervous energy and transform it into vitality and enthusiasm.
10. Gain experience. Experience builds confidence, which is the key to effective speaking. A Toastmasters club can provide the experience you need.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  If you want to create the corporate career success you want and deserve, you need to become a dynamic communicator – in conversation, writing and presenting.  The Toastmasters International 10 tips for successful public speaking are a great place to begin your journey to becoming a dynamic presenter.  Joining and participating in a local Toastmasters chapter is the next logical step.  You can conquer your fear of public speaking.  You can even become a great public speaker – but like anything else when it comes to corporate career success, you have to work at it.

That’s my career advice on becoming a dynamic presenter.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success. I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, you can download a free copy of my latest career success book Success Tweets Explained.  It’s a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened my new membership site on September 1.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  To celebrate the grand opening, I’m giving away a new career advice book I’ve written called I Want YOU…To Succeed in Your Corporate Climb.  You can find out about the membership site and get the career advice in I Want YOU… for free by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.com.

On Sunday April 3 the New York Times Business Section had an interview with Chris Cunningham, CEO of Appsavvy, a social media marketing firm.  Mr. Cunningham’s company has a unique twist to their hiring process.  Check it out.  There is some interesting career success advice here…

“Every job candidate must present to five to seven people as the final step before we hire them…This is where you can make or break it, and we find out if they’re an all-star or whether we just avoided making a bad hire.”

Imagine that – having to make a presentation before you even get hired!

Presenting with impact is a very important career success skill.  It’s really simple common sense; if you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve, you have to be a good presenter.  Yet speaking in public scares the hell out of some people.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  Tweet 118 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Presentations are easy.  Write your closing first, you opening next.  Then fill in the content.  Practice, practice, practice.”

People remember two things about your presentation: how you begin and how you finish.  They 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.  This is the best presentation and career success advice I can give you.

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.”

When I was developing this talk, I wrote this closing first.  I began by listing 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 I 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 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.

“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 capture the audience’s attention by telling them that I am going to explode a myth about life and career success.  Then I share the myth.  Then I outline what I am going to cover in the next hour.  This approach to writing and delivering a presentation is simple common sense.

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 in your opening, and you’ve recapped what you’ve told them in your closing.  Filling in the content becomes pretty simple once you’ve completed these two steps.

Finally, remember the last three words of Success Tweet 118 – practice, practice, practice.  Practice your presentation out loud.  Practice it until you are supremely confident in what you will say and how you will say it.  A well designed presentation will fall flat on its face if you’re not prepared to give it.  And practice is the best way to prepare for any presentation.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  If you want to create and deliver dynamic presentations that 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.  If you use it, you’ll be on your way to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s my career advice on creating and giving dynamic presentations.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your presentation stories – the good, the bad and the ugly – with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

Dynamic communication is one of the keys to career success that I discuss in my latest career advice book Success Tweets.  If you want to become a dynamic communicator, you need to master three basic communication skills: conversation, writing and presenting.

Stephen King is one of my favorite authors.  I once saw a quote from him that is some of the best career advice on communication you’ll ever come across.  “Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

Stephen’s words apply to each of the three basic communication skills.  Whether you’re in a conversation, writing an e mail or report, or making a presentation you will communicate better if you use simple, every day, commonly understood words.  I always suggest that my career success coach clients use the smallest possible word that communicates the exact point they want to make.

I take pride on my vocabulary and sometimes like to show it off.  For example, at my niece’s college graduation party I gave her a copy of one of my career success books, Straight Talk for Success.  I told her that I hoped it would help her as she began her career.  I also said that I tried for an “avuncular hip” tone as I was writing the book. 

My niece is a smart young woman.  She graduated cum laude and is doing a great job creating her life and career success.  But when I said the words, “avuncular hip,” she looked at me and said, “What does that mean?”  I responded, “Avuncular means uncle like.  I was trying to come across as a hip uncle in the book.”  She said, “Why didn’t you just say that?”

Good question.  The best answer is that I was just showing off.  Everybody knows what “uncle like” means.  Not everybody knows that “avuncular” means “uncle like.”  This is what Stephen King means when he suggests not using words that others will need a dictionary or thesaurus to understand.  Showing off your vocabulary is not a great way to become a dynamic communicator and career success.

As I’m writing this, I’m reminded of an IBM commercial that ran a couple of years ago… 

A guy walks into a large, dimly lighted conference room where he sees no tables and chairs and about twenty people lying on the floor.  He says, “What are you guys doing?”  Someone answers, “We’re ideating.”  He says, “What’s that?”  Someone responds, “Coming up with new ways of doing things.”  He says, “Why don’t you just call it that?”

Interestingly enough, the word ideating sounds a lot like a made up word to me.  I expected spell check to flag it.  It didn’t.  So I guess I am behind the times on some of my business jargon.  Even so, I think saying that you’re “Coming up with new ways of doing things,” is much more clear than saying that you’re “Ideating.”  But what do I know?

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are dynamic communicators.  They are good conversationalists, clear writers and effective presenters.  If you want to master the basic skills associated with conversation, writing and presenting begin by choosing your words carefully.  Avoid those polysyllabic — I mean big – words that show off your vocabulary but get in the way of effective communication.  Successful people communicate in everyday, straightforward language.

That’s my career advice on precision in language and effective communication.  What do you think?  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

Dynamic communication is one of the keys to career success that I discuss in my latest career advice book Success Tweets.  If you want to become a dynamic communicator, you need to master three basic communication skills: conversation, writing and presenting.

Stephen King is one of my favorite authors.  I once saw a quote from him that is some of the best career advice on communication you’ll ever come across.  “Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

Stephen’s words apply to each of the three basic communication skills.  Whether you’re in a conversation, writing an e mail or report, or making a presentation you will communicate better if you use simple, every day, commonly understood words.  I always suggest that my career success coach clients use the smallest possible word that communicates the exact point they want to make.

I take pride on my vocabulary and sometimes like to show it off.  For example, at my niece’s college graduation party I gave her a copy of one of my career success books, Straight Talk for Success.  I told her that I hoped it would help her as she began her career.  I also said that I tried for an “avuncular hip” tone as I was writing the book. 

My niece is a smart young woman.  She graduated cum laude and is doing a great job creating her life and career success.  But when I said the words, “avuncular hip,” she looked at me and said, “What does that mean?”  I responded, “Avuncular means uncle like.  I was trying to come across as a hip uncle in the book.”  She said, “Why didn’t you just say that?”

Good question.  The best answer is that I was just showing off.  Everybody knows what “uncle like” means.  Not everybody knows that “avuncular” means “uncle like.”  This is what Stephen King means when he suggests not using words that others will need a dictionary or thesaurus to understand.  Showing off your vocabulary is not a great way to become a dynamic communicator and career success.

As I’m writing this, I’m reminded of an IBM commercial that ran a couple of years ago… 

A guy walks into a large, dimly lighted conference room where he sees no tables and chairs and about twenty people lying on the floor.  He says, “What are you guys doing?”  Someone answers, “We’re ideating.”  He says, “What’s that?”  Someone responds, “Coming up with new ways of doing things.”  He says, “Why don’t you just call it that?”

Interestingly enough, the word ideating sounds a lot like a made up word to me.  I expected spell check to flag it.  It didn’t.  So I guess I am behind the times on some of my business jargon.  Even so, I think saying that you’re “Coming up with new ways of doing things,” is much more clear than saying that you’re “Ideating.”  But what do I know?

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are dynamic communicators.  They are good conversationalists, clear writers and effective presenters.  If you want to master the basic skills associated with conversation, writing and presenting begin by choosing your words carefully.  Avoid those polysyllabic — I mean big – words that show off your vocabulary but get in the way of effective communication.  Successful people communicate in everyday, straightforward language.

That’s my career advice on precision in language and effective communication.  What do you think?  Please 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.  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