As a career success coach, I often help my career success coaching clients with their presentation skills.  Presentation skills, along with conversation and writing skills are an important part of my Career Success GPS system.  I discuss the importance of being a dynamic communicator – especially a great presenter — in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success, Star Power, I Want YOU…To Succeed, Your Success GPS and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success.

Presentations scare a lot of people.  Do you have a fear of speaking in public?  Or does it come naturally to you?  Please leave a comment telling us about your adventures and misadventures in public speaking.  Presentations are an opportunity to shine and to create your career success.

Today, I’d like to tell you a little story about one of my clients named Pat. 

Pat was very good at her job. So good in fact, that she was asked to make a presentation to the President of her Division and his direct reports on a project that she had brought in on time and under budget.

Pat knew this was a big opportunity to strut her stuff for senior management and propel her toward the career success she wanted. She spent hours writing and rewriting her presentation. Then she memorized it. She was confident that she would do a great talk and be on her way to a promotion and even more success.

However, Pat made the mistake of assuming that the President wanted all of the details of her project. She put together a 45 minute presentation. Her PowerPoint slides went into great detail.

A few minutes into her talk, the Division President said, “Pat, we don’t need all of these details, please give us a high level overview. We allowed 15 minutes for your presentation. We have only 10 minutes left.”

That knocked Pat for a loop. She had memorized her talk, and had real difficulty in deviating from it. She went right back to saying what she had practiced, not what the President had asked her to do.

After a few minutes, Pat’s boss stepped in, and presented the highlights of her project, somewhat saving the day. Pat however, was devastated. She thought she had blown her one chance to make a favorable impression with the President and his direct reports.  She thought that she would never become a career success in her company.

She came to me for some career success coaching on how to become a better presenter. I worked with her closely. One of the tips I gave her right at the start was to always make sure she understood what the audience wanted and expected from her presentation. If she had done this prior to her talk for the Division President, she wouldn’t have prepared and memorized a 45 minute talk. She would have come up with a shorter talk that hit the highlights of her project.

Pat got a second chance. By then, she had worked hard at becoming an excellent presenter. She wowed the President and his direct reports in her next talk, and eventually got the promotion that propelled her to a successful career in her company.

The common sense point here is simple.  If you want to become a career success, you need to become a top notch presenter.  Effective presentations begin with a thorough audience analysis.  Before you put pen to paper, or begin creating PowerPoint slides, you need to take the time to get a complete understanding of your audience.  Who are they?  Why will they be listening to your talk?  What do they hope to get from your talk?  How long are they expecting you to speak?  If you spend time getting the answers to these questions, you not only find it easier to design your presentation, you’ll give a better talk.  Once you get to know your audience, all you have to do is meet their needs and wants and you’ll become known as a dynamic presenter and communicator – and be on your way to becoming a career success.

That’s my take on how a thorough audience analysis will make you a better presenter and improve your chances of becoming a career success.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment sharing your best presentation success secrets.  Thanks for reading – and writing.

Bud

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.

Presentation skills are one of the three communication skills that are part of my Common Sense Success System.  I discuss them in detail in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success; Star Power; I Want YOU…To Succeed; Your Success GPS; 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success.

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. 

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people are dynamic communicators.  Presentations 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 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

Competence is one of the four keys to career and life success in my Common Sense Success System.  I also discuss it in some detail in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success; Your Success GPS; and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success.  If you want to succeed you need to develop four basic, but important competencies: 1) creating positive personal impact; 2) becoming a consistently high performer; 3) dynamic communication skills; and 4) becoming interpersonally competent. 

There are four key competencies that will help you become a career and life success:

• You have to be able to create positive personal impact.
• You have to be become an outstanding performer.
• You have to be a dynamic communicator – in conversation, writing and presentations.
• You have to build strong, lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with the important people in your life.

Dynamic presentation skills are a crucial competency to develop.  More than one career has been made on the strength of one or two really good presentations. 

Darren Hardy is the Publisher of SUCCESS Magazine.  I love SUCCESS.  It is full of very useful and usable information every month.  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.

Hopefully there are some tips you can borrow and utilize to improve your own presentations. I hope that I’m standing and clapping in the audience of your keynote presentation soon.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people are competent in four areas: 1) creating positive personal impact; 2) performing at a high level; 3) dynamic communication; and 4) relationship building.  Dynamic communicators are competent in three basic communication skills – conversation, writing and presenting.  Darren Hardy, publisher of SUCCESS Magazine suggests that there are 10 things you need to do to become a master presenter. 1) Prepare.  2) Know your audience.  3) Sell your talk.  4) Package your talk.  5) Be entertaining.  6) Be visual.  7) Tell Stories.  Overdress.  9) Be yourself.  10) Visualize yourself doing a successful talk.  These are 10 common sense tips for becoming a great presenter.  Use them and you will succeed.

Those are Darren Hardy’s 10 tips for creating and delivering great presentations.  What are your best presentation tips?  Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing them with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

For the record — this content was republished with permission from Darren Hardy, Publisher of SUCCESS magazine. For more great insights, tips and strategies on success and achievement go to http://DarrenHardy.SUCCESS.com More about Darren Hardy can be found at: http://DarrenHardy.SUCCESS.com/About

Competence is one of the four keys to career and life success in my Common Sense Success System.  I also discuss it in some detail in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success; Your Success GPS; and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success.  If you want to succeed you need to develop four basic, but important competencies: 1) creating positive personal impact; 2) becoming a consistently high performer; 3) dynamic communication skills; and 4) becoming interpersonally competent. 

There are four key competencies that will help you become a career and life success:

• You have to be able to create positive personal impact.
• You have to be become an outstanding performer.
• You have to be a dynamic communicator – in conversation, writing and presentations.
• You have to build strong, lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with the important people in your life.

If you want to become a dynamic communicator, 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.  Here are five steps to making effective presentations.  These steps have served me well for over 35 years. 

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 point here is simple.  Successful people are competent.  Dynamic communication is an important 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 my five steps for making high impact presentations:  1) Determine your message.  2) Analyze your audience.  3) Organize your information for impact. 4) Design supporting visuals. 5) Practice, practice, practice.  If you follow these five steps – especially number 5; practice – you’ll become a confident successful presenter.

That’s my take on the 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

In yesterday’s post, I told you about Use Your Common Sense Day, a holiday I created to encourage people to use their common sense in their lives and careers.  In that post I mentioned my Common Sense Success System, something I designed to help you create the successful life and career you want and deserve.  Today, I’d like to give you a little more information on the system and another opportunity to order a free 90 minute DVD explaining it in detail.

My Common Sense Success System is based on what I call the Four Cs of Success:

• Clarity of purpose and direction
• Commitment to taking personal responsibility for your own success
• Confidence in your ability to create the successful life and career you deserve
• Competence in four key areas.

Let me tell you a little bit more about each of the Four Cs of Success…

Clarity

Let’s start with clarity.  Clarity of purpose and direction is fundamental to your personal and professional success.  It all begins with a clear picture of how you define success.

When I was 25, if you asked me what I wanted to be doing when I was 50, I would have told you, “Running a one person consulting, coaching and speaking business from my house.”  Guess what?  I have been running a one person consulting, coaching and speaking business from my house ever since 1988.  My clarity of purpose propelled me toward my goal.

That’s why defining your clarity of purpose is so important.  Your clarity of purpose provides both a foundation and launching pad for your professional success.  The old saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t know when you get there” is a cliché but true.  Getting clear on your personal definition of success is the first step to becoming a career and life success.

If you haven’t already done so, I suggest you take some time and think about your clarity of purpose.  How do you define success for yourself?  Keep that purpose and definition of success in mind as you go through your days.

Commitment

Now let’s think about commitment.  It’s simple, really. Success is all up to you, and me, and anyone else who wants it. We all have to commit to taking personal responsibility for our own success. I am the only one who can make me a success. You are the only one who can make you a success.

Stuff happens as you go through life: good stuff, bad stuff, frustrating stuff, unexpected stuff.  Successful people respond to the stuff that happens in a positive way.  We humans are the only animals with free will.  That means we – you and me – get to decide how we react to every situation that comes up.  That’s why committing to taking personal responsibility for your personal and professional success is so important.

Committing to personal responsibility means recognizing that you are responsible for your life — and the choices you make. It means that you realize that while other people and events have an impact on your life, these people and events don’t shape your life. When you commit to taking personal responsibility for your life, you own up to the fact that how you react to people and events is what’s important. And you can choose how to react to every person you meet and everything that happens to you.

The concept of personal responsibility is found in most writings on success. For example, the first of Stephen Covey’s seven habits of highly effective people is, “Be proactive.”

The other two keys to success – confidence and competence — work only if you are committed to taking responsibility for your life and career. Commitment to personal responsibility is the foundation on which this model is built.

Personal responsibility means using this material once you learn it. I’ve written this post to provide you with useful information and knowledge on becoming a personal and professional success.  But, as the U.S. Steel pencils my Dad brought home from work used to say, “Knowing is not enough.”  You have to use what you learn, or else what you’ve learned is of no value.

Confidence

I love stories. I think they are a very powerful way of making important points. Here’s one of my favorites about self confidence. 

The business executive was deep in debt and could see no way out. Creditors were closing in on him. Suppliers were demanding payment. He sat on the park bench, head in hands, wondering if anything could save his company from bankruptcy.

Suddenly an old man appeared before him. “I can see that something is troubling you,” he said. After listening to the executive’s woes, the old man said, “I believe I can help you.”  He asked the man his name, wrote out a check, and pushed it into his hand saying, “Take this money. Meet me here exactly one year from today, and you can pay me back at that time.” Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come.

The business executive saw in his hand a check for $500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, then one of the richest men in the world!  “I can erase my money worries in an instant!” he realized. But instead, the executive decided to put the uncashed check in his safe.

Just knowing it was there gave him the strength to work out a way to save his business. With renewed optimism, he negotiated better deals and extended terms of payment. He closed several big sales. Within a few months, he was out of debt and making money once again.

Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the uncashed check. The old man was there. But just as the executive was about to hand back the check and share his success story, a nurse came running up and grabbed the old man.

“I’m so glad I caught him!” she cried. “I hope he hasn’t been bothering you. He’s always escaping from the rest home and telling people he’s John D. Rockefeller.”  And she led the old man away by the arm.

The astonished executive just stood there, stunned. All year long he’d been wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, convinced he had half a million dollars behind him. Suddenly, he realized that it wasn’t the money, real or imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his newfound self-confidence that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after.

As nice as this story is, I doubt if it is actually true. However, like a lot of fables, it makes a great common sense point about personal and professional success. If you believe in yourself and your success, you are likely find ways to make that belief come true. Think about it.

If you want to become self confident you need to do three things.  1) Become an optimist. Learn from, and then forget yesterday’s mistakes.  Focus on tomorrow’s achievements.  2) Face your fears and take action.  Action cures fear.  Procrastination and inaction compound it.  Failure is rarely fatal.  Do something, anything that will move you closer to achieving your goals.  3) Surround yourself with positive people.  Build a network of supportive friends.  Jettison the negative people in your life. 

Competence

Finally, if you want to succeed in this life, you have to be competent.  You need to develop four key skills. 

• Creating Positive Personal Impact,
• Performing in an Outstanding Manner,
• Dynamic Communication,
• Interpersonal Competence.

Let’s take a look at each of these skills in more detail…

Positive Personal Impact

All successful people create positive personal impact.  Positive personal impact is like charisma, only more so.  People gravitate towards people with positive personal impact.  When you create positive personal impact other people want to be around you.  They want to work with you.  They want to be your friend.  They want you on their teams.

People with positive personal impact develop and nurture their personal brand.  They are impeccable in their presentation of self.  They know and follow the basic rules of etiquette.  If you master these three keys, you’ll be able to create positive personal impact.

Outstanding Performance

All successful people are outstanding performers.  It’s the price of admission to the success club. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that performance alone will get you where you want to go.  Performance is only of the characteristics of successful people.  Outstanding performance is important, but it alone will not guarantee your success.

The Dali Lama of all people has some interesting things to say about outstanding performance.  “One can be deceived by three types of laziness: the laziness of indolence, which is the wish to procrastinate; the laziness of inferiority, which is doubting your capabilities; and the laziness that is attached to negative actions, or putting great effort into non-virtue.”

I really like what he has to say because it drives home an important point about taking personal responsibility for becoming an outstanding performer. The Dalai Lama doesn’t let us off the hook by saying, “I didn’t think I could do it.” Instead, he says that doubting our abilities is a form of laziness. That’s some tough love!

And, if you think about it, he is right. All too often, we let ourselves off the hook by saying, “I’m not going to try that, because I don’t think I can do it.” This is being lazy. “I can’t do it, so I won’t even try.” As I said these words out loud, they sounded pretty lame. Agree?  If you do, you’ll stop using lack of self confidence as an excuse for not doing the work it takes to become an outstanding performer.

Dynamic Communication

I like Chinese food.  Once, I got a fortune cookie that 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.

Become a good conversationalist by listening.  Conversation skills are important for building your professional network. Networking is an important but often overlooked communication skill. All successful people build and nurture strong networks. 

Writing is another necessary tool that helps get your skills noticed. 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. I got dressed up in my one and only suit and went to his office at the appointed time. When I arrived, his secretary buzzed him to let him know I was there. I heard her say, “No, sir, he sent a student.” 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.

Presentation skills may present the biggest opportunity for getting your talents noticed. As I have always worked in training and development, I had to develop and hone my presentation skills at a young age. This wasn’t too difficult for me because I never suffered from stage fright. I used to compete in speech contests when I was in high school. I was the emcee for my high school talent show. I was on the radio in college.

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.

Interpersonal Competence

Interpersonal competence is the final competency that you must master.  No matter how self confident you are, how good you are at creating positive personal impact, how great a performer or dynamic a communicator you are, you will not succeed if you are not interpersonally competent.

Pat Wiesner is a friend.  He is the publisher of Colorado Business.  A while back he wrote a great column entitled “The Biggest Management Sin of All: How to Lose Your Job or at least Deserve to Lose It.”

The biggest sin?  Pat says it is demeaning people. “My belief is that if we get caught shouting at people, demeaning them in any way, we should be fired. On the spot.”

I agree. And this holds for everyone – not just people in leadership and management positions. Raising your voice and demeaning people is not only poor leadership, it is one of the hallmarks of interpersonally incompetent people.

Belittling, intimidating, or otherwise demeaning people is not only nasty, it is destructive to their self esteem and self confidence. Interpersonally incompetent people often seem to feel that the best way to feel good about themselves is to make others feel bad about themselves. That’s why they often engage in demeaning and bullying behavior.

This is simply not true. The title of one of the first self-help books I ever read – published by Thomas Harris in 1969, I’m OK, You’re OK – says it best. Interpersonally competent people come from an “I’m OK, You’re OK” place. Bullies and demeaning people come from an “I’m OK, You’re Not OK” place.

Interpersonally competent people realize that we’re all OK. They work hard to meet people where they are and to build strong relationships with all of the people in their lives.

Treat people with kindness and respect. Help them enhance their feelings of self esteem. Do what you can to build their self confidence. If you do, you’ll be known as an interpersonally competent person – and interpersonally competent people are welcome wherever they go.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people have mastered four C’s – clarity, commitment, confidence and competence.  My Common Sense Success System is based on these four C’s.  I am offering a free 90 minute DVD that explains the four C’s in detail.  Just go to www.CommonSenseSuccessSystem.com to claim your free copy. You can and will succeed if you do four things.  1) Clarify your purpose and direction in life.  2) Commit to taking personal responsibility for your own success.  3) Become a dynamic communicator.  4) Get competent.  You will learn how to do all four of these things when you get my free 90 minute DVD at www.CommonSenseSuccessSystem.com.

That’s my take on the four C’s of success.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always thanks for reading.

Bud

Competence is one of the four keys to career and life success in my Common Sense Success System.  I also discuss it in some detail in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success; Your Success GPS; and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success.  If you want to succeed you need to develop four basic, but important competencies: 1) creating positive personal impact; 2) becoming a consistently high performer; 3) dynamic communication skills; and 4) becoming interpersonally competent. 

There are four key competencies that will help you become a career and life success:

• You have to be able to create positive personal impact.
• You have to be become an outstanding performer.
• You have to be a dynamic communicator – in conversation, writing and presentations.
• You have to build strong, lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with the important people in your life.

I’m often asked for my best thoughts on what it takes to become a career and life success – the key competencies.  I always tell my coaching clients to think systematically, to break success down into some manageable components.

Here is a bullet point summary of what I tell my coaching clients on how to become a career and life success. Put these points to use and you will succeed, just like my coaching clients.  I sent these to my ezine subscribers yesterday, and thought it would be a good idea to post them here.

• Do it yourself. Realize that no one is going to do it for you – not even your executive coach. You have to take personal responsibility for your success. Adopt the motto, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.”

• Become an optimist. Believe that things will turn out well. When they don’t, don’t sulk. Learn what you can from a problem or failure and use it to your advantage the next time.

• Don’t procrastinate. Procrastination is usually tied to fear. In most cases, when you procrastinate, you are doing so because you are afraid of something. Identify those fears and then do something to overcome them. Action cures fear. Act – even when, especially when, you are afraid.

• Surround yourself with positive people. Jettison the negative people in your life. If you can’t rid yourself of them completely, do your best to minimize the time you spend with them. Negative people are an energy black hole. They will suck you dry if you let them. 

• Find a mentor or executive coach, someone who will help you meet your career and life goals. Mentors and executive coaches, by nature, are positive people. They can help you find the lessons in problems and failures and use these lessons to move forward.

• Be a brand. Create and nurture your personal brand. Make sure you stand for and are known for something. Make sure that everything you do is on brand.

• Look good. Be well groomed and appropriate for every situation. Always dress one level up from what is expected. In this way, you will stand out from the crowd.  A good executive coach can help you with this.

• Have manners. Learn and use the basic rules of etiquette. This will distinguish you as a person who is in the know. Social faux pas might not ruin your career, but they certainly won’t help it.

• Make people comfortable. The best etiquette advice I’ve ever received is simple. In any social situation, do what makes the other person or people comfortable.

• Become an expert. Master your technical discipline, and then keep learning. Become a lifelong learner. The half-life of knowledge these days is rapidly diminishing. Staying in the same place is the same as going backwards.

• Aim high. Set and achieve high goals year after year after year. Use the S.M.A.R.T. technique of goal setting.

• Get organized. Learn to use time to your advantage. Organize not only your time but your life and workspace. Sweat the small stuff. Success is in execution. Execution is in the details.

• Become an excellent conversationalist. You can do this by listening more than you speak. Pay attention to what other people are saying and respond appropriately.

• Write clearly and simply. Short words and sentences are best. Never use two or three words to say what you can say in one. Write in the first person. Use the active voice.

• Develop your presentation skills. Adopt this simple formula for your talks: Tell them what you will tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them. Write your closing first, your opening next. Then fill in the content.

• Get to know yourself, as well or better than your executive coach knows you. Use this knowledge to better understand others.

• Get to know others. Use your knowledge of others to build strong, mutually beneficial relationships with them.

• Give. Build relationships by giving with no expectation of return. When you help others because you want to, not because you believe they will do something for you, you’ll find that you will be repaid many times over. Giving of yourself, especially your time, is a great way to build strong, lasting relationships.

• Use conflict as a means to improve relationships. When you find yourself in a conflict situation, focus on where you agree, not disagree, with the other person. This will help you develop creative solutions to your differences, and improve the relationship.

The common sense point here is clear.  If you want to succeed you need to do at least four things: 1) Get clear on –your purpose and direction in your life and career; 2) Commit to taking personal responsibility for your life and career; 3) Build unshakeable self confidence; 4) Develop the competencies you need to succeed.  Yes, there’s a lot to learn, but there is one point I make over and over again with my coaching clients. You need to use what you learn.  I listed several success quick points above and hopefully you learned something from them.  But, as the U.S. Steel pencils used to say, “Knowing is not enough.” You have to use this knowledge if you’re going to become a career and life success.  Remember, success is a journey, not a destination.  Good luck in your journey.  You’ll succeed if you use what you learn along the way.

That’s my take on using what you learn to create the success you want and deserve.  What’s yours?  Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud