Many people have a great deal of anxiety when it comes to public speaking.

As a result, any professionals prepare themselves for every area of their business except one - making presentations!

If that sounds like you, you may be able to avoid giving formal presentations but you will still be expected to give informal ones.

Presentation is a vital part of your working life.

Whatever your position or job, your effectiveness and success will depend to a large part on how well you are able to organise and present your ideas.

Throughout your career you will find yourself presenting in many ways: to colleagues in team meetings; to staff in coaching sessions; to clients; to stakeholders; to managers and management teams.

You will present for many reasons: to propose ideas; to brief managers on project results; to introduce change; to interview direct reports; to interview prospective employees; to sell benefits to potential customers.

ESTABLISH THE PURPOSE

If you think of your presentation as a journey, the purpose is your destination. Stating your purpose tells you what you will have accomplished when you have “arrived”.

The two types of presentations you will give in the business world are:
informative and persuasive, sometimes known as telling and selling.

The purpose of an informative presentation is to increase understanding.

The purpose of a persuasive presentation is to influence choice, or change attitude or behaviour.

A good informative presentation usually answers the questions:

- Who am I talking to?
- Why do they need this information?
- What do I want them to understand?

A good persuasive presentation usually answers the questions:

- Who do I want to influence?
- What do I want them to do?
- How, when and where do I want them to do it?

It is important to decide whether your presentation is informative or persuasive, both for yourself and for your listeners.

Listeners accept, and expect, persuasive presentations to include relevant information which helps them make a decision.

However, many listeners feel “conned” if they are told a presentation is informative but it turns out to be persuasive!

I hope this quick tip is of use to you?

Please remember that if you or your company ever need any management or sales training please give us a call on 0800 849 6732 or complete our enquiry form at http://www.m-t-d.co.uk/enquiry.htm

Until then take care of yourself.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director

Here is a very quick and simple, yet extremely powerful delegating tip.  This method of delegating certain tasks also helps in team building and cohesiveness, training, management and leadership within the team. 

Sooner or late you will have a situation where you have many staff that have been around a long time; which of course is a good thing.  When you are fortunate enough to have those long time experienced pros who stay current and continue to improve; you have nothing less than a treasure.  But, as with everything, there is the 80/20 rule with the more experienced, long-time team members and sometimes some of these ‘old pros’ become a little lethargic and comfortable in the fact that they ‘know it all.’ 

This causes many problems:

1. More experienced team members sometimes fail to keep up with new and emerging trends and industry advancements
2. More experienced members sometimes begin to take the “basics” for granted or forget them entirely
3. More experienced members sometimes feel they do not have to do their ‘homework’ anymore.
4. The above begins to cause dissension in the team as newer staff begin to feel a sense of favoritism toward certain employees by management
5. Communication begins to break down as the newer members begin to shun the old pros and a lack of mutual disrespect develops
6. And more

Well, this delegating tip can help: Simply delegate those tasks that involve the newer, more advanced topics, training topics or even the old basic topics and assign them to the old pros to teach.  When faced with the job to give a report on the new trend or the new product, the team member must him or herself become an expert.  When the long-time employee has the task to teach the new member the basics, they themselves must re-learn those basics.  Take those tasks that you usually do, and delegate them to the people who need to learn them the most. 

When the long-time member is successful and does a good job:

1. He or she has re-learned or learned the topic or training
2. He or she has had to do some real homework
3. They realize that they do not know everything and must keep up to date
4. They begin to empathize with the newer members as they remember what starting out was like
5. Newer members begin to respect the old pros more as they see that they really are experts and practice what they preach. 
6. Newer members begin to lose the feeling that management is playing favorites

Now, in the event that the long-term member screws it up, it actually solves a lot of problems as well:

1. They now realize that they are not as sharp as they thought
2. They are brought back “down to earth”
3. You now have a tangible situation to point to, to suggest improvement
4. A sense of camaraderie ensues as the newer members feel that those long time pros are just as human as they
5. The pro realizes that he or she must stay up to date and do the homework

The common way of thinking is to delegate a task to the person most qualified to compete it.  However, for some things do the opposite: delegate the task to the person who most needs to LEARN it, and watch what happens!

I hope this tip is useful?

Sean

Sean McPheat

MTD Management Training

0800 849 6732