Seldom will you go a long time as a manager without having to present some kind of message, Whether it’s to gain more funding, to convince a customer to use your services or simply to address your team members, you will need to present a message where decisions have to be made and your credibility will be on the line.

How can you make sure you blow them away with your words? How can you prepare effectively to give yourself the best chance of success?

Here are some ideas:

Ask yourself: What objectives do I have? This will drive your whole presentation. Your goals have to be clear, so you can prepare according to exactly what you want to achieve.

Then, what do you need to know about the audience? If it’s your team members, you hopefully will know their characteristics, and will be able to plan accordingly for the responses you most likely will get. But what about if you’re presenting to someone you have never spoken to before? You can still do some research on them or their company to ascertain what kind of person they might be. This will give you confidence in preparing the message specifically for them.

Decide how long the presentation will be. If it’s, say, 15 minutes, divide it up into manageable chunks or units. Write down all the points you want to make, and put them in order. This will create the framework for what you want to say. Prepare the material at the level of the audience; you don’t want to go too deep, but you don’t want to bore them with simplicities.

Don’t use too many facts and figures that will cause confusion and boredom. Prepare any visuals you might be using in a way that complements what you are saying. If your presentation is simply the reading of slides or papers that the audience could have read themselves, you will soon bore them.

Prepare something that will grab their attention. Make the opening come alive with a hard-hitting question, or a statement that makes them think. Then give them a hook, something that will tease them into wondering what the next piece of information is. Create interest by observations or interesting stories rather than a list of facts or figures.

When you’ve prepared the material, read it through and act as if you are the audience. Would this information keep me interested? Does it answer all my questions in my mind? Has it impressed me so that I want to know more?

When you’ve prepared effectively, you might want to bounce the ideas off a colleague so you can get their feedback. Ask for constructive ways you can make the material come alive, and how it would affect them if they were listening to it. That way, you have rehearsed it and got to know how you sound when you deliver it. Remember…keep to the objectives and goals, and you’ll have prepared a presentation that blows them away!

Our next message will be about how you can make a presentation that blows them away!

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

The Kaizen model of continuous improvement originated in Japan and has been used as a management concept for incremental, or gradual/continual, change or improvement. It has been a way of life for Japanese people for centuries and can be applied to key elements of business like quality, effort, employee involvement, change initiatives and communication.

The emphasis is on gradual improvement, built on a foundation of strategic initiatives that create specific and measurable benefits to the business. It’s evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and is best applied in incremental change situations over the long-term.

How do you get your team to buy in to the Kaizen concept?

Firstly, gain agreement that small changes would be advantageous to the working climate. It will have greater backing if all recognise the need for growth.

Ascertain how you could perform as a team if everyone was willing to commit to improvement. Don’t expect or demand overnight radical change…gain their agreement that small, specific improvements will be easier and more effectively implemented than larger, more global ones.

Decide how the team can measure the effectiveness of any new initiative. This will help gain ownership of any changes that can be made.

Commit to the changes yourself, so you set the example of what’s expected. Team members are more likely to commit if they see you championing the concept.

Create short-term wins that will help the team see successes quickly and frequently. Feedback of these wins will create a motivational environment.

Communicate the results and share the benefits. You’ll cement the commitment and drive the momentum forward to continue.

It’s always going to be easier for someone to aim for a 5% improvement over 3 months, than a 20% improvement over a year, so the Kaizen concept of continuous and frequent improvements will provide you with an easier acceptance level from your team. And that can only be good for morale and confidence!

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Manager Training

Click below for a:
Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”

Management is a key position within any business, and can be a very rewarding role to play. It’s not always plain sailing, though, and you sometimes have to deal with people who cause difficult situations for you.

For example, you may be in a situation where you find it difficult to deal with a team member. This can be caused by many reasons, including differences in positions and interests, motivations, personality styles, perceptions, cultural backgrounds, experience and many others.

Here are some questions you may like to consider to isolate the source of these differences and help you consider a way to deal with them:

How is your perception of the situation different from the other person?

How might their motivations differ from yours?

What do you find difficult about the other person’s style?

Does the other person’s communication style differ from yours?

What is the other person’s interest in this matter?

Are they taking a position that you find hard to deal with?

What experience or background does the person have that might be influencing they way they consider the situation?

Are other people involved in the situation, whose views you may have to consider?

Having answered those questions, what conclusions can you come to about the source of the difficulty?

The answers to these questions will give you a clear view as to why the difficulties are occurring in the first place, and give you a firm foundation on which to build a solution-focused conversation.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

Right…grab a piece of paper and a pen.

Do it now before reading on…

OK, draw a picture of a hand on that piece of paper…

It doesn’t matter if you’re not an artist…just draw it.

Done it?

Good! Read on…

Let me ask you…did you look at your own hand to draw the picture? No? You’re in good company because, in this exercise, we find most people don’t look at their own hand first. Why?

Because most people prefer to work with a mental picture even though the real world is staring them in the face. We think with these mental pictures and we frequently base our performance on these illusions. Psychologists call the act of creating mental pictures generalization, abstraction, or concept acquisition. You might want to call it stereotyping.

It isn’t that important if you drew the hand based on your mental picture or by looking at your other hand as you drew it. What is more important is if you decide on team processes or company policy based on the stereotypes or generalisations you carry in your head.

You may have a distorted picture, based on your current thought processes or conditioning that will cause you to think the same way as you did last time you carried out the process. What could be the consequences?

Well, your decision may not produce the desired results you hoped for, as the process may not be in line with the way your team views the situation. Your perception may be true in your eyes, but because you have been conditioned that way, you may not see reality as seen through others’ eyes.

So, take a few moments before making a decision today to see if it’s based on how you generalise situations (stereotyping) or if it’s an up-to-date viewpoint based on taking a look at the real world.

Take another look at your drawing…did you copy your other hand? Or did you stereotype?

Food for thought!

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

Procrastination is a symptom. It’s your body and mind telling you there is some area of stress that you are focusing on. By relieving the feeling of pain associated with actually doing the task you are putting off, you are reducing your anxiety by focusing on something more pleasurable or less demanding.

Remember, procrastination is an end result, so you might want to diagnose what’s causing it first, before you dive into these tips and techniques:

Break any projects you’re working on down into more manageable chunks

Time management guru Alan Lakein suggests using the Swiss cheese method. By knocking holes into projects (doing small tasks associated with it) you don’t see it as a massive mountain, just small journeys to the next base camp.

Aim for a short period of interrupted, quality time that you can devote to the task. Even 20 minutes of focused effort can break the back of many big tasks. At the end of this time, make sure you give yourself a quick reward…a cup of coffee, a walk in the fresh air, a piece of fruit…anything that tells the brain it gets rewarded for completing that bit of the task. It then looks forward to the next 20 minute slot!

Remember your own needs…plan for and carry out some recreation time…but only when you have kept your promise of doing what you said you would with the task.

Use appropriate self-talk to keep momentum going. Words like ‘I choose to’ and ‘I want to’ are better than ‘I must’ or ‘I should’.

Don’t aim for perfection. Excellence is usually good enough for 99% of your stakeholders.

Reward those small wins and share successes with others.

Remember, procrastination is just a matter of thought processes. By concentrating on the benefits of finishing the task instead of the pain of doing it, you should soon see a change in your motivation to overcome procrastination.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”