You can be in a room full of participants wearing expensive suits. But people will surely give their attention to someone in shirts and jeans because his name is Warren Buffet. What you wear creates the first impression. Your presence and the way you connect with people creates the lasting impression.
I can offer you a workshop that will help you discover your presence, but I cannot wear you presence the way they do in Dress for Success and Executive Image training programs. I cannot also make you speak like a leader because I will not be asking you to imitate any leader. Leaders do not speak the same way.
To develop your leadership presence, you have to unlearn pretense. I have often heard experts say that you “fake it ’til you make it”. They want you to pretend that you are someone else because they do not think highly of you (and maybe of themselves too). I suspect that they are faking you too.
Stop pretending. Make real connections. Help everyone feel your leadership presence.
Mission of the Month
Help leaders communicate effectively. Encourage them to examine their beliefs about speaking, show them better learning opportunities to speak with confidence, and challenge them to get rid of their sacred cows so that they can get real.
Offer seminars and workshops on public speaking. The Show Up and Speak workshops will be made available to pastors, priests, teachers, and students for free. So, I am looking for new partner companies. These seminars are worth 60,000 pesos per session. I know my target audience will make more impact when they attend these seminars.Explore new exercises on developing leadership presence.
Share my discoveries to my audiences. I will also invite aspiring speakers to join the Speaker’s Circles. The Speaker’s Circles is by invitation only, but interested individuals may express their intentions and join the waiting list.
Welcome new marketing partners from Cebu and Davao so that I can offer my seminars and speaking engagements there.
Write more articles on effective communication, presentations, and public speaking. These articles will be meaningful and useful to professional speakers, corporate trainers, entrepreneurs, salespeople, marketing professionals, teachers, clerics, and politicians.
Encourage readers to send their articles. They can talk about their experiences in communication. They may also ask questions.
Engage, engage, engage.
Ideas for Inspirational Speakers and Leaders
You want to be inspirational. As a leader, you know that your people expect you to lift them up when they are down, to show the vision when failures blind them, and to deliver hope when they feel that nothing is left for them. I put together my ideas on how you can be effective as an inspirational speaker. I believe these ideas will also help leaders who want to inspire others. You can find these ideas in Become an Inspirational Speaker.
Tips for Team Building Facilitators
Help the teams create open and honest communication.
Notice that there are teams who do not want to have group discussions. Some say that group discussions bore them to death. Others say that nothing good resulted from there past team building workshops. Those team building sessions have speakers asking them to reflect on their lives and their communication issues. Not everyone shared because it was not safe. The teams went back to the office with increased mistrust with each other. This is why, this time they demand a team building workshops which are all game, all play, and no group discussion. They want to avoid any open and honest communication because no one is honest anyway.Games may bring to them temporary happiness. But unresolved communication issues will slowly kill their joys. Don’t allow indifference and lack of trust determine how you design and facilitate their team building exercises. As a leader, you are responsible for helping team members find joy in open and honest communication. Allow me to suggest ways on how you can encourage team sponsors to address communication issues in a safe and friendly environment. Find more in Team Building Tips: Improving Communication
My Ten Beliefs about Communication
I cannot teach you the easiest and the best ways to communicate with others. I believe you have to find that for yourself. I can only share with you the ideas which are working for me now. Five years from now, some of these ideas will be polished. Others will be thrown away for experience will prove them useless.My beliefs about communication is a product of many experiences. There are ideas sacred many years ago which I now find shallow. Communication experts still teach some of these shallow teachings. You may be using one of them today when you communicate with others. Don’t worry. You will outgrow the wrong practices too. Just make sure you keep on learning.
There are many things that I believe about communication. But we are on a journey. Allow me to share with you ten of these communication beliefs today.
Questions About Public Speaking
Readers submitted their questions about public speaking. You can find my answers to some their questions below:
- Is it better to move your arms or keep it still? Use arms to highlight your important points. I find it natural to use my left arm. But really, it does not matter which hand to use. Learn how to use natural gestures.
- Where should I get my sources for my talk? You can research for stories. You can use your experiences too. But the best sources I know are your audiences. I will tell you why.
- How do you get audience’s attention? My quick answer: do your assignment. Pay attention to your audience. Here is how.
- How to conquer the fear of public speaking? Whatever you fear, you must name it. The 600 pound gorilla is oftentimes a stuffed animal. Find out how to get rid of your public speaking fear.
- What are the best ways to eliminate fillers like “ah” and “um”? There are many reasons why we have aspirative fillers.Find out what you can do for each reason.