“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.” Lao Tzu Soft Power is part of Leadership Soft Power is necessary … Read more
I sat through 12 business presentations today. I used my laptop during most of them. Why? Show me you know me, know my reason for listeningTop reason – not a single presenter made me feel like they had something to say that was relevant to me. Not a single presenter took a moment to show … Read more
I was thinking about why presentations fail today. Why do so many great ideas fail at the presentation stage? Business plan presentations, entrepreneur pitches, Sales presentations? Why do they fail?There are many reasons: failure to prepare (deliberate practice), failure to clarify what you want from the audience, failure to make the material relevant to the … Read more
Jerry Weissman, in Presenting to Win, says that there are 5 Cardinal Sins in Presentations: No clear point – the audience leaves wondering what it was all about. “What was the point?” No audience benefit – the audience doesn’t see how they can benefit. “So what?” No clear flow – the sequence of ideas is … Read more
Professor Robert Cialdini in his book “Influence: The Science of Persuasion” outlines six principles of ethical persuasion: reciprocity, scarcity, liking, authority, social proof, and commitment/consistency. Reciprocation – People tend to return a favor. Thus, the pervasiveness of free samples in marketing. In his conferences, Cialdini often uses the example of Ethiopia providing thousands of dollars … Read more
Jeffrey Pfeffer says that there are 4 ways that good ideas get shot down: Confusion – “yes, but how does that address US foreign policy and the social responsibility charter and the challenges of globalisation… and the new tax situation?” Fear mongering – “uff… this will be like X back in 2008 when it all … Read more
I had a question from one of the participants, Thomas, last week in the IESE Persuasive Communications Seminar in Barcelona. He asked “If you are caught off guard with a question – how do you react, or how do you turn around a question without answering?” Don’t do the Rabbit The “Rabbit-in-the-Headlights” look, wide-eyed surprise … Read more
In 2010, 294 billion emails were sent per day for a total of 90 trillion in the full year. 1.9 billion users sent an email during 2010. The average business user in a 1,000 user organisation receives 110 emails per day (of which 13 are spam) and sends 36 emails. (source Radicati Group Email Statistics … Read more
I just finished reading Lend Me Your Ears by Max Atkinson on my kindle. I am a regular reader of Max’s Atkinson’s blog. Max is a political speechwriter, a professor and a blogger. You can follow him on twitter @maxatkinson. Lend Me Your Ears is an easy read and covers the subject of public speaking … Read more
I have prepared a series of short videos for my IESE courses this year. This is a 3 minute video outlining the 4 ways that you can handle anxiety or performance nerves. (The video is here on my blog). I spoke about the 4 ways of handling anxiety in a previous post 4 ways to … Read more