Your thoughts. Your ideas. Your knowledge. Can I give you a penny for them? (an old English saying for my international readers) or are they worth more than that? Are they worth more to you than to me? What are they worth to someone else? What makes us different from google as human beings is that we can interpret information, see if from different perspectives. The information age gives everyone the ability to access the same information as you, your value comes in how you interpret, analyse and apply the things you know. But don’t keep it all to yourself, share it around, discuss, collaborate and improve. Your thoughts are only valuable to me if I know them and vice versa. So, don’t be afraid to speak up and give your ideas a jolly good airing. If they’re good, they will be worth more than a penny. They may be worth millions, you just need to establish, to who?
The outspoken boss of Ryanair today claimed that only “slumdwellers” were at risk from Swine flu. Speaking in London today about whether the pandemic will affect their business, O’ Leary – in typical fashion – has grabbed the headlines again with his on the spot reaction in a press conference. Not many leaders could get away with such talk, I can ‘t think of any other company which is able to treat their customers so poorly, yet still see their profits grow. Bolshy, brash and confident, he has more critics than admirers. But what can you can learn from him? This. He’s 100% clear about what his product is, what the offer is, what you get for your money and the service you’ll receive. You can either take it or leave it. He’s passionate about costs and continues to disrupt conventional pricing mechanisms in order to meet his aim of being the lowest cost operator. He continues to erase, reduce and re-define convention in his industry. That’s what you can take away from him.
Personal criticism of others says more about you, than it does about them. It’s an important lesson that I learned many years ago, whilst being coached by a business psychologist. I didn’t get it at first, however the more self-aware I became, the more aware I became of this statement. When you criticise others, what you’re actually doing is saying “I have a problem”. And, more often than not, it’s to do with your own self-esteem. So, when I hear individuals criticising others, my first question is to try and understand what issues the criticiser has, not the person being criticised. Wade straight in with a good open question to see what the real issue is, believe me, it works.
Busy being busy. Some people thrive on it. Creating a whirlwind of activity around them that makes them artificially indispensable. Taking on work, then throwing their head back and rolling their eyes with the sheer weight of their self-imposed workload. I bet you might know someone that leaps from meeting to meeting, with no time in between, using the excuse of their “being too busy” for the lack of preparation. Those people lead organisations into inefficiency, last minute decision making and disruption. As leaders, it’s vitally important to have thinking time and clear space, in order to keep your minds eye active. If you are hyper-busy, doing lots of unimportant work that could be delegated, then start clearing down and thinking bigger. Busy being busy, is not busy being effective.
Budget by Twitter. Things are really changing in the world of communication technology. Let me give you an example of how.
Yesterday, I was at a conference. I popped out at 12.30pm with an aim to catch up on the
budget headlines. Laptop and 3G card in hand.
I got on the network and then logged on to the BBCwebsite where they were streaming the budget live, with interactive comment being made by the BBC’s key journalists such as Robert Peston and commentary being fed in real time from browsers. I then had my Twitter feed open in multpile windows. HM Treasury were sending out the headlines seconds before Alistair Darling announced them, these were then be re-tweeted into dedicated budget discussion groups with peoples individual comments about the announcements “instant feedback”. So, the bottom line was that as the chancellor was saying the words, discussion, feedback and commentary burst into life. Later, I watched C4 news broadcast live Tweets, you can view how
here. What was obvious to me was that has been a major step change in communication speed and
Twitter seems to be the catalyst for this.
It’s beautiful out there. Spring has sprung. Vibrant colours, later evenings, warmer weather, it just contributes to an overall feeling of positivity amongst folk. People are happier, more engaging and conversational. If you could bottle up all those great things and dispense them during the winter months, then wouldn’t life be brilliant? Or should it be brilliant every day. Spring can be in your mind every single day of your life if you want it to be, it’s just about your attitude. So, breathe it all in, suck in as much as you can and hit the slow release button.
I couldn’t. Not me. Surely not. Mmmm, couldn’t someone else do it? What might happen? Sound familiar? Too often we hold ourselves back from change because of fear of the unknown. What about this as an example of somone that didn’t. When Roger Bannister ran the four minute mile in 1954, experts had predicted he may die because of the undue stresses on the body. Could you have done that? Please don’t try this because you might die. That’s a pretty strong warning. However, despite this, Roger Bannister did the unthinkable and broke this amazing landmark which changed the face of athletics forever. Mental toughness, overcoming fear and going into the unknown are qualities we must all possess as leaders. No one is saying that there won’t be the odd nail biting day when you get gripped by a crisis in confidence, that’s called being human, but make sure you do enough to keep yourself challenged, don’t get too comfy!
More feared than death according to polls, public speaking isn’t for everyone. Primarily due to embarrassment, fear, low self-esteem or confidence, it’s seen as one of those things that people would rather not do, than do. As someone that enjoys it, here’s my ten tips for getting it right: -
- Always consider your audience. Put yourself in their shoes, see your presentation from their point of view. What are you imparting, why do you need to impart it and what do you need them to take away?
- Prepare, prepare, prepare. The more prepared you are, the more confident you’ll be.
- Be authentic. The more authentic you are the more the audience will warm to you.
- Get the audience on your side early. Really work on your first 30 seconds in creating a sense of anticipation about what you are going to speak about. Any comment which compliments the audience early will help get them on side.
- Don’t move around too much. This one is personal, I just find it too much to follow hyper-energetic presenters , however some people can pull it off. I plant my feet and use my hands for movement, moving when necessary to make a point and making it a decisive move.
- If your’re using Powerpoint, keep it to an absolute minimum and NEVER, NEVER, NEVER read from your slides and keep your slide content to a minimum.
- Smile. Clearly you wouldn’t if your delivering bad news, however if you’re not, a smile goes a long way as does well placed humour (but don’t do it if it doesn’t feel natural to you).
- Engage with people as you go. Get eye contact with people in the audience, if they give you a good nod, move on to someone else.
- Rehearse and practice. Try and put mental staging posts in your head for your key topics and sub-topics. Don’t use/read from notes, you’re not a newsreader.
- Enjoy it. The more relaxed you are, the better it will be. Everyone gets nerves at the beginning, these subside as you go and you can use the nervous energy to life your performance.
Been thinking about meetings today and their cost. A couple of years back someone gave me a great little excel utility. What you do is punch in the your best guess of how much everyone earns who is attending, then when your meeting starts a costed clock starts to tick. So, it allows you to see the cost of you all sitting round a table drinking choccochinos from the vending machine. When you make a decision, you hit a split timer button and it shows you the cost of each decision you make. It really focuses you down on why you are there, what you need to decide and the opportunity cost of you being somewhere else. Why don’t you give it a go in your head next time you’re in a big meeting. Simple math is number of people x avg. salary/number of working days in a year (say 220) gives you your cost per day. Then divide that by the number of workings hours (say
and you have a cost per hour for your meeting.
See if you’re getting value for money? If you’re not, don’t meet in the first place, do it by phone, exchange more information pre-meeting to save time or allocate shorter times (meetings are max. 30 mins) to get people to the point.
You know that feeling. Elation, trepidation, euphoria, your stomach in your mouth! Business can be a real rollercoaster somedays, big highs followed by extreme lows. Like a rollercoaster, some days you need to stare fear in the face, swallow hard and hang on, other days you throw your hands in the air and let gravity keep you in.
Without those highs and lows you never learn what things come naturally to you and which things are uncomfortable to you (that you need to develop and work on). You’ll never know which things make you feel nervous and which things you can nail with your eyes closed. Leadership is about dealing with the ups and downs in a consistent manner, knowing when to feed off nerves, knowing when to know when you’ve hit a dip and how to create the natual inertia to come out of it.
