Back in the old days day an executive could issue a directive and be reasonably sure it would be carried out.Unfortunately, that's no longer the case...and too few executives have made the needed adjustment.
Today you have to persuade rather than command.To show your direct reports why the directive makes sense and, particularly, what's in it for them.You have to recognize that your employees feel more loyalty to their professions than to the company and, being younger than you are, have a shorter attention span. You have to come across as real, meaning you have to show your feelings as well as your thoughts when delivering content.
That means you have to put passion into your communications because if you don't show you care deeply about what you’re saying nobody else will. The Roman emperor Marcus (“The Wise”) Aurelius put it well: “If you would draw tears from another's eyes, yourself the signs of grief must show," he said.
Putting passion in your presentation may not come naturally to you.But it can be learned.And once you learn to do it you’ll feel you’ve been paid back a hundredfold for developing that important skill.Great presenters weren’t born that way. They learned through executive coaching to project passion not only with their choice of words but, more importantly, with conscious uses of their voice, posture, movement and timing.
In the old days presenters stood behind a lectern, the best device ever invented for disconnecting the speaker from the audience.Today's successful presenters abandon the lectern.They recognize that they have to create energy in front of the room if they want to be interesting and hold attention.
In the old days presenters read from a script and audiences dozed off mentally if not physically. A written speech read by a speaker is almost always identified by the audience as “day old bread,” meaning that it was written yesterday and is stale in its delivery today. Today’s successful presenters speak without a script, holding everyone’s attention because the audience knows that it’s a live performance, the thoughts are emanating from the speaker, not a piece of paper, and there’s no safety net.
