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E-zine 1

Welcome,

The point is we were never taught how to give an effective presentation in school. So you need to learn them here.

This issue's Action Article show you how you can be much more effective and get better results for you and your team. Read it and apply it. Small steps lead to big results,

Here's to your continued success,

• Action Article: Project Success Depends on Your Presentation Skills . . . NO FAIR!

• Success Story:  'I changed the dynamics within my team meetings.'

• Events: Advanced Presentation Skills in Denver in February

• Other: COMStar unveils six different People Skills courses all designed to increase your effectiveness and results

Your project success depends on your presentation skills . . . No Fair!

I know it’s harsh. But think about it for a minute. Any time you speak in front of a group or team meeting it’s a “Presentation”. In fact, it’s a “Persuasive Presentation”. You need to be very effective giving one.

You have seen it happen.

• At the project kickoff meeting you don’t get all the support from stakeholders.

• At your team meetings not everyone buys into your plan.

• The client requirements meeting doesn’t go as planned.

• You had the status report teleconference but nothing happened.

• Your boss didn’t approve your request for more resources.

Even though you have great technical skills, your real job is to get other people to do what needs to be done to meet the team or project objectives! That takes the “people skills” that they didn’t teach you school; the skills that will make or break your effectiveness.

Persuasive Presentations Are Not Taught In School

In most technical schools presentation skills aren’t taught at all. Our only format for presentations were from either grade school, “What I did on my summer vacation”. In high school or college they call that an Informative Presentation. Or somewhere along the line we learned the old presentation adage: “Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em. Tell ‘em. Tell ‘em what you told ‘em”. Neither of those formats are persuasive. They won’t do what you need, and that’s to Get Action!

Learn the Persuasive Presentation Format

Here are the four basic parts that my good friend Tom Dearth of Spotlight Communications recommends:

1.    Urgency: The first step is to create urgency that your audience needs to do something. Start with how bad it will get if they don’t do something. I know it’s a downer but it gets people’s attention. Create this with specifics not broad generalities. They must be relevant to the concerns of the people you are speaking too. For example, if it’s upper management, you might focus on financial issues i.e. “we will continue to loose $1 million a month. If you are presenting to your client the focus might be with end user efficiencies or effectiveness, i.e. 50% of our customer records have data input errors. This Urgency section doesn’t have to be long but it must get your audience’s attention.

2.    Recommendation: This is where you present your suggested actions that will resolve the urgency issues and bring the benefits to all concerned. For Example: “If we add to additional software developers, we will bring the project in on time and save $5 million dollars while increasing customer satisfaction by 18%”.

3.    Ask for Questions: Ask for specific questions. Pause long enough to give the thinkers in the audience time to formulate them. Be prepared to answer the obvious ones. Make sure there are no unanswered questions that will block progress.

4.     Next Step: Present a brief summary of the benefits and the specific actions you want people in your audience to perform and a time line for action. i.e. approve the transfer, authorize the funds, make the resources available Monday etc. This section is even more effective if you can get people to take some action right at that moment. i.e. sign a request, give the name and contact information of the action person, commit to watch a demonstration etc.

Develop your Persuasive Presentation skills

As we teach in the COMStar People Skills seminars the only way to develop your People Skills is to practice. The good news is that practicing a new skill never makes things worse than the results you are getting today.

To help you with presentations we offer the Advanced Presentation Skills seminar. Check our schedule for then next class offering.

Dick,  I changed the dynamics within my team meetings, just by incorporating some of the presentation skills I took away from your class.

Deborah took an interesting twist and used the Persuasive Presentation format as a quick way to get action on important issues raised at her weekly Program Team action items / status update meetings. 

If there are action items with "issues" that have medium to high risk implications, she frames them as an urgent problem that needs team discussion and agreement on how to resolve the issue so that it does not impact the rest of the deliverables.

She creates an "urgent focus" on the issue by outlining the specific negative implications it can impose on the rest of the project.

She then calls for recommendations and possible mitigations that will allow the project to stay on track and create a win/win resolution. This is the creative part of the meeting with discussion and agreement on what is important to consider. Deb ends this section with a "statement of understanding". (The now agreed upon recommendation)

She then asks for any other questions or areas that they did not consider.

As the next step, she reiterates the benefits of the mitigation and then documents the recommendation as a formal agreement in the Risk Plan.

Thanks Deborah, great application !

On December 1-2, 2010, Dick is presenting Advanced Presentation Skills in conjunction with the Mile HI chapter of PMI. This is a great opportunity to learn how to structure a persuasive presentation and an action update. The best part is you get to practice giving presentations and then get feedback from the audience, personal one-on-one coaching from a speaking professional and a DVD of your session for your personal growth.

Check it out at  http://www.onepmi.org/PMIWeb/EventDetails.aspx?ProductID=1993

COMStar provides a series of unique People Skills programs designed to make you more effective with less hassles and stress.

See our website at http://www.comstar-online.com

For your specific situation contact Dick  for a more detailed discussion. 

Call Dick at: (303) 666-4224

Toll Free at: 1-866-317-4224

email him at: dcochran@comstar-online.com

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