Know-How Exchange : Other

According to Situational Leadership Workshop of Novartis

"one becomes a Leader when one tries to change the behavior of any individual in any situation"

A leader is one who can motivate, inspire and make his team work in adverse conditions, in the face of insurmountable difficulty and acheive the target objective. Good leaders are a mix of Participative and Authoratative traits, they listen to the team and also when needed be strict in making team obeying orders. Good leaders are also very much protective of their teams. When faced with any threat, the leader protects his team, but if the threat is due to a misconduct by any team member, the leaders doesnt hesitate to take tough actions against that person (of course only visible to the team).

for other helps in leadership, you can check the book, "7 Habits of Highly Effective Leaders".

hope that helps. I once had a presentation on Leadership given by Gen Collin Powell to US Military Academy, West Point. i will check to find that, while you drop me a mail if you need that.

cheers!!

What a challenge! We could go on about aspects of leadership for much of eternity and peppering you with examples of good and bad leaders, relevant and irrelevant to your enterprise would be easy, given the services of Google. Strange – there’s a product which is a leader in its field, conceived and brought to market by a couple of guys who certainly didn’t fit into anyone’s concept of being a leader!

Maybe it would be of more use to you to look at the structure and methodology of your presentation.

Do you regard yourself as a leader or do others regard you as such? The answer to the question might predicate the direction in which you want to point the presentation. If you are, or aspire to be a leader, then 40 minutes of a very inspirational “YOU” talking on any subject under the sun which can be empathised by your delegates would both suffice and delight!

On the other hand, if you set your self up as an example of leadership with references to “From my experience”, “I”, “Me” and so on, you’ll have 20-25 people trying to knock you off your pedestal. Same thing happens in sales training – the “Expert” has a bunch of people who don’t believe that they have a thing to learn from the guy at the podium and set him up for a fall. That’s why we get paid danger money and take our own training from stand-up comedians!

Once you’ve decided on the style, next go for the message. The content can evolve from that. Whatever you say and whatever examples you chose, the key thing, to my mind at least, is the clarity of your message. If you have researched your subject well, followed a particular and relevant path through the wilderness of “Leadership Studies” (There’ll be some half baked university somewhere in the UK desperate enough to attract students to offer such a course, believe me) then in your allotted time, what are you expected to deliver?

You need to select a theme. Only you can decide this. Then, if you wish to keep people’s attention for however long the presentation lasts, you need at least enough interesting scenarios to relate to in order to maintain a level of excitement. What’s coming next, should be the thoughts in your delegates minds, not when is this going to end.

Audience interaction and participation helps because involvement is usually seen to be good. If you’ve never done it before, don’t start now. Having the lunatics take over the asylum is a bad idea. Having a bunch of delegates hijack a leadership seminar defeats the purpose of the very subject itself.

Involvement need not include abdication of authority. “What would you do if?” questions open up the floor, but as you will already have researched the answers and more importantly know all the funny ones, you can keep control.

If you can do it, to have a path to follow, like a seasoned company chairman, let the floor have some say, but always take the subject back. Ask some questions but know what the answers might be before you ask and know what you might say in response. Always aim to seamlessly regain control, preferably with a light touch of humour.

Most importantly, you will have your theme, your opening, your questions, your feedback, your development of key arguments all in your bag. You finish in control by having a point to end on. One which gives cause for thought. It should be a point which no-one is likely to have heard of. Possibly one which you devised yourself, but it must have impact. End on a bang, not a whimper.

And how do you get there? It’s Preparation, Preparation and Preparation. Ditch the standard PowerPoint approaches unless you are a genius with it and learn to deliver your presentation with as few notes as possible. Never put up a slide or a visualisation on a screen which contains the words you are going to say.

Don’t hand out key-notes before you speak and treat the whole event like a form of drama with you as the director, the delegates as the audience and the participants. Aim to sum up with your last sentence – not your last paragraph or the last page of your script.

And be careful. When it all comes together, you’ll look and sound like a leader and that’s a hard act to live up to. But then, maybe you’re up to it and that’s why you were chosen to do this!

Bon Chance!

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions