Turbo Charge Your Career With The Most Powerful Leadership Tool Of All: The Leadership Talk Part 3
To develop and deliver a great Leadership Talk, you must understand that every Talk has three important parts. (1) Audience Needs. (2) Strong Belief. (3) Action. (1) Audience needs: The first step in putting together a Leadership Talk is to understand the needs of your audience. As I explained in Part Two, they cannot be ordered to be your cause leaders. Their commitment is one of free choice. They will not make that choice unless they believe that their being your cause leaders will in some way help solve the problems of their (not your) needs. All needs are problems. All problems are crying out for solutions. When you are helping them with those solutions, you are a long way down the road of motivating them to make the choice to be your cause leaders. When you answer these questions, you have a good idea what their needs are. (1) What is changing for them? (2) Who would they rather have leading them besides you? (3) What action do they want to take? (4) What do they feel? (5) What do they fear? (6) What's their major problem? (7) What makes them angry? (8) What do they dream? (2) Strong belief: Knowing your audience's needs is important, but it's only the first step in developing a Leadership Talk. The next step involves strong belief, not just your belief but theirs. Clearly, you must believe in the cause. But your belief is irrelevant. After all, if you didn't believe in the cause, you shouldn't be leading it. The key question is can you transfer your belief to them so that they believe in it as strongly as you do and will commit to becoming your cause leaders? As I explained in Part Two, you are asking people to take leadership for your cause. Taking leadership is a special undertaking, calling for a special commitment. People will not undertake leadership lightly. It is not your choice for them to take leadership. It is their choice. And to weigh the pros and cons of that choice, they want to know two things: who you are and why you are there. You must tell them or they will tell you. And if they tell you, you may not like what they say. As to who you are: In their eyes, who you are involves your knowledge/skills as to meeting the challenges of the cause and your commitment to that cause. If they perceive that you have weak knowledge/skills and/or weak commitment, they'll peg you as unworthy and maybe worse, untrustworthy. As to you why you are there. There is only one answer to why you are there: They must know that you are there to help them solve the problems of their needs. Without communicating strong belief on both counts, who you are and why you are there, you cannot give a Leadership Talk to motivate them to be your cause leader. (3) Action. It's not so much what you say that's important when giving a Leadership Talk, it's what the audience does after you have had your say. The function of The Leadership Talk is to have people take action that gets results -- and more results than simply average results, more results faster, and "more faster" on a continual basis. Once you begin to see your leadership interactions in terms of physical action, you'll see your leadership, and the way you get results, in fresh ways. Challenge your cause leaders to take physical action by asking them, 'What three or four leadership actions, PHYSICAL ACTIONS, will you take to achieve the results we need?' Having people move from simply saying they will do things to actually taking the physical action to do them will dramatically increase
the effectiveness of your Talk. I've been teaching the Leadership Talk to thousands of leaders worldwide during the past 21 years. Many of them have found that the difference between the Leadership Talk and presentations/speeches is the difference between typewriters and wordprocessors. I remember using a typewriter. I was happy using it. I had no idea that I needed a wordprocessor. But when I bought a wordprocessor and went through the trouble of learning how to use it, I saw how badly I had needed it all along. I saw that it was a quantum leap in terms of speed, efficiency, and productivity over a typewriter. So it is with the Leadership Talk and presentations/speeches. Once you go through the trouble of learning how to use Leadership Talks then applying them consistently on a daily basis, you will find they can transform your leadership effectiveness and boost your career in ways presentations and speeches could never do. Such transformations won't happen immediately. It will take you awhile to learn the processes and be comfortable using them. Since you're not in one of my seminars, where the participants learn tested processes to create and deliver Leadership Talks in a relatively short period of time, you'll have to rely on putting them together piecemeal. But in these initial stages of developing and delivering Leadership Talks, putting them together piecemeal is an effective way of beating the learning curve. After all, leadership is long and careers are short. You are not learning to give Leadership Talks as a short term endeavor. It should be a career-endeavor. Step by step, be constantly aware of the three triggers, Need, Belief, Action. Speak from and to those triggers. You may discover that giving Leadership Talks consistently is the best thing that ever happened to your career. 2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved. PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.com The author of 23 books, Brent Filson's recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. ? and for more than 20 years has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: "49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results," at http://www.actionleadership.com.
For more on the Leadership Talk: http://www.theleadershiptalk.com
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Workplace Security Plan: Does Your Company Have One?
Consultant's Perspective...
Cross Cultural Solutions for International Business
Globalisation, the expansion of intercontinental trade, technological advances and the increase in the number of companies dealing on the international stage have brought about a dramatic change in the frequency, context and means by which people from different cultural backgrounds interact.
Recycling, Reverse Logistics and?..Candy
The candy box is a container for all your favourite chew bars, gum and all your other favourite candy. A must-have for all kids and a great fashion accessory! The marketers are desperate for kids to user
their box - so much so that they will soon be giving them away!
Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: Finding The Perfect Balance
This article relates to the Work/Life Balance competency, which investigates how your staff feels with regard to the balance between work and personal life. It explores issues such as priority of family and hours on the job, also covered in this competency. Organizations that enjoy a high satisfaction level in this area will normally exhibit a low rate of absenteeism and experience higher employee retention. Evaluating this competency is helpful in understanding issues relating to a workforce that is commonly tardy or absent from work.
Organizational Culture, Creativity, Innovation
It can be concluded with great certainty that certain organizational cultures inhibit creativity and innovation whilst others foster it. Some organizations are just better at identifying problems, generating and selecting valuable ideas and developing and commercialising them - this is why those firms tend to maintain competitive advantage and remain leaders in their field.
Gift Giving for Business a Major Headache
Corporate gifting is a big headache for most business owners; how much to spend, who to spend the money on, where to get the gifts, what to get and how to gauge the effect of that giving in terms of benefits for the company are all important questions. When a company decides to give gifts it needs to be planned out as part of doing business, not just a last minute impulse. The cost of gifting should be built in to the cost of your product and used when evaluating your break even point.
Whadda Jerk!
If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.
Why Free Agent Thinking Is Good For Your Company
It's no secret! Day after day the news is riddled with companies who are moving operations to other countries or completely closing their doors. Those who remain must transform themselves to lean, mean, businesses with a constant eye on reducing costs.
The Boss Didn?t Understand Why His Staff Wasn?t Reading His Mind
Many people believe that everyone sees the world exactly the same way as they do. This is never true and was the source of much turmoil in Dr. Jacob's office.
The Silent Assassin - What to Do When They Visit You?
Introduction
Lawyers With 2 Hands And Everything Else
I heard this back a few years ago. The boss yelled, "Get me a good lawyer but not the one with two hands!"
Are You At The Mercy Of Computer Geeks?
Many business owners are sabotaging their business without even realizing it. They are completely out of the loop when it comes to all technology aspects of their operation such as websites, computers and software. They become completely dependent on their technical people and naively believe that things are "being taken care of".
How to Fire an Employee
One of the most difficult tasks you will face as a business owner will be firing employees. Employees who consistently break the rules, do not perform the functions of their job, or cause difficulties for your business can be a strain on the work environment, your cash flow, and even disrupt your business from thriving and performing as expected. This tutorial will give you steps and hints about firing employees or associates.
Increasing Employee Retention Through Employee Engagement
You've seen it happen many times. An organization that provides top wages and benefits loses a great employee to a competitor for no apparent reason. Of course, some employee turnover is to be expected, but if your company is truly engaging your employees, there is no good reason for the unexpected loss of quality staff members. Many companies already know that wages and benefits are important to employees, but compensation alone is not enough to keep the highly skilled, motivated and experienced workforce your business needs to excel.
Lead to Succeed: The Seven Essential Steps to Work Leader Success
In my book "You're In Charge?What Now?" I use a mnemonic to describe the seven essential steps to work leader success. The mnemonic is "L.E.A.D.E.R.S" and each of these letters represents an essential step. While I have simplified the elements of leadership into seven words, the essence of my message is that being an effective, peak-performance work leader is simple, but not easy.
Employee Discipline: How to Nip Problems in the Bud
Are you uncomfortable with delivering disciplinary action, even involving employees you know deserve it? You're not alone. Disciplinary action is one of the least favored tasks a supervisor must occasionally perform.
Innovation Management: The Hype Cycle
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.
Meetings: Don?t Just Show Up, Stand Out and Shine
Meetings, whether they're regularly scheduled routines in your company or now-and-then get-togethers, can be a place for you to gain positive visibility and to showcase your capabilities. Here are three strategies that will help you stand out and shine.
On the Road to Assertiveness
Learning to be assertive takes time, courage and the ability to recognize the situation for what is really is.
Stop Going to Meetings - 10 Questions to Ask Before Attending a Meeting - Get More Productive
We get invited to attend so many "meetings" but do we need to attend them all? Use these 10 questions to assess if you should attend that next meeting invitation.
|
