Earlier this week, via the Leadership Development Centre, I attended a seminar by the leadership guru Ron Heifetz.  He was an interesting study as a presenter partly because he made very effective use of story and metaphor.  Any of us could adopt his approach just by putting in some work:

1. Heifetz showed he had done his homework before coming 'Down Under'. He discussed Winston Churchill as a leader.  Heifetz had a New Zealand version relating to the iconic events of Gallipoli, rather than choosing an aspect of Churchill's life less close to our hearts.
2. He used simple local anecdote - using a visit to a local cafe to develop a metaphor for routine technical leadership.  Plus he complimented us about NZ coffee at the same time!
3. An ancient story from Heifetz's Jewish background made another important point.  People said to me that they found the story intrinsically interesting, plus it gave Heifetz a chance to share something of himself with us.
4. A couple of current New Zealand metaphors showed he was up to date with things Kiwi. One of these metaphors, the Whale Rider story from the New Zealand film, took a central role in his development of his approach to leadership.
5. Heifetz also connected to us, 'parent to parent' by using events surrounding his son's bad skiing injury.

Okay, we may not all be Harvard University leadership gurus, but each of us could create valuable stories from our own and our audience's worlds.

A client this week began rehearsing a presentation.  Within a minute he was churning out turn-off expressions such as: 'Today I'm going to tell you about...' 'I just want to cover...' 'Then I'm going to move on to...'

You often hear these deadly phrases at the beginnings of a presentation.  None of them captivate an audience;instead they destroy any energy and attraction.

Aim to create energy with the phrases you use: 'Our company is in a unique position....' It is important that we understand...' 'Of course there is another key aspect....'  You don't have to stray into too much hype.

These empowering phrases not only interest the audience more - they energise the speaker as well.

As a second simple step: Switch to the active voice.  With this change, you quickly move energy levels up another notch:

'Our company is in a unique position....' becomes: 'The addition of Jane Smith to our group puts our company in a unique position'

' It is important that we understand...'becomes: 'We must understand...'

There are some great and well-written ideas for the start of a presentation at the interesting brain blog: Create Passionate Users

The life seems glamorous, the engagements pile up because of your fantastic book or your wonderful experience, but what is the real story?

Answer?  Don't give up your day job!  There's excellent coverage of the economics of public speaking in a recent post on Ben Casanocha's blog: So you want to get on the speaking circuit.

There is another plus of public speaking that Casanocha doesn't mention - public speaking can attract people to whatever you are doing in that day job - the courses you run, books you have written, great causes you espouse and so on.

By the way, my link to this post came from Tyler Cowan's blog: The Marginal Revolution. It has been described as the 'best economics blog in the universe'!

People are still discussing the Obama election night speech.  A surprising number of generally cynical Kiwis seem very impressed.  That's got to be some sort of sign of Obama's effectiveness!

Last week a guy on one of our courses told me about attending the speech.  He and a group of friends, decided to go from New York to Chicago to experience it for themselves.  He said that Obama's presence reached out across the massive bullet proof glass shield and seemed to speak to every single individual in Grant Park and the surrounding streets. 

No doubt the speech will be analysed right through future generations, but here is one analysis from Bert Decker and here is the hard copy of the speech, courtesy of the interesting presentation blog: Pivotal Speaking