Many people see public speaking as just another method of sharing information, but it is much more than that. In order for the speech or presentation to be effective, it is vital that the speaker finds a way to connect to the audience. When the speaker and audience connect there is increased clarity and understanding about the message and the experience is more enjoyable for both parties.

While it may sound difficult in theory, connecting with the audience is not that difficult to achieve for a speaker that is aware of the details of the event as well as the signals the audience is sending.

For one, the type of event will play the largest part in dictating the type of speech, whether it is a business event or for pleasure, formal or informal. For example, telling jokes at a stockholders meeting probably wouldn’t be appropriate; however, a company picnic would be a great place to share a good laugh.

To really connect to the audience and be successful at sharing your message, it is important to be attentive to the response of the audience. If everyone is falling asleep or leaving the room, perhaps there is a different way that the information can be presented. If there are looks of confusion frequently passing between people, perhaps some of the information needs to be clarified and gone over again.

Being confident in the information that needs to shared and flexible in the manner that it is presented is the ideal situation for creating a genuine connection between the speaker and the audience.

Here’s an example of dramatizing your ideas from your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of North Dakota:

This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of North Dakota, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in North Dakota. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

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Results have to be in the wheelhouse of every industry we have here in North Dakota. It is within a mix of strategy that success grows and becomes reality.

Here are seven ingredients of R.E.S.U.L.T.S. based on the key principles found within our mission and values:

R: Reality is the foundation of the organization’s game plan and it should be based on both talent and capability.

E: Excellence jumpstarts all objectives and is the common denominator for all success driven plans.

S: Support from every corner of the company brings ideas and contributions to the forefront.

U: Understanding, especially at the beginning of any endeavor gets everyone on the same page. 

L: Luck is always a key ingredient of success. How people react when things go very well, almost too well, is managed through both good fortune and  increased opportunity. 

T: Trust is integral to the entire process and it must be shared across the organization for anything to be truly effective.

S: Success is the natural derivative of results; not the other way around. Doing everything right, with sincerity and openness, makes achievement and competitive spirit a natural part of business culture. 

At the end of every day, it is all about the results and opportunity. It takes teamwork and great work ethic. And this aptly described our great state of North Dakota.

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This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of North Dakota, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in North Dakota. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

Based on new and groundbreaking research, Dale Carnegie Training is offering a valuable and cost effective session entitled: How Smart Leaders Create Engaged Employees.  Over the course of the afternoon, managers will be shown the three clusters of behaviors that significantly impact employee engagement. Then, within each cluster the facilitators will break down the individual actions leaders take to develop enthusiastic, empowered, confident and inspired employees – the type of employees who care, who want to be part of the organization’s success story, and who will drive the business to peak efficiency.

Increasing productivity and reducing turnover are the simple combination of Dale Carnegie Principles driven by 2013 opportunity.

Presidents, CEOs, HR Directors, and other Senior Team Leaders who are interested in developing a productive and engaged workforce that can positively impact the bottom line are encouraged to sign up and improve the bottom line with common sense strategy.

The sessions are offered in both May and June and will be presented in Fargo on May 30^th, Williston on June 5^th, and Bismarck on June 6^th.

Register today for How Smart Leaders Create Engaged Employees!

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This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of North Dakota, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in North Dakota. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

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While there is no magic recipe for team success, there are certain values you can ensure are in place to give the team the best chance of achieving its goals. Here are some things to think about in that regard from your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of North Dakota:

Engage active team members — Your team will not function effectively unless each member is willing to put in the effort required. Team members who are proactive and understanding of their own parts in the larger process will facilitate progress and cooperation from their fellow team members.

Delegate leadership — If one or more team members demonstrate leadership qualities, you should delegate duties to them and simply take on an advisory role, which is a more efficient use of a leader’s time. That way you can focus on inspiring the best work performance from others and describe and communicate your visions and goals for the team clearly and often.

Maintain integrity — An effective team is guided by a sense of values. Working with integrity means sticking to the company guidelines and mission statement. Workers that have a strong sense of integrity do more than simply avoid rule-breaking practices; they ensure the highest quality on all work presented.

Promote goal-oriented thinking — A team must be able to keep a common goal in mind to ensure success. This type of thinking galvanizes a team, resulting in a higher level of focus and an emphasis on teamwork.

Keep the enthusiasm level high — Teams always work more efficiently when they are not bogged down by negativity. Successful teams consist of members who maintain realistic perspectives while tackling all problems with enthusiasm and positive attitudes. Remember, people want to have fun—even at work!

Monitor the team’s ability to connect — The ability to work well with others is important to any successful team. When team members aren’t buried in interpersonal conflicts, they focus on achieving goals. Workers who demonstrate this quality can work through problems like personality clashes, and maintain positive relationships for the good of the team.

Solving problems effectively and efficiently in a team environment requires a number of conditions to be met, including experience, attitude, willingness and motivation. For more information on team success join us for our upcoming “Advanced Dale Carnegie Course 3-Day” program in Bismarck, ND, on June 11.

This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of North Dakota, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in North Dakota. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

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“The attitude and actions of the immediate supervisor can enhance employee engagement or can create an atmosphere where an employee becomes disengaged (MSW Research and Dale Carnegie Training).”

It is often true that employees and turnover go hand-in-hand. For many companies here in North Dakota and across the United States, it is simply associated as the price of doing business. From car dealerships to restaurants, and everything in between, management practices can often drive new hires and even experienced employees out the door and out looking for a different kind of work.

The culture and climate (or morale) are critical to both careers and profits. It just makes sense to build relationships and grow opportunity. Keeping employees both engaged and positive are two of the hardest things leadership and management can do to create organizational success.

According to the Bureau of National Affairs, 11 billion jobs are lost to turnover each year, and at great cost. Saving jobs means saving both time and money, so the effort to keep employees engaged is of great value.

Building relationships and training leaders to maximize possibilities and minimize poor leadership practices are at the heart of organizational success. Giving employees the opportunity to communicate across levels will indeed increase motivation. When leadership does not allow the cross pollination of ideas, isolation creeps into the ranks and morale does suffer. If communication avenues are not addressed over time, the isolation moves people to unproductivity and disengagement.

Leadership strengths must include the instillation of both pride and strength into the ranks to better manage turnover an even wider array of other related HR issues and concerns. Everything is relationship-driven and a simple commitment to every employee, regardless of position, means increased job satisfaction, production, and engagement.

It is important to remember that work, productivity, and morale all tie together. In every instance, paying attention to people in a positive way and involving them in every day activity maximizes success and promotes achievement. Influencing in a positive way just makes sense. It increases stability and promotes an internal environment where everyone feels good about both goals and objectives. The best organizations depend on its people!

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This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of North Dakota, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in North Dakota. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

Please note that in late May and  June, both leadership and management can attend How Smart Leaders Create Engaged Employees, an employee involvement seminar.

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It’s graduation already and as predicted to us by our instructor it is “bitter sweet”.   To paint a picture for you of the experience, the Dale Carnegie Skills for Success class always warmed up our attitudes by beginning on a positive note with our good news reports like a boot camp class warms-up the body at the gym.  The routine began with group exercises that pumped us up for the big event of delivering our messages before our engaged audience.

The cool-down for the night was always prompted by highlighting the homework for the next week and presenting the awards won for reports delivered that day.  We all may be relieved to be done with the challenging routines that stretched us further outside our comfort zones than we imagined possible, but we will miss the reward of climbing over those uncomfortable obstacles and the tremendous pride we experienced in each accomplishment we tackled.  It was an amazing adventure to see the growth in each of us as our instructor lead us and armed us with the ammo we each needed in order to stretch our comfort zones much like a drill instructor would do for their troops.  She was grinding down our rough edges and polishing us up until we shined.

To ease the growing pains of stretching our comfort zones, the information covered in our weekly homework assignments was served to us in a three course meal on the finest china.  The appetizer was a sampler of the 5 drivers of success, a breakthrough plan for a class project and a vision plan.  The sizzling entrée was 6 oz of juicy human relations principles marinated in stress management principles and topped with effective speaking principles and a healthy side of leadership skills.  A glass of opportunities for successful experiences was available to help compliment the meal of stretching your comfort zone.  The dessert is delivered in the sweet taste of the results on graduation day!  It was a slice of our class project pie served with a scoop of our tasty renewed vision and topped off with the satisfaction of sinking our teeth into the cupcakes of celebration for our hard work and dedication!  The after dinner mint was a golden book to refer back to and remind you of your epic experience.

The true beauty in the class was the reassurance we received not just in how the instructor encouraged us, but also in knowing that we all were in the same shoes of expanding our comfort zones together.  We struggled at first with how to prepare for Monday reports but with each mistake we learned valuable lessons that we can now apply in many aspects of our lives.  My “ah-ha” moment was the comparison of learning to swim to learning to speak effectively.  You can read all the books but until you take that leap and jump into the water to practice you will never achieve these life saving skills.   Once I figured out how well it really did work to practice the speech with others and narrow it down until I accomplished making my talking points in the time allotted, I was able to deliver a successful talk and kick my self-confidence up a notch not to mention melt away another layer of my fear of speaking.

The action I encourage you to take is to make the priceless investment in yourself by signing up for the Dale Carnegie Skills for Success class today and the benefit to you will be that you will receive an invigorating comfort zone work out that will help you to genuinely appreciate a rewarding meal of a successful experience that will plant an enthusiastic smile on your face from ear to ear.

By Corey Perlman

I met a gentleman at a local chamber event who sold life insurance. He asked if he could have my card and connect with me on LinkedIn. I told him that was fine but I was not in the market for life insurance. This was a few years ago and BC (Before Children). Not too long ago, I woke up in a cold sweat with the realization that I now have a family and no life insurance. I quickly jumped online to do a Google search for life insurance companies.

After a few minutes of searching, I decided to take a break and visit my LinkedIn profile. As I scrolled through my LinkedIn homepage, I saw one of my favorite Dale Carnegie quotes, “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they’re doing”. As I went to ‘like’ the post, I noticed it was from the guy who was trying to sell me life insurance years ago. I quickly clicked on his profile and messaged him with a request to meet. That week, almost two years later, he earned my business. Thanks to our LinkedIn connection, he found a way to stay ‘top of mind’ with me when I was ready to buy.

LinkedIn is void of a lot of the noise that frustrates people about Facebook and Twitter and therefore is an excellent place to garner attention from CEO’s, training managers and other decision makers. LinkedIn can help business owners increase awareness, strengthen credibility, and stay ‘top of mind’ with clients and prospects. Below are four simple strategies to take your LinkedIn experience to the next level.

1. Be Proud of Your Profile

If you haven’t reached 500+ connections, stop everything else you’re doing and get connected with your network. When someone visits your profile, LinkedIn only shows the number of connections up to 500. After 500, they just add the + sign. So whether you have 501 or 5001, it will still display on your profile as 500+.

Make no mistake about it—numbers matter. Almost every decision-maker I’ve spoken with has said they check out a business’, business owner’s or salesperson’s LinkedIn profile prior working with that company. What message do you convey with just 45 connections?

Some responses I’ve heard from clients are, ‘small,’ ‘disconnected,’ ‘out of touch,’ and ‘fly-by-night.’ Perceptions like these are not going to help your case when hoping to “close a deal” with a prospect. So start connecting to your colleagues, customers and prospects on LinkedIn and don’t stop until you hit 500+.

2. Get Quality Recommendations from Past Clients

When it comes to recommendations, it’s quality over quantity. If you ask the right people to recommend you on LinkedIn, they will spend time crafting an endorsement worthy of the exceptional work your company does. Recommendations matter.

No, scratch that…

Quality recommendations matter. Recommendations that only come from people who’ve done business with you and are pleased with the results.

3. Update your profile daily…

This takes little to no time at all, but could result in significantly more business. Go check out your LinkedIn profile. You’ll notice some updates from a few of your contacts. These are people who have posted an update to their profile and did it right around the time of your visit. If you’re in ‘buy mode’ for their products or services at the time of their posting, this could be the friendly reminder that earns them your business.

The same goes for your prospects. They could be in need of a service you offer and you may have fallen off their radar for one reason or another. But during a visit to LinkedIn, they see a status update from you referencing a great industry article from a quality source. Whether they read the article is irrelevant. The point is you jumped back on their radar at precisely the right time and you could win their business as a result.

This strategy has become even more important with LinkedIn’s mobile app. If you don’t already have it, I’d encourage you to go download it. You’ll see that as soon as you open the app, updates from your network are the first thing that you see. This is prime real estate and you can take advantage by simply adding high-value content to your LinkedIn profile.

4. Use the Get Introduced Feature.

Simply put, this is my favorite feature in all of social media. In the world of LinkedIn, the power is not in your network, but in your network’s network. There is no reason to ever cold-call again without at least checking LinkedIn and seeing if you have a mutual connection with the person you’re trying to reach. Let’s say you want to do some sales training for ABC Company. You can go on LinkedIn and search for their company page. LinkedIn will show you employees from ABC who have a LinkedIn profile and, if there’s a #2 next to their name, that means you know someone they know.

So after looking at their page, you see that Steve Smith, the sales director from ABC has a #2 next to his name. You click on his profile and see that you and he are both connected with Dan Davidson. You’ve done some work with Dan in the past, so you contact Dan to see if he’d be willing to introduce you to Steve. Dan happily obliges and sends a note to Steve telling him why he needs to take your call. You just turned a cold call into a warm lead. Powerful. Just remember, in order for this to work, you need to have a good relationship with Dan and Dan needs to have a good relationship with Steve. If either is not the case, do not request the introduction.

These four strategies will help you get more results from your LinkedIn efforts. I hope you put them to action and I look forward to hearing about your successes!

About the author:

Corey Perlman is an entrepreneur, author and nationally-recognized social media expert. His book, eBoot Camp, (Wiley) became an Amazon.com bestseller and received global attention with distribution in both China and India. Corey’s company, eBoot Camp, Inc., provides digital marketing services to small and mid-size businesses. A proud member of the National Speaker’s Association (NSA), Corey conducts his critically acclaimed Social Media for Business Keynote to audiences around the world. He’s the proud father of a 3-year-old daughter who has already tweeted, has a youtube channel and asked for a Mark Zuckerberg doll for her birthday. The apple truly doesn’t fall far from the tree! For more information, visit www.ebootcamp.com.

Dale Carnegie once told the story of Harlan A. Howard, who used this piece of advice to completely alter his life. Mr. Howard had a dull job as a youth—washing plates, scrubbing counters, and dishing out ice cream in the high school lunchroom while the other boys were playing ball or kidding the girls. He despised his job, but since he ad to stick to it, he resolved to study ice cream—how it was made, what ingredients were used, why some ice creams were better than others.

He studied the chemistry of ice cream, and became a whiz in the high school chemistry course. He became so interested in food chemistry that he entered the Massachusetts State College and majored in the field of “food technology.” When the New York Cocoa Exchange offered a hundred-dollar prize for the best paper on uses of cocoa and chocolate—a prize open to all college students—Harlan Howard won it.

After graduation, when he found it difficult to get a job, he opened a private laboratory in the basement of his home in Amherst, Massachusetts. Shortly after that, a new law was passed. The bacteria in milk had to be counted. Harlan Howard was soon counting bacteria for the fourteen milk companies in Amherst—and he had to hire two assistants.

Would Harlan Howard ever have found his success in life if he hadn’t found a way to make his dull job in high school interesting? No, he probably wouldn’t have. But he took the situation that life handed him, changed his thoughts about it, and paved the way to become a leader in his profession.

Keep reminding yourself that getting interested in your job will take your mind off your worries, and, in the long run, will probably bring promotion and increased pay. And even if it doesn’t do that, it will reduce fatigue to a minimum and help you enjoy your hours of leisure.

For more information on employee engagement, join us for an upcoming program on “How Smart Leaders Create Engaged Employees” in Fargo, Williston, and Bismarck.

This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of North Dakota, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in North Dakota. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

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In the recent days, after the sadness at the Boston Marathon; Facebook and Twitter in particular have shared leads and pictures that have helped the FBI and the Boston Police with valuable information that is increasing the chances to solve this terrorist act.

In today’s modern organizations across North Dakota and coast to coast, leadership can utilize the same type of “social sharing”, not only solving corporate wide problems, but getting idea generation and goals and objectives’ development as well.

Communicating across divisions, departments, and networks in larger organizations has always been a challenge. It is a numbers game. The more people communicating on a topic or subject, the more input and information is generated.

Using organizational crowdsourcing is an idea based on the key principles of Dale Carnegie Training, and the connection comes from the approach to the supportive communication that Carnegie focuses on with its training:

• Openness: Willing communication is always based on listening and positive relational feedback.
• Support: Influence and trust are major components in achieving true employee involvement.
• Motivation: Personal commitment to success is the driver of both opportunity and achievement.
• Goal setting: Clear, specific, and performance-based work processes increase employee satisfaction.  
• Equality: Every idea is equal and all contributions, recommendations, and suggestions mean something.
• Empowerment: Once the buzzword of the 1980’s, total involvement by each employee is the only way to grow in this still slow economy.

The sharing of power by management is still a relatively new phenomenon in businesses and    organizations. Yet, sharing is the key on Twitter, Facebook, Pheed, and Google+ as relationships are discovered, renewed and nurtured through the exchange of relational communication. Businesses need to mirror what social media does every day. These social platforms are not affected by economic conditions. They grow through interaction and communication. Even small businesses can gain by winning friends and influencing people within the internal environment.

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This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of North Dakota, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in North Dakota. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

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Jerry Hampton knows something about employee engagement. In fact, many would consider him an expert, as he has singlehandedly trained over 2000 men and women to sell -and excel- in the competitive industry of food service.

As the Director of Training for SYSCO, a global leader in the selling, marketing, and distributing of food products, Jerry is charged with creating a high performance sales culture. His team of 138 men and women pound the pavement daily in an extremely competitive environment as they work to grow their customer base. The job is intense, fast-paced and demanding, and rejection is a natural part of the selling process.

I recently had an opportunity to talk with Jerry about his 34 year career with SYSCO, and glean some insights as to how SYSCO creates a culture of performance and engagement among its team members.

The first discovery I made was that SYSCO truly BELIEVES in their people, and they put their money where their mouth is. Each sales representative undergoes an extensive training program to help them understand not only the company and suite of products, but more importantly the value proposition their product line offers. Anyone can be trained to memorize product features and benefits; however it takes a skilled professional to demonstrate the VALUE that SYSCO products will bring to a customers’ bottom line. That’s the ability to understand and apply both the art and the science of selling.

To accomplish this, the company conducts regular and ongoing training, on-site, led by Jerry and his team. Their training room is top notch, offering comfort and new technologies to enhance the learning experience. It is impossible to “mail it in” during one of Jerry’s training classes – his coaching style is personal and deliberate, requiring active interaction and involvement by all participants. Through this process of focused coaching, they create a branded sales process, and a consistent appeal in the marketplace.

SYSCO also sends select sales personnel to outside training. It started 1996 when Jerry sent a few people to the Dale Carnegie® Course to overcome a fear of speaking.  The results for these individuals were astonishing. After recommending that so many people to take the class, a colleague challenged him by saying “Have YOU ever taken the course Jerry?” to which he was had to reply no. “Then how do you know it’s any good?” Touché, he agreed and signed up for the next class. As a graduate of the program he became more convinced of its value to the individual, both at work and at home.

Since that time, SYSCO has become a key global partner with Dale Carnegie. “This is a great program and it’s a serious investment,” stated Hampton. “After graduating from the course, our people are able to truly see the perspectives of others; they gain the ability to give sincere appreciation, to manage stress better, and to find new ways of doing business. In short, they get ‘out of the box’ and develop the enthusiasm to move new ideas forward.”

Craig Tomalak is one example. Craig started his Dale Carnegie Course in early 2013. After 10 weeks of working on his human relations and communication skills, Craig commented “This class forces you to view situations from various different perspectives – something we are all capable of but very rarely do.  I think we are all guilty of forming habits in terms of the way we handle situations.” The Dale Carnegie course gave him the opportunity to look inward and find those areas of growth and others. That new way of operating has helped him strengthen his relationships with customers and improve his results in the marketplace.

Food service is a demanding and competitive industry and salespeople run the risk of burnout and frustration. Pat Hoffman, a Detroit-area participant reported that the concept of “day tight compartments” was particularly helpful to him. Exercising greater patience, keeping things in perspective, and finding greater joy in the days work changed his outlook, and his results. This ability to manage stress more effectively is consistently reported back to SYSCO as a benefit of the Dale Carnegie experience.

Investing in PEOPLE is a cornerstone of running the SYSCO business. Just as they use only the highest quality ingredients in their food – they place only the highest quality training in their people. This investment in PEOPLE helps create a dynamic and engaged workforce that’s motivated and better equipped to delight their customers. And to Jerry Hampton, that’s what it’s all about.