The seven deadly sins of presenting with slides

by Dominic Wells
(Source: http://www.slidemaster.com.au/blog.html)
There is an increasing expectation for organisational professionals to communicate using slide-ware technology such as PowerPoint, Keynote and Prezzi, all great tools for enhancing our message. Yet we have all sat through presentations where technology takes over working against the presenter and amongst the fumbling and mumbling the message is lost.

Enhance your message, improve credibility and connect with your audience by avoiding these seven deadly sins of presenting with slides:
1. Rely on technology
Batteries go flat, software crashes, lights go out and speakers breakdown, we all know it and yet we rarely give ourselves enough time to set up, test and re-test our presentation tools.
2. Read your slides
Slides are fantastic, we love them for their ability to enhance the spoken word but they are not The Message itself. Reading your slides will kill your, credibility and engagement, please don’t do it!
3. Dim the lights
Low light sends us a subconscious signal to relax and prepare for sleep, probably not the emotional state you want your audience in! Wherever possible set your room with natural light that doesn’t glare the screen.
4. Appoint a ‘Slider’
A Slider is a person who is asked to press the ‘enter’ key to move the slides on your behalf. Lovely people but a complete distraction and incapable of working in sync with your natural rhythm. Insist on a wireless slider clicker, discreet and highly effective.
5. Deliver a monologue
Effective communication is a two way street. Where possible move away from your slides, even blank the screen to engage with your audience.
6. Get stuck in the mud
Being conscious of the projector light is a good thing but don’t get physically stuck in one position while trying to avoid a shadow on the screen.
7. Using your slides as a prompt
If you don’t know what slide is next you will fall into the ‘click, pause, deliver’ trap where you are reliant on your slides for what to say next. Know your stuff and create verbal segways between slides to deliver consistency and flow.

Do you have a Powerful, Personal Impact? -Naked leader Weekly 511

Answer the following questions and find out …
1. How visible are you, to the people in your organisation?
2. What was your most recent, big mistake?
3. When you are away from your office, do you worry what is happening in your absence?
4. What is your favourite subject?
5. Do you take personal responsibility for anything and everything that happens to you?
6. If you were stripped of your job title and traits of office, would you still be able to get the best from your people?
7.Can people communicate openly with you, without fear or favour?
8.Can you name the partners / children’s names of everyone in your team?
9. Do people often confide in you?
10. Do you feel confident when you enter a room full of people you don’t know?

Answers

With my love and best wishes
Leave a reply or comment here…

David
X
(Adapted from The Naked Leader Experience )

Breaking glass ceilings in Mental Health

Employers’ discriminatory attitudes inhibit an open approach by employees to the disclosure of mental health issues in the workplace. Studies indicate that more than 80% of employers expect that applicants should be honest about their experiences of mental distress, although less than 40% of the same employers would contemplate hiring an applicant who had made such disclosures.

We have borrowed the term “glass ceiling” from the women’s movement, since we believe that people should have the choice to seek or retain work according to their abilities and the level of their recovery, rather than being restricted to only those jobs which employers believe we are capable of on the basis of our diagnosis. Because of stigma and the pressure of concealment, it is not widely known that people who have recovered from, or who are managing, mental ill health are working in all sectors of our economy – including leaders and influencers within the establishment – and are a key part of the pool of talent available to UK plc.

People with mental health problems have the highest “want to work rate” (of any group of unemployed people) with up to 90% wanting to work. That said, we support the right of any service user to choose how best to manage their mental health, and recognise that for some this will not include work.

“Breaking glass ceilings” will be the key-note campaign to launch Stand to Reason. After running a small scale employer pilot, we plan to focus our interventions on trying to achieve cultural change within the workplace including “hard-to reach” private sector employers and professions within the City. We believe an organisation run by professionals who have suffered mental ill health is uniquely placed to make the economic argument for a change in attitudes and to tackle discrimination.

Stage two of the programme will be to showcase these employers and to use case-histories to roll-out best practice to a wide-range of employers and public sector organisations.

•Seminars will be aimed at Chief Executives and HR Directors, providing direct contact with professionals who have achieved high levels of recovery. We believe this is needed to have a serious impact in changing attitudes, as seeing is believing.
•Workshops, training and ongoing support will also be provided to employees, to outline the protections of the Disability Discrimination Act and to encourage a more open and self-confident approach with line-managers, and HR when people need help.
•We will liaise with other agencies to ensure that ongoing support, such as they believe is currently lacking, is provided to employers.
•We intend to use our high-level access to employers to secure a range of supported employment and transitional employment positions to be provided in partnership with other agencies. Programmes will facilitate the early return to work for persons suffering mental distress, to positions appropriate to their level of skills and experience rather than the lower grade and blue collar work which may be all that is currently on offer.
•We intend to develop a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agenda in mental health that will be highly prized by employers keen to demonstrate to their employees that they are trust-worthy.
•We intend to develop research-models to allow employers to demonstrate the value of these CSR programmes to their shareholders, with a “triple bottom-line” of benefits to shareholders, employees and other stakeholders alike.
The facts about mental health and the workplace

•About 1 in 6 adults has a severe mental health problem and some estimate that 1 in 2 will experience mental ill health during their lives.
•More than one million people claim incapacity benefit for mental health problems.
•Mental illness costs society £25bn a year, according to Lord Layard.
•3 in 10 employees will experience mental health problems during a single year.
•80 million: the number of workdays estimated being lost each year to stress, depression and anxiety.
•10%: an estimate of the proportion of GDP lost due to work-related stress.
•£9bn: an estimated cost per year of salaries to employers not addressing mental health problems in the workplace.
•Only about 20% of people with severe mental health problems are employed, compared to 65% of people with physical health problems and 75% for the whole adult population. Even for people with more common types of mental illness, such as depression, only about half are competitively employed.
•In a survey of people who were “out” about their mental health problems at work most people found colleagues to be accepting (65%). However, only half said they had had the support they needed and 13% said they seldom or never had it. Some people reported being patronised by management or monitored more closely than other colleagues.
•One third of people with mental health problems say that they have been dismissed or forced to resign from their jobs.
•40% say that they were denied a job because of their history of psychiatric treatment and about 60% say they have been put off applying for a job as they expect to be dealt with unfairly.
•38%: the proportion of employers who say they would not employ someone with a mental illness.
•45%: the proportion of employers who think none of their employees would be suffering from a mental health problem.
•8 out of 10: the number of company directors who say their company has no formal policy to deal with stress and mental ill-health and only 14% of those that do felt it was effective.
•1 in 3: the proportion of employers who think people with a mental illness are less reliable than other employees.
•80%: the proportion of employers who agree that more support is required to improve the way businesses deal with mental health in the workplace.
Sources
Shift
Shaw Trust
Employers Forum on Disability
Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health
Mind
Rethink
Mental Health Foundation
Institute of Employment Studies
CBI
Social Exclusion Unit
“Shunned” by Prof. Graham Thornicroft, Institute of Psychiatry

www.standtoreason.org.uk

Best Advice: Don’t Be Such a Perfectionist

Ilya Pozin
Serial Entrepreneur, Columnist, Mentor & Investor
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130226115220-5799319-best-advice-don-t-be-such-a-perfectionist

Most of us are trained to believe that practice makes perfect; but the best advice I’ve ever received preaches the exact opposite: Don’t be a perfectionist. Today I embrace this, but when I first heard this 7 years ago, I refused to accept it.

As it turns out, I needed that advice more than anything, and I now apply it in professional and personal settings alike. Nik, my partner at Ciplex, was the one who changed my life with this advice. He recognized the need for it, and for that I am forever grateful. I started Ciplex when I was 17, so my lack of formal management training and experience meant I learned along with my employees. I expected them to work as hard as I did, do as good a job as I did, and deliver the same quality results. While this approach reached a few employees, it drove the rest crazy, and rightfully so.

Nik’s experiences were highly educational (Harvard) and professional (IBM, idealab), but he, like me, did not come from a background in management; so when he advised me to stop micromanaging and to start accepting that 80% is good enough, I dismissed it. Disbelieved it. Disregarded it. When situations and people started fitting together like puzzle pieces, it started to click back to the advice Nik gave me. I gave his advice a shot because I knew I was headed towards an entrepreneurial path and my (micro) management style was simply not working and could not scale. It took time, but once this theory was proven, I saw the importance in allowing for imperfections.

My old ways of micromanaging forced employees to not feel autonomous and prevented them from thinking creatively on how to solve problems on their own. Employees would feel stress instead of feeling empowered to make their own decisions. They constantly felt demotivated and incompetent. There would be feelings of resentment and an overall hostile work environment.

Not being a perfectionist is a lesson that I look at as not just a piece of advice, but a worldview and a core value. It applies to a wide variety of different situations, regardless of scope or scale. Striving for perfection in every area all the time, wastes time, harms egos unnecessarily, and proves detrimental to any business. This piece of advice has stuck with me for so many years and through countless situations. The outcome? Productivity is through the roof, the culture is amazing, my employees are happier, I have full trust in my team, and I am happier than ever - both personally and professionally.

Interested in finding out more? Check out my article on delegating using the ‘80% is good enough’ rule.

About Ilya Pozin: Founder of Ciplex. Columnist for Inc, Forbes & LinkedIn. Gadget lover, investor, mentor, husband, father, and ‘30 Under 30’ entrepreneur.