Effective executives are continually improving themselves

Jim Endicott is an executive coach and prepares corporate executives for major presentations when billions of dollars are on the line.

Good leaders are:

1. Adaptive communicators.
2. Are constantly sharpening their personal delivery skills.
3. Have a way of making the complex simple.

Four fatal flaws of Leadership Communication assume that stakeholders will actually:

1. Understand what was communicated
2. Agree with what was communicated
3. Care about what was communicated
4. Take appropriate action
(“there’s often an illusion that leadership communication happens at all”)

89 percent of people (or executives, sorry, I missed it) say communicating with a solid level of clarity and confidence directly impacts your career and income.

Don’t just tell facts, use emotions and tell stories. People will remember the stories you told six months ago, but they may not remember the bullet points that went with it.

People who’ve had a lobotomy can’t make simple decisions. They need at least a little bit of emotion to help them choose. For those of us who have all our brains, we all need even more emotion to drive us to our decisions.

What vs. How: People usually spend too much time preparing the “What” of what they’ll present instead of “How” they’ll present it.  People aren’t going to remember most of your “What.”

When presenting, spend a lot of time perfecting your first minute and your last minute.

Non-verbal communication:

--Eyes – move from eye contact to eye contact among your audience – “conversational”
--Hands – make meaningful gestures, as if people were watching you on TV with no sound…open, grand, illustrative gestures.
--Movement – purposefully move about your speaking area.
--Voice – monitor pace, vocal variety

He works in two-hour sessions with executives. The “before” videos are painful to watch. The “after” videos are much improved.

Watch this video: This executive relies on facts, little emotion, complex images. Watch from minute 2:30 through 4:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nGyEjal1_E

Watch this video of an executive who moves a similar audience with emotion and simple images. Watch from :40 to 4:05 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghdTqnYnFyg