ITLP Tuesday Readings

This week's Tuesday Reading is from BusinessWeek's August 25, 2009 Communications Column: How to Give a Lousy Presentation.

We all make a lot of presentations. And, I know that you are like me and know that you are able to do better most of the time. This piece gives you 15 excellent ways to make a lousy presentation. It thereby gives each of us a set of solid reminders for all of us.

And, if you are out to take your presentations to a significantly higher level, get a copy of Garr Reynolds' book "Presentation Zen." (Or, take a look at his website.) His approach to presentations will lead you to a different way to think about how you develop and execute your "presenting." Key to his approach is beginning to think aobut your presentation from the listeners' and not the speakers' point of view.

This is an area where we can always learn.

. . . . . jim

As a related topic, please also check out How not to use Powerpoint. -jh

Posted by Jim Hall at 8:52 AM | Permalink

For this week's Tuesday Reading, we turn to the Career Strategies Column in the Wall Street Journal for a short piece You're a Success, Now Get Down to work.

Near the end of this piece, its author Alexandra Levit writes: "Just because you're skilled or talented in a particular area doesn't mean you should simply pass go and collect your $200." Or, as Marshall Goldsmith puts it, "Strong leaders don't coast."

So what do you need to do:

1. Continue to sharpen your people skills. Listen more carefully. Think before you speak. Reciprocate favors. Manage conflicts diplomatically.

2. Regularly look at yourself, identify your weak points, pick one, and really work to get better in that area.

3. Begin now.

Have a great week. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 5:47 PM | Permalink

Today's Tuesday Reading is The Success Trap from Jeffrey Pfeffer's August 25th, BNET Column, The Corner Officer on August 25, 2009.

Pfeffer's thesis is simple: When we become successful, it is very easy to drop our guard, to not maintain our standards (much less build on them), and to rest on our laurals.

He argues that to maintain our successes we have to understand the basis of our success and maintain a laserlike focus, discipling ourselves to maintain, and even improve, on what made us successful to begin with.

Now might be a good time to take a look at your results. Are their areas where you need to sharpen your focus to regain or improve on your past successes?

Have a great week. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 9:04 AM | Permalink

The Tuesday Reading for today is Jeffrey Pfeffer's piece Stop Working for Technology - Make it Work for You which appeared in BNET's The Corner Office on July 22, 2009. Pfeffer is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

Pfeffer's point in this piece is simple and straight-forward:

For some, maybe most, of us our technology-enabled, always on, always interruptable, always available electronically status is at best not always helpful to us or to those around us. It is disrespectful to those we are interacting with when our favorite technology beckons and we respond often without a word to whoever happen to be interacting with us at that moment. It retards our learning and impeds task performance because it reduces our concentration and focus. Pfeffer reports on a study that showed that just being notified of an incoming message, even if you ignore it, is disruptive.

So what can you do?

Turn off your cell phone/iPhone/Blackberry (or at least set the alarm to "silent"), and do the same with your office phone when you don't want to be interrupted. Set aside time on your calendar to respond to email, to return phone calls, etc. Institute office hours to accommodate those who want to do a low-tech physical drop-in. In other words, take control of your technology so that it works for you. I think you'll find that it increases your focus and your productivity.

. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 10:13 AM | Permalink

For today's reading, we turn to a December 2007 FastCompany article by William Taylor, The Leader of the Future. In this piece Taylor, one of the founders of FastCompany, reports on a discussion with Ron Heifetz, director of the Leadership Education Project at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. You will likely remember that Heifetz is author of one of the views of leadership we studied early in the leadership program.

Although at eight pages this article is somewhat longer than the usual Tuesday Reading, it says some very important things about leadership that I thought should be shared with you. Some of the key things that caught my eye are:

Leaders question reality:

1. What values do we stand for? And, what are the gaps between our values and our actual behavior?
2. What skills and talents do we have? And, what are the gaps between our resources and what we need?
3. What are the opportunities we see in the future? And, what are the gaps between these opportunities and our abilities to act on them?

Leadership means influencing the organization to face its problems and live into its opportunities. Mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges is what defines the new job of a leader.

People learn by encountering differences (another word for conflict). Hand in hand with the courage to face reality comes the courage to surface and orchestrate differences.

The work of the leader is to lead conversations about what is essential and what is not.

The leader must help people face the internal contradiction between the values they espouse and the way they live (behave).

Leaders must know how to listen, want to listen, and want to know what the real difference is in what is being said.

Leaders face danger when they challenge people about their priorities, their values, and their habits. When you do this you have to pace the rate at which you challenge so that you do not frustrate people to the point of inaction on everything.

When a person is attempting to lead and is either without authority or seen to be without authority, people's attention spans are very short when you try to communicate with them. Use what attention you can get wisely and planfully.

Leaders should not take things personally. While it may sound personal, its the issues you represent that people are after.

Look for something in this leadership template that would represent a new, useful practice for you to have. Begin to use it, and adopt it for your own.

. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 10:01 AM | Permalink