Amy Boone of Ethos3 has an excellent article entitled, "How to Overcome Presentation Distractions." It's about how to minimize noise to improve the effectiveness of your presentations. One of the first things that struck me was research from the University of California Irvine. It found that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain attention and focus after encountering a distraction. Holy cow! If you're making a 30 minute presentation, any distraction might cost you the full impact of your message. The article goes on to point out two types of "noise" -- or distractions. As presenters, we have more control over one than the other. In broad strokes, there is external and internal noise. External noise consists of: Environment - this is the physical room and the various elements in it (phones, alarms, beeps, burps) Message - this refers to unnecessary (or hard-to-understand) jargon Presentation…
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What is the difference between being a boss and being a leader? It's not your title, rank, position on the org chart, or the location of your office. Any of these might describe a boss or leader. It's also not just a matter of semantics, a play on words. In both cases, they are surrounded by people. A boss is surrounded by employees. A leader has followers. Employees can be hired. Followers must be earned. This might seem like a simple shift in thinking, but it has the potential to inflate or deflate your influence -- and, therefore, your effectiveness. So ... two questions: How do you want people to see you? As a boss or a leader? How do you see the people who work with you? As employees or followers? Start the Conversation Professor at Warner University masters in business administration (mba) presenter at the WFX National Conference…
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Having been in senior leadership positions for nearly 30 years, here is one thing I've found to be true: leaders often overestimate their ability to communicate and underestimate the hurdles to good communication. In between lies the gap. The bigger the gap, the longer it will take to execute. The bigger the gap, the bigger the potential for conflict will be. Because of I've talked about it (and talked about it), I think I've communicated a message, strategy, or vision. In my mind, the message, strategy, or vision is crystal clear. In fact, I'm often thinking about it outside of meetings, rolling it over in my mind again and again. As every leader discovers, what we believe is crystal clear isn't always so clear to others on the team. There are many reasons for this: Our message wasn't as clear as we thought it was Our teammate was distracted by…
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I’m not sure how many times I’ve missed the right answer because I was asking the wrong question. Even if you get the right answer to the wrong question - it's still the wrong question. Here's what I've learned: to make forward progress in any area of life (marriage, business, faith) requires us to ask the right questions. As you would imagine, people asked Jesus all kinds of questions. In fact, much of his teaching is not of the presorted, canned variety; it's in response to someone's question. In today’s passage, an expert in Jewish law asks Jesus a really good question: how can a person have a right relationship with God? The expert answers correctly. It boils down to two things: Love God and love your neighbor. Let’s pick up the story in Luke 10:28-29 … 28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”…
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In the game of life, everyone is a participant. No one is ever truly just an observer, a member of the studio audience. We will either play an active or passive role, but in both cases we are choosing to do something. Regardless if we are creating our day-to-day experiences or simply allowing them to happen, they are still happening. There are no bystanders in this life. Both action and inaction have consequences. Action-based results are easier to identify because we see the connection between cause and effect. When something works, we refine it and do it better. When it doesn't work, we can make adjustments or drop it altogether. But I believe it's harder to see the consequences of inaction, especially the long-term impact that inaction has on our inner wellbeing. I was recently rereading a story of Jesus, one that is familiar to many people -- at least…
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