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Word count: 989
Summary: The author asserts that presentations and speeches are
the least effective means of leadership communication. There is
a much more effective way: the Leadership Talk. In this three
part series, he describes underlying principles of the
Leadership Talk and ways to help develop and deliver it.
Turbo Charge Your Career With The Most Powerful Leadership Tool
Of All: The Leadership Talk. (Part Three) by Brent Filson
To develop and deliver a great Leadership Talk, you must
understand that every Talk has three important parts. (1)
Audience Needs. (2) Strong Belief. (3) Action.
(1) Audience needs: The first step in putting together a
Leadership Talk is to understand the needs of your audience. As
I explained in Part Two, they cannot be ordered to be your cause
leaders. Their commitment is one of free choice. They will not
make that choice unless they believe that their being your cause
leaders will in some way help solve the problems of their (not
your) needs.
All needs are problems. All problems are crying out for
solutions. When you are helping them with those solutions, you
are a long way down the road of motivating them to make the
choice to be your cause leaders.
When you answer these questions, you have a good idea what their
needs are. (1) What is changing for them? (2) Who would they
rather have leading them besides you? (3) What action do they
want to take? (4) What do they feel? (5) What do they fear? (6)
What's their major problem? (7) What makes them angry? (8) What
do they dream?
(2) Strong belief: Knowing your audience's needs is important,
but it's only the first step in developing a Leadership Talk.
The next step involves strong belief, not just your belief but
theirs. Clearly, you must believe in the cause. But your belief
is irrelevant. After all, if you didn't believe in the cause,
you shouldn't be leading it. The key question is can you
transfer your belief to them so that they believe in it as
strongly as you do and will commit to becoming your cause
leaders?
As I explained in Part Two, you are asking people to take
leadership for your cause. Taking leadership is a special
undertaking, calling for a special commitment. People will not
undertake leadership lightly. It is not your choice for them to
take leadership. It is their choice. And to weigh the pros and
cons of that choice, they want to know two things: who you are
and why you are there.
You must tell them or they will tell you. And if they tell you,
you may not like what they say.
As to who you are: In their eyes, who you are involves your
knowledge/skills as to meeting the challenges of the cause and
your commitment to that cause. If they perceive that you have
weak knowledge/skills and/or weak commitment, they'll peg you as
unworthy and maybe worse, untrustworthy.
As to you why you are there. There is only one answer to why you
are there: They must know that you are there to help them solve
the problems of their needs.
Without communicating strong belief on both counts, who you are
and why you are there, you cannot give a Leadership Talk to
motivate them to be your cause leader.
(3) Action. It's not so much what you say that's important when
giving a Leadership Talk, it's what the audience does after you
have had your say. The function of The Leadership Talk is to
have people take action that gets results -- and more results
than simply average results, more results faster, and "more
faster" on a continual basis.
Once you begin to see your leadership interactions in terms of
physical action, you'll see your leadership, and the way you get
results, in fresh ways. Challenge your cause leaders to take
physical action by asking them, ‘What three or four leadership
actions, PHYSICAL ACTIONS, will you take to achieve the results
we need?'
Having people move from simply saying they will do things to
actually taking the physical action to do them will dramatically
increase the effectiveness of your Talk.
I've been teaching the Leadership Talk to thousands of leaders
worldwide during the past 21 years. Many of them have found that
the difference between the Leadership Talk and
presentations/speeches is the difference between typewriters and
wordprocessors. I remember using a typewriter. I was happy using
it. I had no idea that I needed a wordprocessor. But when I
bought a wordprocessor and went through the trouble of learning
how to use it, I saw how badly I had needed it all along. I saw
that it was a quantum leap in terms of speed, efficiency, and
productivity over a typewriter. So it is with the Leadership
Talk and presentations/speeches. Once you go through the trouble
of learning how to use Leadership Talks then applying them
consistently on a daily basis, you will find they can transform
your leadership effectiveness and boost your career in ways
presentations and speeches could never do.
Such transformations won't happen immediately. It will take you
awhile to learn the processes and be comfortable using them.
Since you're not in one of my seminars, where the participants
learn tested processes to create and deliver Leadership Talks in
a relatively short period of time, you'll have to rely on
putting them together piecemeal.
But in these initial stages of developing and delivering
Leadership Talks, putting them together piecemeal is an
effective way of beating the learning curve. After all,
leadership is long and careers are short. You are not learning
to give Leadership Talks as a short term endeavor. It should be
a career-endeavor. Step by step, be constantly aware of the
three triggers, Need, Belief, Action. Speak from and to those
triggers. You may discover that giving Leadership Talks
consistently is the best thing that ever happened to your
career.
2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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