How to capture more value from an overview presentation

How to capture more value from an overview presentation

by | - Clarify your purpose, - Understand your audience, - Updates

What to do when your manager asks you to ‘give a presentation’ to introduce your team?

Perhaps you have a new senior executive who needs a briefing or perhaps there is a slot to fill in a coming Town Hall?

Do you work through your org chart or can you turn this into a bigger opportunity?

I hope you know me well enough by now to assume the latter!

Today I would like to offer some further insights on this topic while also linking back to a previous post addressing a similar challenge.

So, here are some thought starters to help you ‘niche’ your purpose statement and will turn this potentially burdensome request into an opportunity. I offer three initial areas to explore and three follow-on questions:

3 initial areas to explore

Dig into three areas so you can ‘niche’ your purpose and turn this burdensome presentation into an opportunity.

  1. Think very carefully about the role your team plays within the organization strategy. How do you add value? Why are you ‘organised’ into the structure in the way you are? Why do you even exist as a team / unit / division?
  2. Ask yourself what the rest of the organization could do for you if they understood your role better. Could you equip them to help you better by supporting or perhaps not resisting some of your requests? Could they adjust their approach to enable you to deliver more value? Could they get more out of your services if they understood you better?
  3. Find out why you have been asked to present to this audience at this time. Are you ‘just’ on a roster of education presentations or is this ad-hoc? If so, what is behind the request? Does that inform the value you could deliver or obtain from this presentation?


3 follow-on questions

Once you are clear about the answers to these questions, go further and ask three more:

  1. As a result of this presentation, I want my stakeholders to know, think, do …. What?
  2. Who among those stakeholders are going to be most influential in achieving that outcome?
  3. How can I tailor my messaging to hit home with them (as well as everyone else, but particularly with them?)


>> Click here for an example that we worked on within the program

Have a great week.

Talk soon,
Davina

INTERVIEW – Busting 3 Business Negotiation Myths

INTERVIEW – Busting 3 Business Negotiation Myths

by | - Clarify your purpose, - Interviews, - Negotiating Skills, - Patterns, - Stakeholder Management, - Understand your audience, 1 - Design your strategy

I came to Friday's interview with Matt Lohmeyer a bit selfishly. Negotiating has often made me nervous and yet he seems to thrive while discussing and doing it.

So, I wanted to learn how he gets great outcomes while actually enjoying the process.

If I am to interpret Matt correctly, the ‘insight' is to explore ‘possibility’ and seek out ‘opportunity’ rather than be driven by the fear of being cornered by a win/lose proposition.

Here are three fear busters that I took away that I hope help you also.

  1. Deal with the hairy beasts first
  2. See popular techniques as tools rather than the main strategy
  3. Avoid saying no

Let me now give you some more detail about these before offering the interview and two powerful free tools from Matt.

1 – Deal with the hairy beasts first. By that, Matt suggests dealing with the most difficult issues of a negotiation first. He recommends agreeing the negotiation strategy at the beginning as a way to build rapport, rather than dealing with small items. An example might help.

At the beginning you might ask the other person (note, I am deliberate in not saying ‘the other side') to identify their biggest concern. You might even suggest that you think item X is going to be the most difficult thing to resolve.

This gives them an opportunity to agree or to indicate that item Y or Z is a bigger deal for them. Taking this approach offers many advantages. You

  1. Enter into a collegiate discussion about the way forward that builds rapport
  2. Gain insight into their situation
  3. Work out quickly whether this negotiation will go far or not, so that you can avoid wasting time and resources if it is unresolvable
  4. Hold onto valuable bargaining chips that could help you address the hairy beast rather than trading them away to solve lower level issues

2 – See popular techniques as tools rather than the primary strategy. Matt suggests that emphasising win-win solutions or splitting the difference results in mediocre outcomes. Why?

Because they leave you thinking small. They lead you to

  1. Being adversarial which can put you back in the fear corner'
  2. Trading items tit for tat around micro elements of the deal
  3. Taking energy away from finding a really great outcome that neither party may have considered at the start of the discussion.

3 – Avoid saying no, and frame your response as a possible alternative. This doesn't mean NEVER saying no as Matt was quick to point out, but rather avoid saying it.

To give an example. Instead of saying ‘No, I can't have coffee with you tomorrow afternoon', say ‘I could have coffee with you at 9am tomorrow at a location near me'.

This then puts the onus back on the other person to decide whether they will make the extra effort to make that time and location work.

This is a simple example, but a powerful principle that empowers me by offering a constructive way out.

These are just some of the gems that Matt shared. You can visit the recording below, as well as download two powerful resources he has for us all.

 

DOWNLOADS:

1. A diagnostic to help you calibrate your personal blend of preferred negotiation strategies with the norm group of over 2,500 other executives. How do you actually negotiate? To unlock this tool, you will need to use the password Mythbusters.

>> Click here to access

2. A generously detailed PDF full of negotiation strategies for you to employ.

>> Download here 

 

Kind Regards,

Davina

How do we storyline when not making a recommendation?

How do we storyline when not making a recommendation?

by | - Articulate your Answer (So What), - Clarify your purpose, - Synthesis, - Understand your audience, 1 - Design your strategy, 2 - Develop your storyline

Have you ever wondered whether a storyline is the right tool to use when you are not providing a recommendation?

Perhaps you have been asked to undertake some analysis or are concerned that your audience may not want you to be too assertive or direct?

If so, you may enjoy some insights from this week's coaching discussions which conveniently follow on from last week's focus on communicating details.

When delivering analytical findings, particularly to a sensitive audience, summarise your findings rather than synthesising or recounting your analytical process.

Provide a summary answer rather than a true synthesis. The examples below illustrate how to offer a summary rather than a synthesis:

  • Level 1 focuses on ‘what' you found or what needs to be done by illustrating ‘what we found', or ‘what we need you to do'.
  • Level 2 offers the implication of those things by placing them in a context. In these examples we are either offering a comparison to other options or explaining how these actions will help.

Avoid describing what you did to deliver your findings, but rather focus on what you found.

This played out perfectly this week when a data analyst in a pricing team for an energy company needed to backtest the pricing model. His goal was to assess whether the model was accurately reflecting the market by checking actual versus predicted market pricing over the past quarter.

The temptation was to explain the steps he took to confirm that the model was accurate rather than explaining that it has proven to be accurate this past quarter because it ‘ticked all the boxes'.

Listing all the steps he took required the audience to work through his analytical process rather than focus on the outcome.

This is a common challenge I see at play among analysts, which could also play out if you were trying to navigate cultural sensitivities about being too forward.

Allow your audience to make the decision if you are concerned about cultural sensitivities around assertiveness.

When I was based in Asia, particularly in Hong Kong helping consultants communicate with mainland Chinese clients, we had to be very careful about how we couched our messaging.

Our advice was not going to be welcome if we were too assertive, and we needed to respect a specific cultural need for leaders to be seen to make their own decisions.

The role of consultants in these contexts is different than in more direct, Western environments so we tailored our approach accordingly.

The example on the left of our value ladder is more useful in this context, with level one being pretty clear that ‘Black' is the way to go without going as far as saying that. Some interpretation is still required by the decision maker, which allows them room to ‘make the decision'.

This approach can be used more broadly when making a recommendation without being seen to recommend.

I hope that helps. More next week!

Kind regards,
Davina

PS – please note that in the example to the right you will see we jump from ‘four things to do' to ‘two ways to help'. This is because in the actual example we grouped the four into two parts as we elevated up the storyline hierarchy.

Related Posts

Why ‘updates’ are hardly ever JUST an update

Why ‘updates’ are hardly ever JUST an update

by | - Clarify your purpose, - Introductions (CTQ), - Patterns, - Q&A Recording, - Understand your audience, - Updates, 1 - Design your strategy

This week's working session drew out one of my pet peeves: Updates.

Leaders, of course, want you to update them on your progress whether your work is ‘business as usual' or project based. They want to know enough to trust that all is on track or to offer guidance where needed.

However, thinking of these communication opportunities as just an update is such a waste!

This week we helped Belinda convert her 10-minute MS Teams update into a powerful story that would engage future supporters. Here are the three biggest takeaways, which I hope help you also.

  1. Having 10 minutes to showcase her project to 450 colleagues was an opportunity to engage potential supporters in her program who would help her deliver on it over coming months. It was so much more than just an update.
  2. The context was an opportunity to not just remind everyone that she was working on two important data collection projects, but rather to remind them of the value those projects will bring.
  3. The trigger was an opportunity to explain to them not just why she was telling them about the project, but why they needed to hear about the project

Here were the highlights.

 

Watch the recording below and download the session notes for more details.

 

Download Notes

What to do when stakeholders disagree with you?

What to do when stakeholders disagree with you?

by | - Board communication, - Clarify your purpose, - Stakeholder Management, - Understand your audience, 1 - Design your strategy

I was recently asked a wonderful question:
 

How do we communicate with a large group that includes stakeholders who disagree with us?

 

The client and I had a terrific discussion and I mapped the outcome as a decision tree to share with you all.

The tree offers a series of decision points that we must navigate if we are to deliver a story that gets the result we need.

In this particular case, the issue centred around a common problem, which was how to handle ‘the story' when key stakeholders don't agree with it. Do we ….

  • Tell the same story regardless?
  • Edit the story to accommodate that person (or those people) only?
  • Ask someone else to present on our behalf?
  • Create a separate story that deals with the ‘objector's specific concerns?
  • Scrap the story and start again?

There are lots of alternatives, each of which might suit a different situation but none of which suit all.

Hence, the decision tree.

You can also download the decision tree here >> 

I hope you find it useful.

Kind regards,
Davina

PS – For those of you who have not yet joined one of our working sessions, please go to the session registrations tab on the main menu to do so. We'd love to do your work for with you!