Ten Reasons Why People Hate the Boss

Read this post on CIO.com this past week.  It’s a quick slide show on some serious mistakes managers and leaders may make.  I found this intriguing both on the way they presented the problem and solution (1 slide for the problem and one for the solution), as well as how they followed the presentation secrets outlined in last weeks post on dramatically improving your strategic communication.

Dramatically Improve Your Strategic Communications

Two of my colleagues, Steve May and  Heidi Schultz, both suggest that a big part of a senior leader is the ability to communicate one’s key points of strategy in a variety of formats.  One of the most common forms of strategic communication is making presentations to groups.  Many of us, (alright, almost all of us), use a presentation tool like PowerPoint or Keynote to organize our thoughts and use as  a tool for our presentations to groups large and small.

Unfortunately, May and Schultz  note, many times senior leaders can fall into a trap of using these tools as a crutch or in a way where the tool overshadows the speaker.  I’ve been in many meetings, conferences, and other public venues where participants are either whipped by presentation slides or there is so much text on the slide that you simply want to say, “Just give me the slides and I’ll read them myself.”

Two posts may give you some guidance on ways to improve your presentation skills.  Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule and Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs gives any senior leader a concrete idea on how to make your presentation come more alive, communicate your guidance or key points more effectively, and dramatically increase your effectiveness.  The fact that they both come from Apple is no coincidence, I think.  Apple has consistently focused on design to market their products.  This extends to their various forms of communications as well.

I’ve tried their tools in my presentations and have found the transition from a text heavy format to more graphics a struggle at first.  However, I now find that using their tools and design models have forced me to know my content and key points in much greater depth than before and I have seen it translate to more confidence when I make the presentations I make to various groups and audiences.  Test them out and see if you find your strategic communications to various internal and external audiences become more engaging and interactive.

All the best,

Chris

Great Blogger-Go Jan Borelli!

I wanted to introduce North Carolina School Executives to a terrific principal, Dr. Jan Borelli, who is a principal in Oklahoma schools.  Her blog, Dr Jan’s Blog has frequent postings on the school principalship, ideas, and thoughts on different aspects of school leadership.

I’ve had the opportunity to chat with her and I read her blog whenever she has a new posting-she “has game” and a terrific way of sharing her wisdom and perspective.

Suggestion-bookmark her blog and add her to your RSS Feed.

See you next week,

Chris

School Data Tool

I’ve been a small part of a project with Scott McLeod, called Leadertalk.  He has another website that has a dynamite set of tutorials for data analysis.  This time of year, many school executives are trying to make sense of the data-his tutorial website is one you should keep bookmarked!

Chris