Leadership is communication. Sometimes that communication is one-to-one, and sometimes it's one-to-many. Depending how many, "communication" can begin to feel a lot like "public speaking."
Wait a minute... Is leadership synonymous with public speaking?
Sarah Kimes is Senior Associate Vice President and Brand Strategist at CallisonRTKL, a global architecture, planning and design practice. She leads the brand services team at the Dallas, TX office, and her goal is to connect the built environment to people in a way that's meaningful. How does Sarah create these meaningful connections? She uses powerful presentations to communicate her ideas and build, change and reinforce beliefs in her audience.
What makes Sarah such a powerful presenter? Her strengths are threefold: She relies on a dependable process, she has extensive experience in branding, and she's incredibly self aware.
The Campfire Method® requires presenters to examine four elements before selling an idea: audience, story, environment and self. All of these elements matter, but in reality, the last element - self - might be the most important, and also hardest to tackle, since it's likely you're not used to doing it, particularly in a business setting.
However, knowing yourself is essential to being a great persuasive storyteller, and therefore, if you want to make presentations that move audiences and change minds, you're going to need to focus on who you are: your strengths and weaknesses, your past experiences and your special skills. Join us on a journey of self-reflection, so you can improve your persuasive storytelling ability, and watch your ideas take hold.
Funny thing about self esteem: It's often at its highest when we need it least. The inverse seems true as well: When opportunity knocks, many of us (who aren't proud to admit it) have been known to pretend we're not home. This reaction, even though we attach our professional value to the content we share, as we've explored in prior musings.
In fact, it's the most common thing we hear from our clients as they grapple with presentations: "I would do that, but I'm just not creative."
Since our beginnings, we humans have defined our individual value by what we share with others. It's as important a step in self-actualization as any other: Acknowledgement from an audience (of one or many) for providing information perceived as valuable.
Does this mean we're selfish? Hell yes. And we should be proud of it, too. Isn't that what effective leaders do? We look for more ways to deliver more value, faster. And we give others credit when deserved.