It’s almost always “Where we are, where we want to be, and how we’re going to get there.”
In my 25+ years working, I have given, received, reviewed many presentations. To small groups, to large groups. To friendly audiences, and to hostile ones. Met with applause, met with the sound of crickets. With paper presentations around a table, and on a screen on a stage. So my lessons learned….it’s a story. It starts out “Once upon a time”….and ends….well, that’s the question right?
Notice I didn’t say what was important to you. By core value, I mean something that defines how you want to live your life. That if this value isn’t driving your choices, you’re going to be unhappy. Lie awake at night worrying. Regretting choices. Stress eating. Behavior that you know is detrimental to your overall well being.
So fill it in: If I am not ______, I won’t/can’t be truly happy.
I got this lesson from the book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. It is something I try to remember.
Most of us are trained to think about every possible outcome and every scenario in order to come up with the best approach to tackle a problem. While that kind of “worst case scenario thinking” can be helpful, it can also become overwhelming. Couple that training with the desire to not make a mistake and to always be right, (who wants to make mistakes and be wrong?), you have a perfect set up to constantly worry.
Worrying is thinking that the worst might happen. For some people, it’s a fleeting thought. For others, it becomes a nagging preoccupation that takes energy and time. Continue reading
This is something I learned that takes time, but is definitely worth it…what I used to call “spend 5 hours now to save 60 later”.
This is particularly important in situations when controversial recommendations or findings will be presented. They tend to be large committees, cross functional, dealing with thorny issues where there will be “losers” and “winners” (like a change in cost allocation. Or recommended budget cuts. Or recommended process changes. Or any change). Or they can be situations where the team is now at a crossroads and needs to make a big change in strategy in order to get back on track. Or situations where what people think isn’t what’s actually going on, and it falls on you to communicate that.
For those situations, I have seen the value of “pre-selling”. Continue reading
f someone is faltering, ask yourself “Is it a skill or will issue?” Skill you can change, will you can’t.
This is something I learned to use as a manager as a helpful way to assess people. So think of the x and y axis: one representing “will” and the other “skill”. Will is the desire to do whatever it takes in the job to be successful, skill represents the technical aspects of the job, and on both, one can score from low to high. Continue reading