The Career Enhancing Benefits of Message Mapping
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Management Education, Marketing, Marketing Yourself, Product Management, Professional Growth, Strategy, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Critical communication situations demand crystal clarity.
With apologies for my abusive but personally amusing alliteration above, I’m banging the drum again on the need for all of us to carefully form and frame our messages before we open our mouths and trip on our tongues.
There are many critical communication situations that we face in our organizations and in public, and the moment that you open your mouth is not the time to begin thinking about how to best get your points across. And it’s certainly no time to start rambling like so many politicians or hapless business executives caught on the wrong end of a microphone without a plan. We all know the outcomes, ranging from empty blah blah blabbing to disturbing utterances that demand later apologies.
I use a simple but powerful tool called Message Mapping that is ideal for all of those critical communication situations, including:
- Developing and delivering a speech
- Presenting to executives
- Preparing and participating in a job interview
- Launching a new product
- Communicating a new strategy
- Announcing organizational changes
- Helping to get a group on the same page
- Preparing for an interview
- Delivering difficult news
- Anything else that you can think of…
A group of us learned this approach from a public relations professional years ago and went on to adapt it to serve our own needs in creating corporate and product messaging and helping to ensure that trade show and briefing teams were on the same page about new product launches. Ultimately, we’ve all used it to great effect in our personal professional lives for interview and other presentations.
Creating the Map-Simplicity and Complexity at the Same Time:
The approach is simple to explain, easy to visualize and darned challenging to master all at the same time.
Let’s start with the visual in my poorly constructed, but hopefully, illustrative picture here. In its’ simplest incarnation, the map is constructed on a single sheet of paper (landscape), with the core message placed at the center, no more than 4 key supporting points external to the core message and then supporting data or evidence adjacent to each supporting point. That’s the easy part.
The challenging issue is to distill your core message down to its bare-naked essence and get it right. If you are preparing for a job interview, the core message is your personal-professional value proposition, which for most of us, is something that takes a lot of teeth gnashing and revision work to capture and describe properly. If you are launching a new product, this is the core value proposition of your offering…the essence of why this is important and for whom and how it is uniquely different. And yes, this is captured in one or two sentences.
Once your core message or in this case your core value proposition is defined, you need to back that with points (examples, facts, experiences) that support this message. Once again, you face the task of distilling a lot of examples and supporting points down to the very few that most effectively support your case. And yes, I’m serious about limiting yourself to three or at most four supporting points that make the case for your core message. Any more than that, and you’ve not worked hard enough to sharpen your messaging.
The outer ring as I describe it is used for the facts and supporting points that back your logic. The constraint of a single page or flip-chart challenges you to summarize the critical points and to jettison extraneous anecdotal information.
Using the Map:
Once the map is in place and appropriately tested, it becomes an invaluable personal or group tool. You’ve now got a tool to help you practice and deliver in the most difficult of situations. If constructed properly, your map drives your script and serves as an aid in answering questions. Proper use of the map involves making your case according to the flow and answering questions by referencing back to the supporting evidence…key supporting points and core message every time.
One point of caution: politicians are often observed abusing this tool by answering questions using their maps, with complete disregard for the question being asked. Don’t disrespect your audience this way.
The Bottom-Line for Now
I’ve worked for weeks with teams using this tool to form corporate and product messaging and days and weeks with individuals to help frame their own professional value propositions. I’ve also used this in minutes to prepare for interviews or executive updates. We frequently provided these maps to our trade show teams to ensure that everyone could answer the questions, “What do you guys do?” or “What’s new this year?” with something that actually meant something to someone, other than the inconsistent corporate gobbedly-gook that is often spewed in these settings.
Keep in mind that just because you own the finest woodworking tools doesn’t mean that you are capable of creating beautiful furniture. The message map is a tool that demands care and handling and then and only then, rewards you with rich and productive communication experiences.
Measure twice, cut once.
Leadership Caffeine: Prepare Your Mind to Conquer Presentation Anxiety
Filed under: Career, Leadership Caffeine, Management Education, Marketing Yourself, Performance, Professional Growth, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Few phrases are capable of sending shivers down a person’s spine, like, “Bob or Mary, why don’t you present your ideas at our next meeting.” Except perhaps, “Bob or Mary,” why don’t you present your ideas at our next Board of Directors meeting.
For some people, this seemingly golden opportunity to show and share is akin to receiving a prison sentence with no hope for parole.
Speaking as Cruel and Unusual Punishment?!
While never seeking to engage in cruelty by invitation to present, I’ve had people tell me (after the fact) that they basically shut down from the time they were “invited” to present until it was over.
One individual volunteered that during the weeks leading up to the board presentation, he suffered from a number of symptoms, including sleeplessness, grinding of teeth, loss of appetite, disengagement from family, feelings of excessive stress and finally, a rolling wave of panic attacks. While he did a great job, that’s not a desirable or sustainable process for anyone to have to deal with when it comes to preparing to present.
Most everyone would agree that the extreme fear of speaking in front of a group is not rational, yet, for those so afflicted, the fear is every bit as real as if the judge was handing down the sentence and offering the choice between execution and delivering the speech. Many people would hesitate on making that call. “Hmmm, if I choose the former, I can skip the presentation.”
While part of me wants to say, “man up,” or some other gender appropriate, much more politically correct phrase for “grow some,” (oops), I can’t. I consistently spend 10 hours per week and often 20 in front of groups ranging from workshops to keynotes to classes, and my journey from something resembling the individual above to someone that truly loves and seeks out opportunities to engage an audience, is all too fresh in my mind.
No amount of cajoling will help someone overcome his or her fear of speaking. This is an intensely personal foe that is difficult to wrestle to the ground and pin. While there is some oft-repeated and worthwhile advice, ranging from hiring a coach to joining organizations such as Toastmasters, I’ve observed that a good number of people have learned to manage their anxiety by focusing on preparing their minds.
6 Starter Ideas for Coping and Even Conquering Presentation Anxiety:
1. Learn from Ben Franklin. Draw a line down the center of a blank piece of paper and label the left “positives” and the right “negatives.” Over the course of the next few days, jot down all of the good things that will accrue to you from developing your skills as a presenter as well as all of the negatives. Return to the list daily, add new ideas and cross off those that have no basis in reality. For example, “I’ll be fired immediately” for whiffing on the presentation is not going to happen. Neither will you be bound, have an apple stuffed in your mouth and roasted over an open spit. And I’ve yet to fall through a trap door on a stage. The positive list will be much longer…much more rational and this is where you should focus your mind.
2. Turn your thinking around. Develop a fear of not overcoming this bogeyman. On another sheet of paper, create a list of all of the potentially negative things that will happen if you don’t develop comfort in front of an audience. Think about an endless cycle of the horrible symptoms described above. Throw in career derailment, reduced earnings potential and an artificial cap on your ability to succeed. There are some really great reasons for developing as a speaker and some truly significant implications of shrinking from or shirking this developmental area.
3. Turn your thinking around, part 2. Reorient your perspective to turn developing as an effective and confident speaker into your mountain to climb. You’ve already established the negatives of not succeeding and the positives that accrue from conquering this Mt. Everest. It’s time to turn this into an all-consuming goal. Whether you take your inspiration from watching “The Biggest Loser,” (hey, nothing intended here.) or Wimbledon or the Tour De France, make this your event to pursue.
4. Start with some easy practice runs to build confidence. There are nearly countless opportunities to start practicing in front of groups in your workplace or in your personal life. Each practice run is an important part of your conditioning. Set a goal on achieving one opportunity per week in fairly friendly surroundings. Focus initially on content that you know well or topics that you are passionate about.
5. Learn to plan your message. I never speak without having first created my message map on a single sheet of paper. Place your core message at the center, your supporting messages hang off the core and each supporting message is backed by evidence. Build your update from that template and you will be amazed how much easier this processes becomes. The preparation of a good message map means that you are not only ready to present your compact in a clear and concise manner, you are also ready to field questions. The message map is absolutely my best speaking friend.
6. Say it with a smile. As part of your climb up Mt. Everest, learn to manage your emotions. A simple technique that will help you immediately and that will warm your audience, is to smile while you talk. Don’t grin like an idiot, but show your warmth and emphasize the smile.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
My intent in this post is to offer hope…and some lifelines for everyone that suffers from Pre-Speaking Traumatic Stress Syndrome. This is real, and you can shrink from it, shirk it or find a way to shine. And while there’s a lot more to do than what I outlined in this post, remember, these are lifelines to help you rein in and focus your emotions. Now enjoy the training and start climbing. The benefits to you in your career are priceless.
Have You Been Observed Recently?
Filed under: Leadership, Management Education, Marketing Yourself, Performance, Professional Growth, Talent Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
For a whole bunch of reasons, I really enjoyed the latest column by Dan and Chip Heath at Fast Company, entitled, “Watch the Game Film.”
Professional sports teams and great athletes have long understood the power of watching game film to learn about themselves as well as the strategies and tendencies of their opponents. Aside from professional speakers, few of us in business benefit from either viewing ourselves in action on film, and sadly too few of us benefit from good feedback and mentoring from our managers and colleagues. An exception to my “too few” lament is found in the emphasis that great front-line sales managers place on observing and then coaching their reps. Of course, great front-line sales managers IMO are the exception and not the rule.
The Heaths offer some fascinating examples of the power and tangible impact on performance of third-party observation in business and education settings (well worth the time to read), and then cap things off with the thought-provoking question:
What insights might your team be overlooking because no one is observing carefully enough?
Wouldn’t You Like to Know?
- What impact you really have on people as you engage with them?
- What habits you have that detract from your effectiveness as a communicator?
- What you need to dial up to encourage people to know, like and trust you?
- What your top (performers, reps, project managers, product managers team leaders) do to engender trust and create positive results?
- What you can do to help everyone on your team recognize what they need to do to improve?
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The power of observing is under-emphasized and critically important in business.
Much like professional athletes, we need to see ourselves in action to understand our own quirks, tells and idiosyncrasies. When it comes to dealing with people, engendering trust and earning respect, we’re often our own worst enemies. It’s long overdue for us to spend some quality time studying game film or listening to someone that has observed us in action. We all might be surprised at how easy it is to identify and make meaningful improvements in our lives, careers and organizations.
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Check out the Leadership Tip of the Day at Building Better Leaders
9 Tips for Nailing the Classroom Group Project Presentation
Filed under: Career, Management Education, Marketing Yourself, Performance, Professional Growth, Project Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Note from Art: this is a public service post for anyone in a classroom anywhere that is on the hook for a group project. MBA students and undergraduates, please pay particular attention. If you know someone that might benefit from the guidance, please pass this along. I want to hear about some seriously great group project presentations over the next few weeks! And hey, the rest of you professionals out there might just pick up a few pointers below as well.
Everyone’s Doing It and Many are Not Doing It Well:
On campuses and in classrooms, graduate and undergraduate students alike are all doing It and many are not doing It very effectively. The It of course, is preparing for the end of semester/quarter/year group project presentation, which in many cases will serve as a significant portion of the final grade.
After sitting through a fair number of these presentations over the past few years, I’ve identified some common mistakes that detract from the quality of the final presentation and depress grades, not to mention instructors. The mistakes and misfires are generally a result of two issues: the very personal and irrational fear of presenting and some horrendously poor planning and coordination between group members.
Sidebar on Group Projects:
The topic of group projects in school probably merits a book, and while there are many pros and some cons to this component of the education process, I am in the camp that a well-defined project assignment enhances the learning experience, challenges individuals to develop strong group socialization, communication and leadership skills and offers a learning opportunity for the entire class if the output is of good quality. I’ll save the cons and potential for abuse of this component of college and grad school life for another post.
Regardless of your opinion on the worth of group projects, they are a reality, and one which students should play to win. What follows is a short summary of the tips and suggestions that I provide to groups in my MBA and undergraduate classes. I welcome additional thoughts and I encourage you to use these tips in good health and in pursuit of an A.
9 Tips For Nailing the Class and Group Project Presentation:
1. Ensure that the group members share an integrated view of the project:
One of the biggest and painfully visible issues with group projects is that it becomes clear that the work was doled out to team members and while everyone knows their part, no one knows the whole picture. Take the time to discuss your respective work products, key findings/conclusions and ensure that there is a unified and complete view of the project.
2. Before preparing presentation materials, the group must think through the following:
- You need to interest your audience in the first 60 seconds or you’ve lost them. The group should develop an engaging opener..a reason for the audience to be interested.
- You need to plan your message…before you begin writing your presentation. Key points; necessary supporting points; examples; summary of key findings…and take-aways.
- The goal is not to show how much you know..it is to concisely and briefly deliver key points, insights and conclusions.
3. Building the presentation:
Remember, business plans seeking millions of dollars in funding can be pitched in a dozen or fewer slides. Keep your deck brief…make every slide count.
- Ideally, have one person build the presentation…it allows you to standardize on graphics, fonts and importantly, on a single voice. Nothing is worse than disjointed presentation materials that don’t flow and look like they were created in a blender.
- The best approach is always one-main point per slide. (Or, no slides at all.)
- Pictures are best…with brief captions or sidebars
- Plan on your narrative and speaking points filling in all of the words that are not on the slides.
4. Helping the group and individuals prepare to present:
Since your slides are crisp and clean, every speaker must plan out their presentation narrative. I like to print my slides, handwrite my major points (no more than 3 to 5) and then practice delivering these points until I don’t need notes. Other important planning issues:
- Create transitions between speakers
- Plan on the team leader conducting group introductions.
- CREATE AN ENDING. Too many groups end with “that’s all.” That works for a cartoon…not for a project presentation.
- Coordinate the slide advancement in advance…not during the presentation.
5. Getting yourself ready-prepare your attitude:
It’s time to tackle the irrational demons that bedevil so many classroom (and professional) speakers. Think through the following:
- Remind yourself that there is little to fear. The audience is on your side. They want you to succeed. Unless you disrespect the audience, they are there for you.
- Remember that your goal is to always inform, share and even entertain. Entertaining does not mean that you have to tell jokes…but having the mind of an entertainer…ensures that you focus on pleasing your audience.
- Sit down the night before the presentation and imagine that you were an audience member for your own presentation. Jot down a list of what you would like to learn. Review that list before the presentation.
6. Immediately before the presentation, remind yourself of the following:
- Smile while speaking. Your smile is infectious.
- Eye contact please. Or at least pick different spots in the room slightly above head level and move your eyes to each spot in a random fashion.
- Project your voice. Many students forget to project, and the audience has to struggle to hear. Be loud and proud…always with a smile.
- If you have an accent…or if you are a mumbler, you will need to focus on both projecting and enunciating!
- Modulate your voice. Raise volume for emphasis…lower volume for intensity. Avoid talking in a monotone.
7. During the presentation:
- Smile, project your voice, and make eye contact. Present with confidence, and be part of the group in the room, not a talking head.
- Enthusiasm and passion are a speaker’s best friends! Show and share yours.
- Modulate your voice.
- Notes: if you must have them in your hand, don’t read from them. An occasional glance is fine. Reading is never fine.
- DON’T READ YOUR NOTES!
- Posture…don’t stand defensively (no arms crossed)…don’t get in the fig-leaf pose (use your imagination) and don’t get in the T-Rex pose (again, use your imagination). No hands in pockets, either. Pick a base position…hands at the side with occasional, simple gestures. Vary it slightly so that you don’t become a mannequin. (Thanks, Tim Koegel for these posture suggestions!)
- Be conscious of your timing. If you’ve practiced and if you know your key points…make them and keep moving.
- Briefly recap your key points and then transition to your next speaker…introducing him/her by name…and perhaps topic.
8. After the presentation: Q/A:
Many a great group presentation crashes on the rocks of a mismanaged Question and Answer session. Consider the following:
- Pre-plan for someone to be the question moderator. The moderator should restate the question and then direct it to the appropriate person.
- If you don’t understand the question, ask the questioner for clarification.
- If you don’t know the answer, do not make it up. Develop the habit of saying, “I’m not certain, but that is an important question that I would love to look into for you.”
- Keep your answers brief. Resist the urge to share everything you know.
- The moderator should sense when the question is answered/over and move on.
- No need to get defensive with an audience member that disagrees. It’s OK to agree to disagree.
9. Wrapping Up:
The group moderator should close out the group’s presentation, thank the audience and transition for the next group. Do something to close out beyond the ever-present and really depressing, “that’s all we have.”
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Here’s to nailing some group project presentations, getting great grades and importantly, improving your personal and professional communication skills along the way. Use these in good health! -Art
Fear, Self Confidence, Development, Renewal and Branding: Content from Art in Other Publications
Filed under: Career, Current Affairs, Innovation, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Leading Change, Life and Business, Management Education, Marketing Yourself, Performance, Professional Growth, Talent Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
As I continue expanding my writing and publishing activities in my growing multi-media and multi-medium world with multiple blogs and an e-newsletter as well as frequent writing for other publications, I feel duty bound to highlight some of the content that you won’t catch in this blog alone.
In the next few weeks, I will work with my good friends and web developers at DigiSage to eliminate the need to send out separate posts on what else I’m covering in different arenas by creating a sidebar where you can scan and click as you so desire. For the moment however, here’s the update.
In Cased You Missed These At My Building Better Leaders Blog:
-The Leader’s Daily Reminder List offers nine suggestions for improving your blocking and tackling as a leader every day. Great leaders don’t make New Year’s resolutions, they resolve to improve every single day!
-Develop the Courage to Lead by Pushing Out of Your Silo offers ideas on enhancing your career and improving your effectiveness by building bridges with other groups and professionals across the organization. Contrary to the popular myths, the people in other departments are generally neither idiots or out to get you!
-The Leader’s Journey from Fear to Self-Confidence tackles a critical topic that almost no one talks about. Great leaders work hard on overcoming their fears. And yes, we all have them.
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The First Edition of the Management Excellence Newsletter Published on January 6 with All New Content For:
-Ideas for Turbocharging Talent Development on a Lean Budget
-Get Started Suggestions for Growing Your Professional Brand This Year
-Must Read Resources-A Book and Blog Review.
If you are not on the Management Excellence Newsletter list and would like to make sure you don’t miss out on the current and future issues, you’ll find the sign-up in the far right column here at Management Excellence. I’ll send out a copy of the current issue to anyone who signs up this week. And of course, your e-mail information will never be used for any purpose other than distributing the newsletter!
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I was thrilled to be asked to write the cover story for a quarterly business publication distributed to all businesses in my county here in Illinois. The story, “Rethink, Renew and Recover”offers my take on tackling the tough tasks in front of us and how to succeed and prosper now! You can read the article by downloading the pdf file of The Catalyst magazine on this linked webpage.
Oh, and shameless plug…notice the Strategy and Execution program highlighted on the cover as well. That would be me on the docket to conduct one of my favorite and most invigorating programs on how to create value through a dynamic strategy and execution process. I would love to run this program for your firm.
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Happy Reading!
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