Are you getting called in to do a sales presentation on your product?  Perhaps the audience already knows what the product is.  They already know the "what" before you tell them the "why".  How do you use the Rule the Room technique to captivate them when they already know the "what" and are already expecting "the sales pitch"? This is something many people want to know.  Whether you do technical sales or non-technical sales, the key is to stop pitch selling and start getting the clients to sell themselves. When we were little kids, we were taught to lead with the product. We were handed a tin of popcorn or a box of cookies and told, "Go sell the product." People would go around and sell a couple of tins of popcorn and a couple boxes of cookies. Ever since we were little kids, each of us was taught product sales, product sales, and product sales. Are you a product salesperson or a coach? Here’s how you can tell: the product salesperson focuses the close around the recommendation or product he/she is intending to sell. Often times, you are describing all of the neat features the product provides and how it can benefit the client. This leads commonly to cognitive dissonance and a thirty percent closing ratio. Being a coach is very different. It’s about guiding the prospect through a series of strategic questions that leads to the prospect coming to his own conclusions. The coach is giving up ultimate control of the meeting, but is ensuring cognitive connection and a sixty percent close ratio. Getting people to sell themselves is not about the product. If you pitch a product for even just one sentence during your entire close, it’s over. Some people will take what it is we’re going to be talking about in this blog (getting the client to sell himself), and they’re going to use 99% of it. But, 1% of it they’re going to forget. Do not forget!!! The first rule of getting clients to sell themselves: you can’t pitch anything. There are no more product sales! If you can’t pitch anything, how are you supposed to sell it? The answer is getting the client to sell himself. When you do this, it becomes a true partnership with your client, and the following scenarios start to take place more and more in your business as you are getting all your clients to sell themselves on your solution: Your clients put their energy into you. People fill you up. You are consistently getting restored. You have more energy to give to other areas of your life. You close even more business than ever before. Your client acquisition rate increases by 50% or more. Your prospects routinely say, "When can I sign?" Your prospects are incredibly excited to meet with you next. Your prospects truly understand why this is so important. You are decreasing the time it takes to acquire a client by 33% or more. Imagine asking the client, "Do you want to go on a road trip?" The client says, "Yes, I want to go on a road trip." You respond, "Okay, so we’re going to go on this road trip together. Are you sure you want to go on this road trip together?" The client says yes. You’ve just formed a partnership with your client that you’re going on this road trip together. When you’re in the car together, you’re in a partnership. You both chose to be in the car. At this point, you have to ask yourself, "At any point, are you grabbing the wheel?" Most sales people feel they need to be the one driving the car on the road trip. Getting the clients to sell themselves suggests a different solution: the sales person sits in the co-pilot seat instead of the driver’s seat and lets the prospective client drive the car. That’s the difference. Why not let the client drive? Who has to spend more energy? The person driving or the person being the copilot? The answer is the person driving. Ironically, many sales people live every single day as the drivers of the car. Why do they do that? Many feel that they have to drive in order to be successful. Many feel like they can maintain a sense of control. Often, it’s a false sense of security. When you’re the one driving the car, you’re not noticing all the cool things and all of the opportunities around you, because you’re rarely able to look out the side of the window. As the copilot, you have the mental capacity to notice things that other people won’t notice. This includes things like: Other client opportunities Other prospect opportunities Referral opportunities Opportunities to help the client think bigger Being able to see what’s going on in the client’s eyes Noticing what the client is thinking or feeling People are scared of being sold. Getting the client to sell himself isn’t about fear selling. It’s about asking the right questions so that the client comes to his own conclusions and answers. You make the process as simple and clear to him or her as "water is wet." It’s about anchoring the answers to your questions in the client’s mind. Any time you refer to a question in the future, you are essentially asking the client, "Mr. Prospect, is water wet?" Now the client won’t say, "Let me think about that. I’ll get back to you." They will simply say, "Yes, of course water is wet." Instead of selling a product or pitching a process, you are coaching somebody to come to his own solution by asking strategic questions. Think of it in the same way you would teach a child to tie his shoes. You could just tell a child how to do it, or you can ask the child questions. You can show the child how to tie a shoe all day long, but he won’t get it until he is the one actually tying the shoe. If you’re going to pitch sell, then you have to worry about style. But if you’re going to get the client to sell himself, this is a universal technique that works for anyone. This is the one place that we can throw the styles out the window, and we’re going to prove it by looking at a panel of all four styles in this boot camp so that you can see that no matter what personality style you have, you can be incredibly successful getting your client to sell himself. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book David and Goliath, points out that a disproportionate number of highly successful business owners and CEOs are dyslexic. But, it’s not because they’re dyslexic that they are successful. It’s because they struggled with school so much that the one thing they had to learn how to do was be incredibly good listeners. That’s the difference. Getting a client to sell himself has to do with those listening skills. When you’re listening, it doesn’t matter what your communication style is, because listening is listening. This whole chapter, this whole concept, this whole process, is about listening. No matter what your style is, you can do this method. Do you know the people that when you talk to them, you can’t get a word in edge-wise? You feel you’re competing with them for the ability to talk. Well, not the great sales presenters. The best sales people are also some of the best listeners I have ever seen.  Did you ever notice that the great sales people (who are great listeners) almost always defer to the other person when the other person has something to say? It’s as if the person almost has a zipper on his mouth and just instantly closes it whenever anyone starts talking. They won’t interrupt. The best sales people have learned how to sit back and listen and only talk when it’s critical to get the client to sell himself with four simple steps: Ask Leading Questions (I talk about how to do these here: http://ruletheroom.com/how-to-create-good-leading-questions/ Ask for his thoughts Get a double commitment Rinse and Repeat Think of these techniques as a cycle. Asking leading questions, then asking for his thoughts, and then getting a double commitment forms a complete cycle that allows you to get the client to sell himself.  Try it and then let me know how it goes. P.S. To learn more about how to give an amazing presentation, check out my new book Rule the Room. Best, JasonTeteak Rule the Room The post Sales Presentations That Get Clients To Sell Themselves appeared first on Rule The Room.

I was at a national health care conference a few years ago. One of the presenters finished, signed off with sincerity and warmth, and promised to stick around. The handclapping had been spirited. As they filed out, people were talking to one another and there was a feeling of energy in the room. "Wow!" someone said. "You said it!" someone else agreed. "That was an amazing presentation!" Some months later, I returned to the same room to hear another presentation. That one ended quite differently. I didn’t hear anyone say "wow." In fact, there wasn’t even any applause at the conclusion, because people weren’t quite certain that the presentation was over. The screen went to black, at which point the presenter merely said, "Thank you," and left the stage. There were a few awkward moments of people looking around, unsure whether it was time to go. Then they began to drift out, silently. The presenters had equally interesting topics, good material, and polished deliveries, yet one sent the audience out the door buoyed and energized and the other let them leave feeling let down. The difference was that the first presenter knew what performers, directors, and producers—people who are always conscious of the audience—know almost intuitively: You need to put as much emphasis on the finale as on the opening of a show. How you close is critical. Focused on overcoming their anxieties about the opener and their concerns about the core of the presentation, many presenters pay scant attention to how they will end it. But Rule the Room style is to plan to the end—and beyond. The presentation isn’t over until you’ve met the needs of all the audience members. Do that, and they’ll be saying "wow" about your presentation, too. To make that happen...   Show that the presentation was worthwhile. Put up the summary slide and summarize all the takeaways in one sentence. Begin the sentence with "You have just learned . . ." and complete the statement using the summary of the main hook for your presentation. For example, at the end of my presentation bootcamp, I say, You have just learned forty-eight new ways to create a customized, memorable presentation; feel more prepared and confident; and engage and entertain even the most challenging audience."   Address any remaining questions. When you’re finished summarizing the presentation, and while you’re still on the summary slide of all the takeaways, make your final question request. Ask, "What questions do you have about [the title of your presentation]?" In my case, it would be: "What questions do you have about giving an irresistible presentation?" Tell the audience where they can get more information. You’ve reminded them what they got and why they wanted it, and presumably have won their trust and appreciation. Take advantage of the opportunity to make an ongoing connection, and do it correctly, when you display the final slide. Avoid a heavy-handed approach such as, "If you’d like more information about [whatever you’re offering], go to [name of website]. There you’ll find material and information that will make you a huge success." It’s more subtle and, I believe, more effective, simply to include the contact information on the very last slide of your presentation along with the words "Thank you." Let them read the information, and assume they will contact you. This shows a lot of confidence. If you have offered to the entire group or to any individual that you will answer particular questions, provide a resource, or make a phone call, confirm at this point that you will follow through on your promise. You can make a generic statement such as "I will follow up on [the information you promised] by [specific date]."   Part with warm closing words. When you thank your audience, give an actual, specific reason to thank them and you will seem even more sincere. Many presenters tend to thank the audience for their time, which suggests they might have been spending their time doing something more important. Instead, mention why you appreciate something they have done. For example, if they were very responsive—they were listening attentively and asking great questions—you might say, "Thank you for being such a warm audience." If they gave you some great feedback you were looking for, say so: "Thank you for your feedback." As always, your tone is more important than the words you use. Keep your volume down, your pace normal, and your speech free of inflections. Close with a pleasantry. You have to be able to read your audience. If your audience has been especially responsive, then you can add again, "If you have additional questions, stick around," which shows again you want to reach out to them. Otherwise cut directly to your closing remark. "Have a great day" will suffice. It shows them you’re done, just as if you’re closing the curtains on a performance. To make sure they have no doubt, walk away from the sweet spot as soon as you’ve uttered your closing words. Often, some of your audience will approach you to have a few words before you leave. Stay where you are or return to center stage and answer the individual questions you promised to handle. Meet their needs. Oh . . . and expect some applause. It may begin when you make your pleasant final remark or when you walk away from the sweet spot. (The audience needs such a cue to begin.) You may never have gotten applause for a presentation before, but if you’ve followed through on all my suggestions in my new book, Rule the Room, now you will hear it time and again, after every amazing presentation you give. Best,   Jason T. Teteak Rule the Room The post How to Close Your Presentation appeared first on Rule The Room.

What’s a surefire way to make sure you’re meeting your audience’s needs? The circle of knowledge is a way to get the audience members to reveal what they actually want to know from you and to look good while they do it—and ultimately, it will be a tool to get them to listen. The simple, three-step process is an unparalleled tool to help you connect with your audience and get them to want to listen to you. Step 1: Ask a question Begin by saying, "Before we get started, I want to know what you think." Ask them what they think are the top three things that represent a success in the topic you’re presenting about. Then, give them thirty seconds to write down their individual answers. Asking the right question is key. For example: If you’re presenting to sales professionals: "What are the top three qualities you think successful salespeople all have?" If you’re presenting to a group of academic administrators: "What are the top three things that make an effective staff meeting?" If you’re presenting to software developers: "What are the top three features that make a new software program appealing to any market?" If you’re presenting to venture capitalists to get funding for your startup: "What are the top three criteria a great investment should meet?" What the question achieves: When I described the circle of knowledge, Richard White, who wanted to sell his services to community bankers, wanted to ask, "What are the top three concerns community bankers have?" For a presentation I would make, I would like to ask, "What are the top three areas you need to improve as a presenter?" so I could address those concerns. But it is pointless to ask a question designed to uncover pain points. Why? Because you won’t get many responses. People don’t want to reveal their weaknesses publicly. However, if you ask what are the top qualities or skills or results they’d like to achieve in their area, you will get lots of answers. Though they may be unwilling to express their deficiencies, people always know how to state positive goals. Richard reworded his question to ask, "What do you think are the top three qualities of a great loan?" As a presenter myself, I would ask, "What are the top three qualities that make an amazing presenter?" By making our audience members feel like experts and keeping the topic positive, we gain insights and build our credibility to our audiences. Spend time on coming up with questions for the circle of knowledge that will prompt useful responses. Ask a question that: directly relates to the overall topic of the presentation. is expressed in a positive way. is open-ended, with multiple right answers. is designed to tell you what your listeners want to know about the topic. allows the audience to demonstrate some expertise about the topic. Step 2: Request agreement Ask audience members to take another thirty seconds to discuss and then agree with the person sitting next to them on the best answer. What this process achieves: Your audience is always a bit apprehensive at the beginning, both about you and about interacting with others. But your question will allow audience members to express their opinions about a topic they care about and to come to an agreement—people love to agree—with a colleague or peer. This makes them loosen up, which makes them feel safer, which makes them more comfortable and ready to enjoy your presentation. Step 3: Call on a relayer Ask each pair to assign one of them to be the relayer who states what they came up with. What this achieves: Using a relayer system will be far more productive than asking for individual responses. People are less hesitant to speak in front of an audience if they are speaking on behalf of someone else, because they don’t have to take individual responsibility if their answer is not well received. In this case, since the question is based on their expertise, people often are eager to answer, hoping to look good in front of and be validated by you and by their peers. After a minute has elapsed (thirty seconds to write things down, thirty seconds to consult with the relayer), ask, "Relayers, what did you come up with?" They may not be sure whether to raise their hand or not, so I encourage them to be a bit informal by saying, "Shout it out. What are the top three things that make an effective [your topic]?" As they shout out answers, write them down on a board or a large sticky note if you can. (You’ll want to refer back to these later in your presentation to show you’ve met their needs). When you use the circle of knowledge, the answers come so quickly you may have trouble writing fast enough to get them all down. In the hundreds of times I’ve used the circle of knowledge, it has never failed to get an enthusiastic and helpful response. The circle of knowledge is effective and powerful. It enlivens the presentation. It gives your audience a chance to show its expertise and feel comfortable with you. It shows your empathy: You care what they have to say and you’re listening to them. It tells you exactly what they want to know. To the question of what makes a great loan, Richard’s audience mentioned such topics as minimizing risk, using existing customer relationships, and satisfying their customers. Among the qualities my audiences have said will make you amazing as a presenter are showing confidence, looking knowledgeable, using humor, appearing calm and flexible, building rapport, and so on. These answers reconfirmed the topics research told us were of interest, but with the circle of knowledge, the audience was hearing the answers aloud. If people add a topic you hadn’t prepared for, but you’re knowledgeable in that area, you may be able to weave the topic into your presentation in real time. (I’ll make some suggestions for doing that later in chapter 12.) At the very least, you’ve got some market research for the future. Best of all, you’ll have the perfect segue from what they want to the takeaways that you have. Once you bridge that gap, you will have them exactly where you want them, hanging on every word you are about to say. Best, Jason Teteak Rule the Room The post Meet Your Audience's Needs appeared first on Rule The Room.

Questions are a sign people are interested and provide an opportunity for interaction that makes your presentation livelier. Presenters often tell me they have a hard time getting responses when they invite questions. You can turn that around with just a few simple techniques.     Make people feel safe to ask a question Adult learners’ greatest fear is looking foolish in front of their peers. That’s why if you ask, "Do you have any questions?," chances are you’ll get nothing but dead silence. No one wants to be the first to raise a hand for fear of looking as if he or she is the sole individual in the room who doesn’t understand what’s going on. If instead you say, "What questions do you have about [the topic you’ve just covered]?," you’ve increased the likelihood of a response. You’ve suggested that you fully expect there will be questions, and therefore no one should be embarrassed to ask one. Still, you will have to wait for one to come.   Wait seven seconds to get a response The real key to getting questions is taking enough time to wait for them. Typically, presenters invite questions, wait a beat or so, say, "Then let’s continue," and go immediately to the next topic. When I point this out after an observation, the usual response is, "Nobody spoke up, and I felt so awkward and weird standing there silently while they stared at me, so I figured I should just move on." But you have to wait. You have to wait a full seven seconds. Though that’s not a lot of time, it can feel like an eternity. Do it anyway. Here’s why: The average human being needs one or two seconds to process a question, another three or four to come up with a response, and one to two more to get the courage up to ask the question publicly. And though you may find the wait uncomfortable, I’ll remind you that this presentation is not about you; it’s about your audience. You may experience discomfort while you’re waiting, but they won’t. You may feel they’re looking at you, but in fact, they’re not paying any attention to you. They’re thinking about what you just asked. While you’re waiting, their brains are busy. You will be more comfortable if you use the techniques I described to display confidence, taking the stance I have described in a previous blog. Swivel your head slowly from one side of the room to the other, gazing across the entire audience, so everyone knows you’re just waiting for a question. The more calm and confident you look, the more questions you’re apt to get. The first question often arrives just before the seventh second. If you allow less time, you may not get any questions at all. Until next time,   Jason Teteak Rule the Room The post How do you get an audience to ask questions? appeared first on Rule The Room.

Do you bank your happiness on the world around you? Or, instead, are you a beacon of hope for other people? If you radiate confidence, then the flux of the world around you doesn’t change who you are as a person.  This is especially true of public speakers.  Imagine being grounded enough in who you are that you remain unruffled. With each crisis, you become instantly more attractive, which leads to more speaking gigs and more business. You deserve not to be controlled by other people. You’re about to learn how to take your freedom back from people who have been taking it from you. The only thing you have control over is yourself. You don’t have control over anybody else. This blog will help challenge you to stop wasting time on other people’s business. When there is a problem, or anything unpleasant happens in your life, often times you will tell yourself a story to make sense of that situation. A story is simply something that you tell yourself. For example, you may be telling yourself that since certain clients didn’t move forward with you, they must hate you. This is a story you’re telling yourself. If the person calls you up and says, "I hate you," then you could make the claim that this person hates you. However, a more accurate representation is that this person feels that they hate you, but they don’t really hate you. There are really three types of "businesses" you can be involved in: Your business Other people’s business God’s business "My business" represents all the things that you directly have control over. These are things you can change that affect your world and your sphere. For example, the choice to be happy or not is "my business." This is a big one. Most people live in other people’s business and their happiness hinges on external things. "Other people’s business" represents things that you don’t have control over. You can influence things, but because of human free will, you cannot control another human being. For example, when you worry about whether your friend Joe is happy or not, you are in Joe’s business. Whether your staff is happy or not, whether your business partner is happy or not, or whether your spouse is happy or not—it’s all other people’s business. "God’s business" is literally everything else on the planet. It has nothing to do with another human. For example, worrying about the weather is worrying about God’s business. Worrying about a tornado or earthquake in your area is spending time in God’s business. Worrying about getting hit by a bus is being in God’s business. Worrying about someone in your family dying is being in God’s business. Identify When It’s Your Business One of the best ways to is to identify what is your business is to ask yourself these questions: Does what you want require anybody else to do anything? Or is the control and potential all within you? If you are the only variable, it’s your business. For example, let’s say you want to hire a marketing person for your business. You may really want a marketing person for your business, but you haven’t been able to find one yet. If you’re the only one responsible for taking the action to find that marketing person, then it’s your business. You can tell whether you have taken on other people’s business—and attached yourself to their end result—by thinking about a tug of war analogy. Imagine someone comes up to you and asks you to play tug of war; he does all sorts of things to try to get you to pick up that rope. If you let that person convince you to pick up the rope, then you have not learned how to detach from the end result. If you show distaste towards something that person said or did, then you’ve attached yourself to his end result. Chances are, that person wants you to be affected by what he says because then he knows he’s got you. You’re now attached to his drama and his end result. If you don’t pick up the rope, that shows you have learned how to detach from the end result. The shame, the guilt, or whatever else that person is trying to use to manipulate you to pick up that rope isn’t working anymore. Hope this helps when it comes to your fear or anxiety of giving a presentation (or really anything else you’re worried about in your life). All the best, Jason Teteak Rule the Room     The post Detach Yourself from the End Result appeared first on Rule The Room.

Are you ready for your next big presentation?  Are you sure?  Just because you have your notes ready, and even if you know exactly what you are going to say, you still may not be truly ready.    That’s because the presentation isn’t actually about you at all.  It’s about your audience.  If you really want to be ready so that your audience is blown away by your presentation, then after your notes are ready, you need to practice.  My suggestion is to practice your presentation three times in real time with what I call "Ninety-Ten." Practice for "Ninety-Ten" "Ninety-Ten" is the term I use to describe one of the best rules of presenting. While it is a comfort to have all the material available in your script for reference, to be a really dynamic speaker, you should be so familiar with your material that only 10 percent of your brain needs to be thinking about the presentation content itself and 90 percent of your brain can be thinking about your delivery to and interaction with your audience. If you are only at 60/40 or 80/20, you will be constantly distracted, looking at your content rather than at the audience, which will make you appear nervous and distract your listeners. More important, the more comfortable you are with your material, the less likely you are to be nervous. You make that happen with practice. The great majority of people can get to 90/10 after they practice a presentation three times in real time. In other words, if you have an hour-long presentation, you would stand in an empty room and go through it from beginning to end three times for a total of three hours. Afterward, you are likely to find the cues from this outline will be all you need to remind you what you have to say. I did a second observation of my new clients after I had helped them create their blueprints and told them to practice three times. Instead of as many as two dozen downward glances, I recorded only four to six. Each told me how much less nervous he felt about making the presentation. Most important, both appeared less nervous. Though three practices are enough for many people, some need more. I suggest you practice until you feel comfortable, but I assure you this will happen sooner than you might expect. Practice away your last-minute jitters Even when practice has gotten you to the 90/10 level, you may have some presentation anxiety. You’re most likely to experience it during the first thirty seconds of your presentation and for up to five minutes after you start. If you can’t do a complete run-through in real time right before you are scheduled to present, you can reduce your anxiety if you at least practice the beginning of your presentation. Go through the whole opener, from "Hi" and your name through "I’m going to show you . . ." and continue into your first topic. I usually suggest you continue until the five-minute mark, since normally nervousness dissipates by then. However, you may want to go a little longer or shorter, based on your past experiences of how long it takes you to relax. Do the pre-presentation practice of the opener at least three times. However, if you experience not just nervousness but fear—the kind that makes your palms sweat, your voice shaky, and your brain blank out temporarily—six practices seems to be the number that does the trick. (That’s only a half hour in all.) The best place to practice is in the empty room where you will be delivering the presentation, before everyone gets there. If that’s not possible, it’s useful to find a private space where there’s a mirror. Face the mirror when you practice to check you’re not exhibiting any of the nervous habits that I’ll describe later in the chapter. Even if you don’t feel nervous, you may unwittingly use body language that makes you look as if you are. If you’re having trouble finding a practice space, use this tip a colleague shared. When he needs a private spot, he locates the nearest restroom and retreats into one of the stalls. By warming up and relieving your concerns about forgetting, practice will do wonders to calm your nerves. With Gratitude, Jason Teteak Rule the Room The post The 90/10 Rule appeared first on Rule The Room.

What Every Presenter Should Know About Being the Best Q& A Session with Jason Teteak How does the white belt mentality apply to presenting? Years ago I decided I was going to start a Presenter Education Program at one of the largest healthcare software corporation in the world with 150 Presenters on staff. I met with the Head of Training to propose an innovative program to improve learning transfer, audience experience and reduce Presenter burnout/turnover. He said "I see the need to provide this program for all new Presenters, but why would we want to extend the offer to seasoned Presenters--they are getting great evals, their audience loves them, they are learning a ton from them and they’re happy?" I introduced him to the concept of "The White Belt Mentality"-- also known as beginners mind. So, what is "The White Belt Mentality"? I will read and excerpt from my book to answer this: When I taught high school I came across the notion of the best of the best teachers always getting better. I was awestruck by this and had to figure out why. I learned that the best of the best get (and stay) that way because they are constantly working to become better and humble themselves to the process—"White Belt Mentality". Look at the best tennis players in the world, they have coaches. Now, can their coaches beat them on the court, probably not but that’s not the point. The question is can these coaches help these top athletes get better? Absolutely! And no one questions this. In my experience with thousands of Presenters, the best Presenters want to be coaches; they seek feedback, learning and challenges. There are so many benefits to them getting coaching but I have found the Presenters with this "White Belt Mentality" to be the exception, not the rule. That is not to say that a "White Belt mentality" cannot be cultivated. I have actually found a way to train coaches to inspire others to as I call it "climbs an even higher mountain". Without giving away all of your secrets can you explain how to create a "White Belt" Presenter environment? First create and offer a class that will be offered to seasoned Presenters who want to get better to be held just once a year for these top Presenters to collaborate and learn from each other. Your "White Belt" leaders will immerge here. Assign them to be what I call a "Yoda". These "Yoda’s" embody the "White Belt Mentality". Offer them learning and training opportunities from a Master Yoda.  They then will observe the Presenters and gather specific positive feedback based on what they see, hear and feel while observing the Presenter in the classroom to build awareness for the Presenter about their strengths. A great Presenter is aware of their strengths and uses them to further the learning of their audience every time. This is very powerful knowledge that gets overlooked and sometimes, when there is not awareness about strengths, there are many missed learning opportunities and atrophy can occur. How do Presenters feel about the "White Belt" approach? Most Presenters I have worked with have a lifelong passion for learning. This love of learning is actually the key to cultivating and maintaining an appreciation for "White Belt Mentality" vs. a black belt mentality. The "Black Belt Mentality" focuses on a finite "mastery" point, or a finish line. It has an air of "Ok, now that I have mastered this subject, I can train on this subject". And herein lies a big problem, most Presenters love to learn. With this "Black Belt Mentality", learning ends and this is where what I call "Presenter-drain" begins. Boredom can set it. Learning decreases. With the White Belt mentality, the learning is always going to be a part of the process and I see Presenters with amazing energy, focus and motivation spring forward. It prevents anyone from getting stuck in a rut. Staying with what you know is comfortable but you do not grow. What does a "White Belt "Presenter embody? An excitement for learning. There’s a strong appreciation for always having "A new mountain to climb". It’s seeking out the best techniques, coaches, and mentors. They thrive being the learners too. You allow them to learn how to fly higher in ways authentic to who they are as individuals by implementing a program that embraces and rewards the white belt. The best only get better because of habits like getting a coach. At the end of the day, seeking the "White Belt" mentality is a personal choice and depends on internal motivations based on WHY a person is a Presenter, WHAT their goals are for themselves and the people they teach and WHO they want to be as a Presenter. 3 Ways to Encourage White Belt Mentality: 1) Find strengths and ensure that strengths are being utilized so they stay powerful. 2) Identify the next mountain to climb. 3) Look for authentic ways to soar above where you have been. I’ll add that I love coaching and working with-in groups of advanced "white-belts". It’s amazing when "white-belts" get together to problem solve. They can amaze themselves and have new found love for training. Enjoy training more; cure Presenter burnout! Here are a few White Belts for you to meet-- Carlos’s Story- A financial professional and Presenter who loves to learn. He embodies the "White Belt Mentality". We take turns being the learner and sharing with each other. In a "Black-Belt" environment it becomes about "who knows more" or who is "the master". In a "White-Belt" environment, it’s just the opposite! We actually fight over who gets to be the learner because we each love being in the learner role! With this shared mentality we come up with amazing ideas for training programming. Natasha’s Story- When a "Presenter Education Process" was introduced at a major corporation a few years back it was meant to be for new Presenters. Natasha, a top Presenter, well know, well loved, seasoned Presenter requested that she be a part of the process. She sought out coaching. After she went through the process she said she "Had a renewed respect and enjoyment for training. Honestly, I was starting to get bored with being a Presenter and feeling really drained. I was so refreshed by this process and now I have two year’s worth of material to implement. " Jeremiah and Dylan Two best of the best, top Presenters in their organization requested coaching. Their employer brought me in and for me it was amazing to see them in action. They both clearly know their strengths and how to utilize them in a training environment. They were looking for feedback and craved validation for what they were accomplishing from a coach who had the eye for seeing what they were doing right, letting them know and then helping them to find new challenges-new mountains to strive for and ways to become ever more authentic while in front of their audience. White-belt to the "nth" degree—they couldn’t wait to get a coach in the room with them. So what are your thoughts about cultivating a "White Belt Mentality"? If you are a Manager, how do you keep you white belt mentality for yourself, encourage it or recognize it in others at your organization? Send me your thoughts at Jason@RuletheRoom.com.   Want know more about the "White Belt Mentality"? Go to ruletheroom.com   The post White Belt Mentality appeared first on Rule The Room.

 You may routinely give presentations on different topics to a group of wily veterans who think they have heard it all before (a group of physicians, for example, or executives, or even a convocation of college students). You may also give presentations on the same topic to audiences of all different types. In either case, there will be times when you want to make the presentation even more effective by spending some advance time tailoring it for a specific audience. It’s even more challenging when you arrive at a presentation only to discover the composition of your audience is not what you expected. Or, even if you’ve done your research and prepared very carefully for your audience, you realize that their expectations are different from what you had anticipated. In these cases, you’ll also have to tailor your presentation, but you’ll have to do it in real time. Here are ways to meet both sets of challenges: Customize takeaway hooks for your listeners Be prepared to match the mood of your audience Customize your presentation on the fly. Give real-life uses they can relate to. I am surprised when I look over presentations and discover that presenters have not done enough work to ensure their stories and examples are customized according to the particular requirements of the audience. Your audience needs to feel as if you have written this presentation specifically for them—even if that’s not the case. Customize takeaway hooks for your listeners If you are giving a presentation to a number of wily veterans, one of the best ways to make your listeners feel you wrote the presentation just for them is to modify every one of your takeaway hooks to suit them in particular. For example, when I gave a presentation to a group of newly veteran professors on how to give a compelling lecture, among the takeaways I planned to include was one about confidence. Typically, I’d introduce the hook by saying, "I’m going to show you how to come across as completely confident, safe, and trustworthy." For the professors, I rephrased the topic so it would appear to be tailored to them: "I’m going to show you how to feel and show more confidence and credibility so you and your students can focus more on learning." When I delivered this hook, the professors were especially attentive and engaged. I have said you need to do research for a presentation, and if your audience is more informed, it pays to do additional research when you’re going to appear before a particular type of audience. I knew how to tailor my presentation to what the professors wanted because a few weeks prior to the presentation, I had called on some of them to discuss what would be important to their peers. I asked the sort of questions that elicited some of their pain points and pleasure points: What most worries assistant professors about giving a lecture? The number one answer? They were concerned about appearing credible to the students. What are your biggest challenges as lecturers? Covering the entire topic was one. Dealing with different levels of competence in a single classroom was another. What were some of the problems the challenge causes? Being ignored by students who were sitting with their computers open to Facebook. Feeling their confidence erode. Worrying about their competence as teachers. What would be the ideal outcome after attending a presentation on giving a compelling lecture? They described it as having confidence that they could appear before seventy-five students with open laptops, call them to attention, and manage to keep their attention for an hour. What would getting such an outcome do for you? Feeling confident would make them enjoy interacting with their students and have a snowball effect, they told me. They’d become better teachers and could focus on helping the students learn. These answers helped me tailor my hooks so I could make the audience crave what I was going to say. Be prepared to match the mood of the audience If possible, do some advance research about the sponsoring organization that can help you anticipate the general mood of your audience. Perhaps the sponsoring organization is facing financial reorganization, so the staff is being cut and the people remaining are uncertain about their positions. Or perhaps the company has brought you in to implement new procedures and the personnel aren’t happy about the changes. Begin with a neutral tone. Don’t try to incorporate humor or enthusiasm right away. People won’t respond to humor or enthusiasm until they’re feeling good. They don’t feel good until they feel safe. And they don’t feel safe until they trust you. Wait until after you’ve covered your first takeaway or later before you introduce any humor. They’ll start to feel good only after you’ve taught them something that catches their attention and/or their imagination.  Give real-life uses they can relate to Gradually—by the end of the opener, after you’ve shown them the list of takeaways, and especially after you’ve taught them how to achieve the first takeaway—your audience members should become responsive. Once they start to demonstrate some enthusiasm, you can respond to it, build on it, and perhaps introduce some humor. If audience members are unresponsive or negative, they’re likely not getting what they wanted for one of two reasons: Your presentation isn’t meeting the audience’s expectations: It’s not giving them what they came for. Your presentation isn’t meeting the audience’s needs: It isn’t giving them adequate and actionable solutions. Even if you prepared using all the techniques I suggest in my book, it is possible your audience will want to know even more than you had planned to cover. You can find out what the audience hopes to learn while you are actually delivering the presentation, and you can make sure to deliver it. To show an audience you’re responsive to them, the first thing you have to demonstrate is that you’re listening, you know what’s important to them, and you know how they’re feeling. They have to be sure you have heard them before they will feel that what you are saying is meant directly for them. This means they don’t want you to offer solutions until they have asked for them, so your job is to get them to tell you what they want to know. Then, when they’re convinced you’re tailoring your approach to their needs, they’ll be responsive. Once again, I’m going to remind you it’s not what they want that’s really important. It’s why they want it. You need insight into their emotional needs—their pain points and their pleasure points. You need to find out what is bothering them so you can offer appropriate remedies or what they desire so you can offer the means to get it. You can get that information quickly and effectively with the circle of knowledge. I’ve already told you how it helps capture their attention and makes your presentation enjoyable; now I’ll explain how it helps you tailor your approach. I was speaking to a group of deans at a large university and then to a gathering of student ambassadors who had been hired to recruit other students to join the sponsoring organization. In both cases, I was talking about how to give a presentation. I knew the takeaways for both would be similar. But I wasn’t sure which specific takeaways would matter the most to each group. I knew the circle of knowledge would help me to customize my presentation on the fly and allow me to focus on the areas that were of primary interest to each one. Knowing this, I could change my emphasis, a simple matter of taking time away from some topics and adding time to or emphasizing others. When I asked the college students the top three things that make an effective presenter, one said, "They know how to deal with questions they don’t know the answer to," and a second said, "They know how to interrupt the questioning to deliver their message." Those responses, which revealed their fears and doubts, represented their pain points. I asked the deans what they felt made a presenter effective. Their responses made it clear their main concern was managing to communicate everything they felt was necessary in a relatively brief period of time. Again, they had revealed their pain points to me. Give real-life uses they can relate to Telling your audience what you’re going to teach them is important, but to really get and keep their attention, you have to make them understand why they might need it. One of my clients once told me, "I’m giving the audience information. They can figure out how to apply it." When I disputed that, he said, "I can’t give them an example because I don’t have one. This is an audience of project managers, and I’ve never presented to project managers." The way you find examples is by talking to people like those who will be in your audience, doing research in advance, and mingling with the audience before the presentation. Mention your takeaways, and ask the person you’re speaking to how they might be useful. Half an hour before I spoke to a group of HR managers, I engaged one in conversation about three of the points I planned to cover. I asked if there were times she felt especially challenged by keeping her topic interesting. She said that happened during the meetings in which she was to help employees choose a health plan. I also asked if she sometimes felt it difficult to stay on track. She cited presentations about sexual harassment, when the discussion often became heated and difficult to control. Finally, I asked if making any specific presentations made her particularly nervous or fearful, and she said that happened when she had to address key objectives such as turnover and staffing. This five-minute discussion directly before my presentation yielded gold. I took notes, and, after our talk, I spent another five minutes incorporating her examples under the appropriate tasks and subtasks on my blueprint. When during my presentation I cited these examples, which the HR managers could apply in their world, I could see from their expressions they understood I was talking directly to them about things they could use, and they were rapt. The most important way to tailor your approach to a particular audience is to give actual examples and demonstrate as clearly as possible how those examples apply to their situations. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of putting effort into this step. The payoff is enormous. You’ll seem credible and empathic, and you’ll find your audience much more attentive. Best, Jason Teteak Rule the Room The post Win Over Wily Veterans appeared first on Rule The Room.

The 'Deadwood' star will have an important role in the upcoming sixth season of 'Game of Thrones.'

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Michael Starr, lead singer of Steel Panther, explains the venue's legacy before his band performs on the final show.

You just promoted one of your most promising employees to manager. Along with other new middle managers, she will also [...] The post 5 Traps that New Middle Managers Fall Into appeared first on .

This article was written by Dan Ring and originally appeared on TechTarget. Long before she won on Shark Tank, Kim Kaupe believes she made an important decision to boost her small business. Unhappy... Visit site for full story...

By Kevin Fall Deputy Director, Research, and CTOSEI This post is the first in a two-part series highlighting 10 recommended practices for achieving agile at scale. Software and acquisition professionals often have questions about recommended practices related to modern software development methods, techniques, and tools, such as how to apply agile methods in government acquisition frameworks, systematic verification and validation of safety-critical systems, and operational risk management. In the Department of Defense (DoD), these techniques are just a few of the options available to face the myriad challenges in producing large, secure software-reliant systems on schedule and within budget.In an effort to offer our assessment of recommended techniques in these areas, SEI built upon an existing collaborative online environment known as SPRUCE (Systems and Software Producibility Collaboration Environment), hosted on the Cyber Security & Information Systems Information Analysis Center (CSIAC) website. From June 2013 to June 2014, the SEI assembled guidance on a variety of topics based on relevance, maturity of the practices described, and the timeliness with respect to current events.  For example, shortly after the Target security breach of late 2013, we selected Managing Operational Resilience as a topic. Ultimately, SEI curated recommended practices on five software topics: Agile at Scale, Safety-Critical Systems, Monitoring Software-Intensive System Acquisition Programs, Managing Intellectual Property in the Acquisition of Software-Intensive Systems, and Managing Operational Resilience. In addition to a recently published paper on SEI efforts and individual posts on the SPRUCE site, these recommended practices will be published in a series of posts on the SEI blog. This post, the first in a two-part series by Ipek Ozkaya and Robert Nord, presents challenges to achieving Agile at Scale as well as the first five of the 10 technical best practices detailed in the SPRUCE post. The second post in this series will present the remaining five best practices, as well as three recommendations for making the best use of the practices to achieve Agile at Scale. Why is Agile at Scale Challenging? Agile practices, derived from a set of foundational principles, have been applied successfully for well over a decade and have enjoyed broad adoption in the commercial sector, with the net result that development teams have gotten better at building software. Reasons for these improvements include increased visibility into a project and the emerging product, increased responsibility of development teams, the ability for customers and end users to interact early with executable code, and the direct engagement of the customer or product owner in the project to provide a greater sense of shared responsibility. Business and mission goals, however, are larger than a single development team. Applying Agile at Scale, in particular in DoD-scale environments, therefore requires answering several questions in these dimensions: 1. Team size. What happens when Agile practices are used in a 100-person (or larger) development team? What happens when the development team needs to interact with the rest of the business, such as quality assurance, system integration, project management, and marketing, to get input into product development and collaborate on the end-to-end delivery of the product? Scrum and Agile methods, such as extreme programming (XP), are typically used by small teams of at most 7-to-10 people. Larger teams require orchestration of both multiple (sub)teams and cross-functional roles beyond development. Organizations have recently been investigating approaches, such as Scaled Agile Framework, to better manage the additional coordination issues associated with increased team size. 2. Complexity. Large-scale systems are often large in scope relative to the number of features, the amount of new technology being introduced, the number of independent systems being integrated, the number and types of users to accommodate, and the number of external systems with which the system communicates. Does the system have stringent quality attributes needs, such as stringent real-time, high-reliability, and security requirements? Are there multiple external stakeholders and interfaces? Typically, such systems must go through rigorous verification and validation (V&V), which complicate the frequent deployment practices used in Agile development. 3. Duration. How long will the system be in development? How long in operations and sustainment? Larger systems need to be in development and operation for a longer period of time than products to which agile development is typically applied, requiring attention to future changes, possible redesigns, as well as maintaining several delivered versions. Answers to these questions affect the choice of quality attributes supporting system maintenance and evolution goals that are key to system success over the long term. Best Practices for Achieving Agile at Scale Every organization is different; judgment is required to implement these practices in a way that benefits your organization. In particular, be mindful of your mission, goals, existing processes, and culture. All practices have limitations—there is no "one size fits all." To gain the most benefit, you need to evaluate each practice for its appropriateness and decide how to adapt it, striving for an implementation in which the practices reinforce each other. Also, consider additional best practice collections (such as the one from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) referenced at the end of this webpage). Monitor your adoption and use of these practices and adjust as appropriate. 1. Make team coordination top priority. Scrum is the most common Agile project management method used today, and primarily involves team management practices. In its simplest instantiation, a Scrum development environment consists of a single Scrum team with the skills, authority, and knowledge required to specifyrequirements, architect, design, code, and test the system. As systems grow in size and complexity, the single team mode may no longer meet development demands. If a project has already decided to use a Scrum-like project-management technique, the Scrum approach can be extended to managing multiple teams with a "Scrum of Scrums," a special coordination team whose role is to (1) define what information will flow between and among development teams (addressing inter-team dependencies and communication) and (2) identify, analyze, and resolve coordination issues and risks that have potentially broader consequences (e.g., for the project as a whole). A Scrum of Scrums typically consists of members from each team chosen to address end-to-end functionality or cross-cutting concerns such as user interface design, architecture, integration testing, and deployment. Creating a special team responsible for inter-team coordination helps ensure that the right information, including measurements, issues, and risks, is communicated between and among teams. Care needs to be taken, however, when the Scrum of Scrums team itself gets large to not overwhelm the team. This scaling can be accomplished by organizing teams—and the Scrum of Scrums team itself—along feature and service affinities. We further discuss this approach to organizing teams in our feature-based development and system decomposition practice. Such orchestration is essential to managing larger teams to success, including Agile teams. 2. Use an architectural runway to manage technical complexity. Stringent safety or mission-critical requirements increase technical complexity and risk. Technical complexity arises when the work takes longer than a single iteration or release cycle and cannot be easily partitioned and allocated to different technical competencies (or teams) to independently and concurrently develop their part of a solution. Successful approaches to managing technical complexity include having the most-urgent system or software architecture features well defined early (or even pre-defined at the organizational level, e.g., as infrastructure platforms or software product lines). The Agile term for such pre-staging of architectural features that can be leveraged by development teams is "architectural runway." The architectural runway has the goal of providing the degree of stability required to support future iterations of development. This stability is particularly important to the successful operation of multiple teams. A system or software architect decides which architectural features must be developed first by identifying the quality attribute requirements that are architecturally significant for the system. By initially defining (and continuously extending) the architectural runway, development teams are able to iteratively develop customer-desired features that use that runway and benefit from the quality attributes they confer (e.g., security and dependability). Having a defined architectural runway helps uncover technical risks earlier in the lifecycle, thereby helping to manage system complexity (and avoiding surprises during the integration phase). Uncovering quality attribute concerns, such as security, performance, or availability with the underlying architectural late in the lifecycle—that is, after several iterations have passed—often yields significant rework and schedule delay. Delivering functionality is more predictable when the infrastructure for the new features is in place, so it is important to maintain a continual focus on the architecturally significant requirements and estimation of when the development teams will depend on having code that implements an architectural solution. 3. Align feature-based development and system decomposition. A common approach in Agile teams is to implement a feature (or user story) in all the components of the system. This approach gives the team the ability to focus on something that has stakeholder value. The team controls every piece of implementation for that feature and therefore they need not wait until someone else outside the team has finished some required work. We call this approach "vertical alignment" because every component of the system required for realizing the feature is implemented only to the degree required by the team. System decomposition could also be horizontal, however, based on the architectural needs of the system. This approach focuses on common services and variability mechanisms that promote reuse. The goal of creating a feature-based development and system decomposition approach is to provide flexibility in aligning teams horizontally, vertically, or in combination, while minimizing coupling to ensure progress. Although organizations create products in very different domains (ranging from embedded systems to enterprise systems) similar architecture patterns and strategies emerge when a need to balance rapid progress and agile stability is desired. The teams create a platform containing commonly used services and development environments either as frameworks or platform plug-ins to enable fast feature-based development. 4. Use quality-attribute scenarios to clarify architecturally significant requirements. Scrum emphasizes customer-facing requirements—features that end users dwell on—and indeed these are important to success. But when the focus on end-user functionality becomes exclusive, the underlying architecturally significant requirements can go unnoticed. Superior practice is to elicit, document, communicate, and validate underlying quality attribute scenarios during development of the architectural runway. This approach becomes even more important at scale when projects often have significant longevity and sustainability needs. Early in the project, evaluate the quality attribute scenarios to determine which architecturally significant requirements should be addressed in early development increments (see architectural runway practice above) or whether strategic shortcuts can be taken to deliver end-user capability more quickly. For example, will the system really have to scale up to a million users immediately, or is this actually a trial product? There are different considerations depending on the domain.For example, IT systems use existing frameworks, so understanding the quality attribute scenarios can help developers understand which architecturally significant requirements might already be addressed adequately within existing frameworks (including open-source systems) or existing legacy systems that can be leveraged during software development. Similarly, such systems must address changing requirements in security and deployment environments, which necessitates architecturally significant requirements be given top priority when dealing with scale. 5. Use test-driven development for early and continuous focus on verification. This practice can be summarized as "write your test before you write the system." When there is an exclusive focus on "sunny-day" scenarios (a typical developer’s mindset), the project becomes overly reliant on extensive testing at the end of the project to identify overlooked scenarios and interactions. Therefore, be sure to focus on rainy-day scenarios (e.g., consider different system failure modes), as well as sunny-day scenarios. The practice of writing tests first, especially at the business or system level (which is known as acceptance test-driven development) reinforces the other practices that identify the more challenging aspects and properties of the system, especially quality attributes and architectural concerns (see architectural runway and quality-attribute scenarios practices above). Looking Ahead Technology transition is a key part of the SEI’s mission and a guiding principle in our role as a federally funded research and development center.  We welcome your comments and suggestions on further refining these recommended practices. The next post in this series will present the five remaining technical practices, as well as strategies for how an organization can prepare for and achieve effective results using these best practices. Below is a listing of selected resources to help you learn more. We have also added links to various sources to help amplify a point.  Please be mindful that such sources may occasionally include material that might differ from some of the recommendations in the article above and the references below. For more information about Agile at Scale, please see: Stephany Bellomo, Philippe Kruchten, Robert L. Nord, Ipek Ozkaya. How to Agilely Architect an Agile Architecture, Cutter IT Journal, February 2014. Stephany Bellomo, Robert L. Nord, Ipek Ozkaya: A Study of Enabling Factors for Rapid Fielding: Combined Practices to Balance Speed and Stability. ICSE 2013: 982-991 Ozkaya, Ipek, Michael Gagliardi, and Robert L. Nord. Architecting for Large Scale Agile Software Development: A Risk-Driven Approach, Crosstalk, May/June, 2013. Integrate End to End Early and Often, IEEE Software July/August 2013 issue, Felix Bachmann et al Government Accountability Office. Software Development: Effective Practices and Federal Challenges in Applying Agile Methods. Report GAO-12-681. July 2012. http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-681 Leffingwell, Dean. Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Addison-Wesley, 2011. Leffingwell, Dean. Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises. Addison-Wesley, 2007. Larman, Craig and Vodde, Bas, Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Large, Multisite, and Offshore Product Development with Large-Scale Scrum For more information about quality attribute scenarios, please see: Leffingwell, Dean. Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Addison-Wesley, 2011. Ipek Ozkaya, Len Bass, Raghvinder Sangwan and Robert Nord. Making Practical Use of Quality Attribute Information, in IEEE Software Volume 25 Issue 2 March-April 2008, Page(s): 25-33. To learn more about test-driven development, see: Whittaker, James A., Jason Arbon and Jeff Carollo: How Google Tests Software (Apr 2, 2012) Beck, Kent: Test Driven Development by Example

The former Massachusetts governor impresses the new "Late Show" host with his uncanny ability to "stay in character."

We are delighted to have been asked to launch a blog on the Corporate University Exchange site. Who are we? Priscilla Nelson is a talent management executive with more than 30 years of experience who has consulted with and coached leaders in organizations around the world. Ed Cohen is a talent executive who also has more than 30 years experience and led both Booz Allen and Satyam Computer Services to the top of the ranks in learning and development. Together, we are Nelson Cohen Global Consulting, specializing in leadership strategies, development and coaching. With all the other blogs out there, and there certainly are many, we decided the theme for ours will be: When leadership matters most, how prepared are your leaders to influence change and guide your organization in today’s ever-changing business environment? We will view this from the lens of leading through learning. What do we mean by leading through learning? Simply put leading through learning is the simultaneous opportunity for leaders to learn, lead, and teach as they grow throughout their careers. Leading through learning can happen anywhere. Formally it happens in the classroom (although we are seeing less and less of this) with webinars, coaching, and through conferences. Informally, it happens through the simultaneous learning, doing and coachable moments that take place as leadership is happening. To this end, social media is highly influencing the evolutionary opportunities for leaders to lead through learning, along with a major emphasis on relationships and collaboration. We will present our views, share the views of others, and bring you the thoughts of practicing leadership development professionals and the leaders that are influenced by these opportunities. We also invite you to actively participate by sending us questions about and examples of leading through learning. Let the journey begin! Read More

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