Don’t Blame PowerPoint!

Next to a laptop, PowerPoint (PPT) could be considered one of the top three tools used in business. More than 30 million presentations are built in the software every day tying up 15 million people hours at a cost of $252 million…..every single day! And yet, few of us are Masters of it. In fact, we have a love/hate relationship with the software which has led to the term, “death by PPT.”

AT SW&A, we hear a lot of the angst around preparing presentations blamed on the software.

From the listeners:

• “There were too many details and too much information.”
• “I got lost in the details and didn’t understand what the listener was asking me to do.”
• “It’s a horrible eye chart.”

From the communicators:

• “We go through more than 15 iterations of decks before we have a final presentation.”
• “I got so many edits to my slides that I’ve lost the point I was trying to make.”
• “I’m not artistic or creative; I hate building slides.”

And our response is always: Don’t blame PPT.

It’s the process…or lack of a process…that frustrates you. Not the software.

Here’s a little self-diagnosis.

Assume that you’re asked to deliver a presentation two weeks from today.  Whether you start planning it today or wait until next week to develop it, how many of you will start the process by opening up a PPT document on your laptop?

If this sounds like you, stay with me. Then, you begin outlining points by putting a text box on each slide or if you’ve covered the topic previously, you’ll open up another PPT and begin to migrate slides to your new deck. Either way, you’re building the foundation of your content, one slide at a time.

It’s a very linear approach to structure, and it’s the wrong approach.

Because now you have a collection of details instead of a storyline, and you will present the deck slide by slide versus concept linked to concept.

Is this your approach?  Most people say yes.

When PPT is used as the planning tool, it becomes cumbersome to work with and takes on a very different role. PPT’S role is to help you illustrate details or connect two points, not to thread all the points together.  That’s the role of an outline or storyline structure as we refer to it. The usage numbers above may explain this.  Because organizing content has become such a constant in our day, we may be telling ourselves that we can skip a step and organize our thoughts at the same time as we illustrate them. And, that’s a misuse of PPT.

The storyline structure is the first step, always. Whether you use our model or you have your own tool, as the communicator, you should always start with an end to end view of what you’re asking the listener to do. It’s rarely the details that fail in presentations; it’s always the connection between them.

A storyline view helps a communicator understand the bigger ideas and repeatable points that will lead the listener to an outcome or takeaway.  This changes how you build out a PPT.

When PPT becomes the second step, it works beautifully for the communicator and the listener. A broader storyline helps the listener see beyond what you’re illustrating and understand why you’re illustrating it. The communicator’s focus gets simpler and key concepts get repeated as the communicator focuses on pulling ideas forward rather than making every point.

PPT is also a horrible communicator and a really good illustrator.

Let’s diagnose that one.

Assume that the presentation you’re building is for another leader to deliver or it has such high visibility that several people want to give input before you deliver it. So, you work on the PPT for a few days and then you forward it for feedback.

Does this sound like you?  Then, what you may not realize is that even though you shared it for feedback, you were pretty locked into those slides. And your editors now begin to interpret what the slides mean.  They can see the illustration; they just don’t know the storyline. So, they create their own mental storyline to support your details. Then, they edit to their own thinking.

This leads to adding content on your slides, reordering your slides and even adding new slides to support their thinking. You get the edits back and don’t feel grateful for the input.  You’re frustrated. Because they’ve changed the meaning of your slides and thrown off the flow of your storyline. At least the storyline you have in your head.  Because it was never shared as a structure for the conversation.

Have you had this experience? Most people say yes.

 

The storyline drives communication; PPT creates illustration. If an editor can read a storyline to see the end to end plan for communication, they are much less likely to edit slides.  Instead, they’ll identify areas of the storyline that aren’t easy to understand or where they want you to add detail.

In fact, when a team is involved in preparing a presentation, we urge communicators to get buy-in to the storyline first before PPT is even introduced. This helps a group align to the full direction of communication and the big ideas before the supporting PPT takes shape. And it keeps a team moving through the organization process together. Then when you move to PPT, the second step, the feedback is limited to the look and feel of illustrations.

As a communicator, you want listeners spending less time on how to follow your thoughts and more time on understanding how the big ideas connect and lead to outcomes.

And if we’re pleased with the transformation we see when individuals add our first step  into content planning, we’re ecstatic when we see teams adopt it. Because if an individual can improve a single meeting, the full team can change their influence in an organization.

We know because we’ve made it happen.

We’ve taken many teams beyond the storyline structure to a team template that gives the communicators a template to follow and the listeners a consistent expectation. So, listeners spend less time trying to follow the structure and more time hearing the ideas.

When teams adopt a standard structure, it quickly takes hold in an organization. They become known for their ability to deliver clear ideas and recommendations which often raises their visibility in a company.

If you’re getting bogged down in details and edits, don’t blame PPT. Put the first step back into your process. And if you’d like some help learning to do that, join us for an upcoming storylines workshop. Even better, bring your team together and strengthen the group’s impact across your organization.

Call us when you need us.

Creating High-Performing Teams

As leaders step into new roles and realign strategies, they almost always adjust their teams. It makes sense. Leaders need people that they can trust, and they want people that they have experience with. In short order, they bring trusted colleagues into their group. It gives them peace of mind and an established working pattern, but it doesn’t immediately yield a high-performing team.

In fact, it can create competing priorities on a leadership team. As strategies get realigned, it shifts focus, responsibility and some initiatives. And unintentionally, peers can get on opposite sides of an issue from one another. The real risk of conflict is competition among the leaders’ employees who can feel as if they’re working on opposing teams. This creates friction within a culture and angst among employees. In order for employees to align behind strategies, the leadership team has to appear to be aligned with each other. And that doesn’t happen without effort.

To drive fast results, leaders create great 1:1 relationships with members of their team but they don’t always take the time or have the time to help the new colleagues build relationships with each other. In fact, the 1:1 approach can eliminate any need for peers to collaborate with each other.  When this happens, leaders have strong relationships but lack the bench strength that they’d like to have, the team trust that they need to have or the support system that the team needs.

Over time, it may sort itself out among the peers or by the leader.  But time is the one thing that organizations don’t seem to have these days. And, that’s why we’re often asked to help a leader accelerate the process.

Essentially, you’re trying to establish openness and candid feedback in order to work toward trust.

A high-performing team has three core qualities.

• They value diverse thinking.

  They’ve learned to see their peers beyond functional responsibility.  Instead, they value the way peers think and they learn to seek out the added perspective in their own decision making.

• They share ownership.

  A true team mentality comes from working together and solving together. They understand that they will have to compromise or improvise on most initiatives. They respect that multiple perspectives are usually better than a single one. And once their voice is heard, they align to the decision of the team.  

• They trust each other.

  Trust is an earned relationship and a goal the team reaches over time. By accelerating openness of thought and feedback, trust becomes a more intentional goal rather than evolving over time with trials and missteps along the way.

So how do you get a peer group there quickly? By focusing on the first two qualities in a way that lays the foundation for trust to develop. 

We follow a three-step process with teams to improve how they interact with each other and to strengthen their impact across a company.

First, we get to openness by putting each leader’s brand and peer impressions on the table for discussion. With our help, each individual understands how they’re perceived within a group today and what the group expects from them. We help each individual understand their strengths/challenges, and the areas where they will need to improve to win trust with their peers. We talk through the aspiration of a high-performing team and what each member needs to feel a part of it. This work is done without the leader and begins the process of empowering a team.

Second, we work to help each individual introduce new skills into the team. This may take shape in a workshop or across projects with a partner.  To value diverse thinking, the group has to begin to experience it. The openness of feedback and willingness to grow together sets the right environment for peers to speak up and get outside of their function area more often.

And finally, the leader has to adjust to a team mentality versus the 1:1 relationship that they may have started. While 1:1 expedites activity and gives the leader quick insights, it can also blindside buy-in across a group.  Leaders need help learning to defer decisions to group settings and shut down some of the side conversations that lead to misalignment. When a team senses that a leader has trust in them, they begin to respect the perspectives and ideas of one another. This drives more honesty in the room and ultimately works toward building trust for decision making within the team.

A high-performing team leads to a high-performing organization.

But with today’s pace of change across leaders and teams, most groups need a little help. If you’re leading a new team, a great starting point is peer feedback and honest impressions. And if the timing is right, we’d be happy to talk through how we might develop a plan for your team.

Call us when you need us!

Executive Presence Is a Top Priority for Leadership

High-potential and leadership programs are a top priority as companies focus on succession planning and the development of future leaders. And, as companies define skill gaps, Executive Presence has become a hot topic and an urgent priority.

While it is a part of every assessment and curriculum, many development managers struggle with what it is and how to build it into a leadership program. The concept of Executive Presence is not a new one. People have talked about the aura of leaders and the need for leaders to have presence for some time. But the gap is wider because future leaders just haven’t followed the same development paths or had the same mentoring opportunities their predecessors had.

Presence isn’t something you give yourself. It’s something you earn from those around you who respect your right to speak and your ability to lead. Some have called it an “earned authority.” It is a combination of behaviors and attitudes that present a sense of confidence, competence, commitment, and authenticity.

Although we’ve coached presence for thirty years, we were intrigued to understand the impact of presence within an organization and to gather perspective through a lens other than our own. So we commissioned a survey on Executive Presence with nearly 400 CEOs, C-level executives, corporate communications executives, and professional development managers. The results were confirming and surprising.

We found them confirming in that senior executives see presence as an essential part of their job. In fact, 89 percent of survey respondents believe that presence helps you get ahead. All of the executives interviewed believe presence can be a differentiator. And 78 percent say a lack of presence will hold you back.

Why? Because while many struggle to define it, everyone agrees presence is easy to spot. Presence fits a person like a well-cut suit. People who have presence fill a room and command attention as if they simply have a right to be there.

Surprisingly, 98 percent of the executives also admitted that their skills were not innate. That’s surprising because most development managers are quick to say that future leaders either have this trait or they don’t. While they definitely value the impact of presence, development managers are skeptical about whether or not it can really be developed.

In fact, the gaps in perspective were highlighted when we asked senior executives and development managers for the most effective ways to develop presence. Executives leaned heavily on three concepts:

1. Observation: 70 percent of the executives observed presence early in their careers.
2. Coaching: 65 percent of executives say executive coaching can help a leader develop presence. Only 20
   percent of the development managers believe this.
3. Training: 55 percent of executives say that leadership programs are a great way to develop presence; only 33
   percent of those who run these programs believe this.

All of the executives we interviewed said they were aware of the impact of different leaders in their organizations and they made note of what set them apart. All of the survey participants felt they had worked on their own presence, and approximately 35 percent thought they could benefit from more work. Most said they think intentionally about how they need to come across, and they work hard to deliver an authentic, succinct, and relevant message. In fact, they believe their ability to do so can calm unsettled issues, inspire unfocused employees,
and convince skeptical audiences.

This strong buy-in to presence by the C-suite explains why senior executives need to be involved in developing presence in others. Some companies do this by rotating a portion of the curriculum among senior leaders; others use executives to set the tone for a program and to offer feedback at the completion of it. Executive participation also speaks to what future leaders really want out of leadership programs, and that’s exposure. Many rising stars believe that if they get exposure to the senior management team, they can create their own fast track and their own potential. The personal stories we heard through our research suggest this may well be true.

We recommend three key elements for a program or curriculum on Executive Presence:

• Assessment: Presence is about perception, and the critical starting point for any future leader is to have a clear understanding of how he/she is perceived. Feedback and evaluation set the stage for where you are today and where you need to be in the future. It’s also the acid test for feedback. The executives we interviewed said feedback was an important part of their own development. They were open to it and sought it frequently.

• Core Skills: There are fundamental skills of presence tied to how you use your body and voice. Every future leader needs to know how to develop and deliver thoughts with confidence and conviction. Our research defined key attributes of presence and revealed that these skills can be developed and fine-tuned in any individual.

• Coaching and Practice: Ultimately, it takes practice to turn initial impressions into lasting ones. Many structured programs use a case study or simulation to give future leaders an opportunity to apply skills to a business situation. This is the point at which existing leaders are willing to engage and support the program with feedback. Coaching
ensures that this high-profile exercise is a high exposure and high payoff for future leaders.

Ultimately, these three ingredients help future leaders develop skills for immediate success and long-term results.

According to senior executives, Executive Presence is a priority because it’s one of the leadership traits that can’t be supported by anyone else. When you step into the C-suite of an organization, you go from being a specialist in an area to being a generalist. Your messages broaden, your audiences expand, and you have to engage and influence every one of them.

We’re here when you need us!

 

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!