How Great Leaders Communicate
"Jacked Up: The inside story of how Jack Welch talked GE into becoming the world's greatest company" by Bill Lane (McGraw Hill) is a book about what the author and Welch did to make communications better at General Electric (GE).
What Lane did, and still does, is observe. He can see what works and doesn't work, and spots the elements that make a presentation a triumphant success, and those that spell disaster or even career death. Take his advice and you will never make a bad presentation for the rest of your career; and if you are already near or at the top, you'll never tolerate another bad presentation made to you.
This book is about vanity. It is a shot at clarifying the character and personality of perhaps the most significant business leader in history. But, much more important and focused than that, the book is a 20-year foray into how Welch's "vanity" drove him to change the way the world's greatest company spoke to the world, and how you can better communicate with and present yourself to your world.
The vanity of communications is about never ever allowing anything but your best face, and that of your organization, to ever, ever, appear in front of your constituencies or your employees or your mates.
Rehearsing is essential.
If you are early in your career and cannot commandeer even a few people to listen to you rehearse, and your husband or wife refuses or falls into a catatonic trance after the first thirty seconds, either seek a quick divorce or try this: Do it yourself.
Find a conference room. Lock the door, clock yourself, clear your throat, and begin. For the first few minutes this approach will be surreal--the sound of your voice in the empty room analogous to the tree falling in the empty forest. But drive on and in a few minutes you will get the same buzz as if there were a hundred people in front of you. Suddenly digressions will become apparent, boring passages, unnecessary discussion, rambling, and non sequiturs will ooze out, if there are any. And there will be.
Your job is to fascinate. And your job requires that you devote as much time and work and passion so that the end product--your pitch--will fascinate.
Some presentations follow this pattern: A strong introduction and then "padding along" for a minute or so to get to a really great point you really can't wait to make because it's so good, then some more filler to get you to the next big point, and then the next, then on to the end, which is sometimes also good.
Use your rehearsal to cut out entirely, or at least minimize, the transitions form major point to major point, so that when you stand up to deliver it, you "can't wait" to do the thing "because it's so good."
Get all the boring and nonessential filler out of your pitch. Rehearsing is the way to find it, to "feel it." If you are providing your listeners with something of use to them, applicable to their business lives, you will never be boring. Ask yourself, continuously, as you prepare the pitch, "Why should they care about this?"
Develop Leadership Skills: A Mobile Reference Guide