Impactful leadership through influential communication

With the ever-changing environment, the ongoing pandemic, world events and hybrid workplaces, there is a challenge for all managers and C Suite executives to communicate to their internal and external stakeholders the strategies that can bring them closer together and grow their business.

Charismatic leaders have a balance of competence and warmth and credibility and likeability. They have the confidence to deliver a message that bridges the gap between knowledge and influence.

Understanding the power of the voice is often underestimated, it's an instrument that has the ability to inspire passion, to move people and to encourage them to take action.

Follow these three strategies when developing and delivering your next presentation.

Curate

It's not about you. One of the most valuable lessons I learnt when speaking with one of my mentors.

When you start to go inside your head and start to think what your audience thinks about you, if they like you and do they like what you are saying, you will come across as needy, self-centred and not interesting. When presenting, it is not up to the audience to be interested in you, it is your role to be interesting.

Who is in your audience, what message can you share that can assist them and how can you have an impact on them in your delivery should be your entire focus. This is for one on one or one too many presentations.

If somebody is taking time out of their day to listen to you, your content better assist them in some way.

Knowledge is power yet it's a curse when it comes to your presentation. Many presenters feel the need to tell the audience everything they know, to prove to them that they are clever. This will have the opposite effect, you will end up confusing your audience and then lose your audience?- if you confuse you lose.

Curate your information down to one key message which may have three parts to it and that's it.

Ensure that you are solving a problem for your audience with simple and repeatable sound bites that they can remember and then implement after your presentation. When you can solve an intrinsic problem of your audience by simplifying it and the solution, your influence will grow substantially.

Translate

Considered one of the most powerful tech launches of that year, Elon Musk delivered his first power wall launch at an English language level that a 12-year-old could understand with the clever use of simple language and metaphor.

Don't confuse your audience with complex language and data, simplify your message to simple and short soundbites that are memorable, repeatable, and not forgettable.

Data-heavy presentations are easily forgettable and quite frankly, boring. Translating the data is the secret for that information to have a greater impact on your audience. A great way to do this is to tell stories and to use an analogy.

When discussing IT security challenges and the millions of pings that a firewall gets, the speed and ferocity of the attacks and how difficult it is to manage and why it is critical to maintain data integrity, and what would happen if one got through. An analogy could be, it's like when you go camping by a river and as night falls, the mosquitos come out in their thousands, yet you know you are safe in your tent with the fly screen. But as you are drifting off to sleep you hear that buzzing sound of one mosquito who has managed to find its way into your tent and no matter how hard you swipe your hand around, you just can’t seem to kill it.

Another challenge you may face in your industry is the use of jargon and acronyms, they are often hard to avoid. Avoiding these pitfalls will show that you are not like everyone else, you respect your audience, and you want your message to be understood. The presenters that can simplify the most complex of problems into easy-to-understand language are always remembered.

Illustrate

The best way to leave a lasting impression in every presentation is to tell a story. A story brings your message to life and will be the glue that brings your one message together into a real-life scenario.

Now a case study is not a story. Many presenters believe they are telling stories and clarifying their position with story; however, they are simply delivering a case study.

A story is about a person that we care about. We don't really care about a profession, a company, or a brand however we do care about people and people who work within professions, companies, and brands.

When telling a story, it doesn't mean that you don't mention anything about the company or brand, we tell the story of the person you had dealings with within the company or brand and tell the story through their eyes. So yes, it does involve XYZ company and the problem you are solving for them, but it also includes the COO as an example, and the impact the problem has on their role within the company and ideally, the impact it is having on them personally.

People connect with people and when we tell the story through a person’s eyes there are other biological and neurological impacts that you will have on the listener.

The greatest leaders of people, of countries, and in business, are the most charismatic presenters and communicators and the great news is this can be learnt. When you curate, translate and illustrate your knowledge and information, you will become more influential and have a greater impact.

You may be thinking that knowledge is enough, your brand is enough and what you do is enough however it will only take you so far, in fact you can go from being 20%-90% more influential when you master communication in every presentation.