Lessons in public speaking
its not often that I hear CIOs talk. Certainly not CIOs of organisations that have revenues in excess of 8Billion USD. I was therefore all ears recently when i heard the CIO of a well known US retailer speak about leadership.
It was a VC for an hour and there were no ppts for folks like me to get glued on to the images. Whats more, the speaker was always seated and we never got to see his hands. All of this would have made me endlessly bored within minutes but i was completley glued to what he was saying. What he said made a big impact on me. More about that later but here were two simple presentation techniques I learnt -
- He peppered his talk with many anecdotes, I did not know any of the people, but he said it slowly and conversationally and when it involved another person saying something, his voice changed as if they were saying it.
- He smiled a lot! small things can make a big difference and this certainly did! I am sure his smile made me feel much more focussed on what he was saying than on the limitations of the logistics!
try these out when you have to speak next time! I sure am going to and may even have my speach video recorded and check if I did do what i wanted to!
Comments
Agree Pradeep. I was also present in that VC and felt the experience that you have explained nicely. It was good because the speaker was talking on something where he had excellent experience, was able to explain it the way the audience could relate to and structured it very well.
Posted by: Balakrishnan M. Sundararajan | January 26, 2012 4:55 PM
Good learning - Thanks for sharing
Posted by: Jitendra S | January 27, 2012 2:40 AM
Pradeep, I completely agree with you. I had the opportunity to be in the same session and even I was glued to the entire presentation. Another thing that struck me was the affection that he displayed when he talked about people. His whole body language changed. That to me is another key leadership lesson - you need to love the people who work with you in order to be a good leader for them.
Posted by: Deepak | January 27, 2012 3:25 AM