Around 20 people joined us for a conversation about Smarter Leaders, which was organized by Jack Mason in the IBM Virtual Analytics Center. Rawn Shah and I gave introductory remarks, and then we facilitated small-group discussions. I focused on the need for smarter leaders at every level and what we could do to help people develop as leaders.

What did I learn?

We know what can help: identifying characteristics of effective leaders, focusing on leadership instead of technology, collecting and sharing success stories, compiling a cookbook that focuses on needs instead of tools… That part is just a matter of doing it, and there are lots of programs already underway.

Is it going to be enough, or are there other things we can do to break through? If it took e-mail ten or so years to become part of the corporate culture and enable all sorts of opportunities, can we wait that long for connected leadership to become part of the way we work?

We tend to have a culture of waiting for permission instead of experimenting (and asking for forgiveness if needed). This means that lots of people are waiting for their managers and executives to participate in this.

Me, I’m all for people taking responsibility for leadership at any level. We might not make big decisions, but we can still make a difference.

What am I going to do based on what I learned?

I’m going to take a look at the characteristics that describe IBMers at their best. I’m going to figure out how to develop those characteristics myself, and how other people can develop them.

I’m passionate about helping individual contributors build and demonstrate leadership. I’m neither a manager nor an executive, and I don’t want to wait for everyone at the top to “get it” before the benefits can trickle down to everyone else. So I’m going to keep poking this idea of leadership until more people can identify with it and ask themselves, “How can I be a smarter leader?”.

What are you going to do to spread be the word about smarter leaders? =)

What worked well? What could we improve further?

• I really liked being able to help bring together all these interesting people. It was like going to a real-life conference.
• I finished my part in time (short talk!). =) I forgot some of the points I wanted to make, but it was okay because I’d already shared them in my blog post.

I did a good job of picking on people to get the ball rolling, and the conversation can get even better if I can figure out how to bring more people into the conversation.

• Small-group virtual facilitation needs to be tweaked further. I felt conscious about people being outside my vision, so I turned my avatar around, but it still felt strange to have my back to a speaker. We didn’t organize ourselves into a circle because it would’ve taken time to position people, and the spatial audio might’ve been weak. I like the way that our Second Life meeting environments sometimes have auto-expanding chairs.
• My audio was clipping because the sound was set too loud. I should definitely do more audio tests before the sessions.
• My sketches turned out pretty well on the screen of the Virtual Analytics Center. =) Simple and easy to see from any part of the auditorium.
• The auditorium turned out to be too small to accommodate breakout groups. One of the breakout rooms had audio running, and we couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. The big gathering area was a good place to have a discussion, though. Teleporting buttons would be a great way to get people from one place to the other without wasting time navigating. (Ooh, teleporting buttons with visual feedback for intuitive load-balancing…)
• The indicators for who was currently speaking made large conversations so much easier. I want that on all of my teleconferences. =)
• Text chat still beats speaking in turn when it comes to getting lots of stuff out. It’s odd to mix it in, though. It feels a little weirder than having an active backchannel during a phone conference. I think it’s because you can see people, so you feel more of an urge to talk to them instead of typing.
• The web.alive folks definitely need to add a way to save the text chat!
• The virtual environment can capture all sorts of interesting data. I wonder what kind of research can come out of this…

Lots of good stuff!

While thinking about identities, personal brands, and what people remember, I thought it might be useful to think about what people probably remember about me:

Presentations are probably the clearest time I present a “brand” or a slice of myself, because I focus on a single topic and I write a bio that highlights relevant aspects. At work, on my blog, and in life, I can bring out more complexity.

I started thinking about this when someone asked me how one makes the shift to talking about identity when people ask about their brand. When I thought about the question, I realized people don’t really ask me about my “brand”, they just figure it out.

People find happiness and energy remarkable. One of the tags people added to my profile at work is “howcomeshesalwayscheerful”. <laugh> Ditto with energy – people are surprised by that. It seems like being passionate about your work is a rare thing. I’m going to work and live as if these things aren’t rare, assuming instead that everyone can be happy and energized and passionate about what they do. =)

Happiness, energy, and passion don’t fit neatly into the idea of consciously building personal brand. Happiness doesn’t work well when you’re being happy just because you’re the happy person. You don’t say, “Hey, happiness would be a good brand for me, so I’m going to be happy.” You just are. You can focus on the bright side of life, but that’s more about you and less about what you want people to think of you. And happiness doesn’t mean that you need to hide the sad parts of your life, because those challenges help you grow too.

The cross-over between different parts of my life (such as Emacs people sharing their insights into my hobbies) is totally awesome, which is why I like sharing the complexities of who I am instead of boxing myself in with a brand.

I like working this way. I like being myself, seeing what people find valuable, and then building on those strengths so that I can use them to help more people. Instead of thinking of this as one-way, like personal branding is often seen, I think of the conversational development of identity. It doesn’t spring full-formed from my solitary thoughts, like the way someone might deliberately develop personal branding. It emerges as I interact with people and the world, and as I reflect on what I’ve learned.

Thanks to @saradelekta for prompting me to think about this, and to Bernie Michalik for the comparison between identities and personal brands!

Jump to comments

Things I’m planning to talk about during the virtual leadership session tomorrow:

Backup URL: https://sachachua.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/smarterleaders1.jpg

One of the reasons why I like presenting online more than presenting in even the best-equipped halls is the text chat that participants can use to share what they think. I love it. I think it’s incredible how, through talks, I can provide a space for people to come together and discuss something they’re interested in, and I can listen to what’s important to them and what they’ve learned.

The value I bring to a presentation:

• a key message
• next actions
• a short, energetic, engaging presentation
• other stories and insights as they come up during Q&A

The value I receive from a presentation:

• new insights from the conversations
• new connections
• the warm and fuzzy feeling that comes from sharing

It’s a lot of fun. I hope I can help more presenters get the hang of the backchannel!

Why

• You’re going to need it. Why solve things twice? Write things down.
• You can save yourself the time it would take to explain to lots of people.
• You can save other people time.
• You improve your understanding and your communication skills.
• You can build your reputation.
• You can meet interesting people and find new opportunities.
• You can train other people to do your work. Replaceable = promotable. Also, you can move on to other roles without feeling stuck or guilty.

How

• Just write. Paper notebook, big text file, blog, wiki, wherever. It doesn’t have to be organized. Just get things out of your head. Rough thoughts, doodles, step-by-step instructions, solutions—whatever you can. Don’t get into trouble, of course. Strip out sensitive information. There’s still plenty to share.
• Plan for search. Number the pages of your paper notebooks and keep an index at the back. If you use a blog or wiki to store your notes, try using your tools to search. Add extra keywords to help you find things.
• Be lazy about organization and refinement. Your notes don’t have to make sense to other people in the beginning. If other people ask you for that information, then you know it’s worth revising and organizing. Build links when you need them.
• Share with as wide an audience as possible. Even if you don’t think anyone would be interested in what you’re writing, who knows? Maybe you’ll connect the dots for someone. Put it out there and give people a choice.
• Write, write, write. You may catch yourself writing about something for the sixth time in a row because the past five times didn’t quite capture what you wanted to say. This is good. The more you write about something, the more you understand it, and the better you can communicate it to others.
• Keep a beginner’s mind. Write earlier rather than later. Write when you’re learning something instead of when you’ve mastered it. Experts take a lot of things for granted. Document while you can still see what needs to be documented.
• Think out loud. Don’t limit braindumping to the past. You can use it to plan, too. Write about what you plan to do and what you’re considering. You’ll make better decisions, and you’ll find those notes useful when you look back. Other people can give you suggestions and insights, too.

Other notes

Many people use these excuses to avoid sharing:

• I’m new and I don’t know anything worth sharing.
• I’m an expert and I’m too busy to share.
• No one will read what I’ve shared.

If you’re new to a topic, awesome. Sharing will help you learn better. Also, as a beginner, you’re in a good position to document the things that other people take for granted.

If you’re an expert, sharing lets you free up time and enable other people to build on your work. You can make a bigger difference. You’re probably an expert because you care about something deeply. Wouldn’t it be awesome if other people could help you make things happen?

Don’t worry about people not reading what you’ve shared. You’ll get the immediate personal benefit of learning while you teach, and you might find it handy later on. You can refer other people to it, too. People can find your work on their own months or even years later, if it’s searchable.

Share what you’re learning!

Thanks to Luis Suarez, John Handy-Bosma, and John Cohn for the nudge to write about this!

Kaizen: relentless improvement

When I think of becoming a better presenter, I think of four key areas:

• Content: the raw material
• Organization: how you put it together to make sense
• Presentation: the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic aspects
• Delivery and interaction: the performance

All four areas can be separately and deliberately practised to help you build your skill.

CONTENT: Writing journal entries, blog posts, and articles is an excellent way to deliberately practice building content. Here are some ideas for finding content worth sharing:

• Think about what you’ve learned that other people need to know.
• Read lots of books on a topic. Summarize them and add your own insights.
• List the top challenges someone might face in a particular area (ex: facilitating meetings) and how to deal with them. Illustrate this with stories.
• List five to ten unexpected tips on a topic and illustrate them with stories.
• Come up with a creative metaphor combining two or three very different things. Illustrate.
• Collect interesting statistics, stories, pictures, and videos.
• Learn something new. Share it.
• Take a cliche and change it. Illustrate.
• Pick a famous person with interesting quotes. Apply to a different field.
• Blog. Review your archive to find things that people find useful. Revise or summarize in a presentation or blog post.
• Pick an action you want people to take. Assemble stories and tips to help them change.

ORGANIZATION: A good talk hangs together well. It’s of one piece. It flows. It’s memorable.

• Read books. Watch other presentations, TV commercials, etc. Look for the framework and sequencing of ideas.
• Take an existing talk (even by someone else). Restructure it. Find the key message. Cut out all the things that don’t support the key message.
• Take your raw material. Pick out key elements.
• Play with finding acronyms and mnemonics.
• Play with structure: location, alphabet, time, category, hierarchy.

PRESENTATION: There are so many ways to express ideas.

• Watch other presentations for inspiration. Slideshare and TED have many great examples. Take notes on what you like and don’t like.
• Develop a visual vocabulary by looking at ads, photography, videos, and so on.
• Keep an ear open for vivid language and imaginative metaphors.
• Experiment with different ways to look at an idea. The Back of the Napkin has a great framework (SQVID).
• Turn blog posts and book reviews into presentations and share them on sites like Slideshare.
• Listen to and tell stories.
• Read design books.
• Look for great data visualizations and ways to make statistics come alive.

DELIVERY AND INTERACTION:

• Watch other presenters. Take notes on what you like and don’t like. Every presentation (even a boring one) is a learning opportunity.
• Listen to speeches, radio programs, and other examples.
• Attend webinars to see how they handle the backchannel.
• Read speaking books.
• Stop thinking of people as audience. Think of them as participants who can teach you a lot. Experiment with ways to involve them and learn from them.
• Practise and reflect.
• Record yourself and review it. Build on your strengths.

See also: <a href=”https://sachachua.com/blog/2009/04/seven-tips-for-making-better-presentations/”>Another seven tips for making better presentations</a>

Creativity loves constraints, and the Ignite style of presentations has lots of constraints. Your speech has to fit into five minutes. You have room to make one point and perhaps tell one story. You have twenty slides that automatically advance every 15 seconds, although you can slow down by duplicating slides or speed up by using timed animation. You’re giving your presentation to a live audience, so you need to be part actor and part stand-up comedian. Oh, and you’re just one in a long line-up of five-minute speeches, so you need to stand out if you want people to remember your point.

My first Ignite-style presentation will be The Shy Presenter, which I’ll share at IgniteTO this Wednesday. It’ll be a fun experiment that builds on a lot of things I already do for my regular talks.

Full notes

So let me take apart my process to see how I can improve it, or if I’ve picked up any tips that other people might find useful.

I write about a topic before preparing a talk for it so that I can find out what I know, whether it’s useful, and whether I care enough to invest a few hours into preparing a presentation. (Yes, it’s that old skills-needs-passion sweet spot. Handy!)

Ideally, I’ll have blogged about a topic often enough to figure out the key points I want to communicate, and then it’s just a matter of reviewing the previous posts, summarizing them, and editing the points. Not having lots of blog posts about a topic is often a danger sign, as I learned two years ago:

But sometimes an interesting presentation opportunity comes up, and I’ll flesh out new material after people have okayed my title/abstract.

I’ll mindmap what people come in with, what I want them to leave with, and what I can put together to help them along the way.  I also find it useful to braindump a quick list of points I might want to make.

I like making my talks short. I usually try to fit my talks into 7-15 minutes, which is good practice in finding the core of a message and putting together a few supporting points. A good way to estimate this is to take your target words per minute and multiply it by your time, adjusting for pauses. I usually aim for 150wpm (in the middle of the 140-160wpm often suggested by books on public speaking), although I often end up speaking at 180-200wpm. Then I read things through and tweak the text until it fits.

Keeping it short and simple also makes it easy for me to remember. The shorter it is, the more I can improvise to fit the needs of time.

I post my speaker notes online. It lessens the surprise, but it makes the notes easy to share, search, and get feedback on.

Then I split my notes/script into segments. For Ignite, that’s about 37 words per segment. Editing smoothens things out.

At this point, I can usually think of a few simple ways to illustrate each segment. Sometimes I write out the visual sequence and then storyboard it. Other times, I go straight to the storyboard. Sometimes images or segments pop into my imagination, and I rework my writing to include it.

Then I draw the pictures and make slides. I usually use Inkscape because that makes it easy to edit my drawings to reasonably resemble my imagination. I’ve been experimenting with MyPaint lately, though. It takes more work, but it’s interesting.

I post the slides on Slideshare and add it to my blog post, again trading surprise for sharing, search, and feedback.

Once I’ve boiled the idea down to slides, I can work on remembering the key points for each slide. If the key points flow together and people get interested in a topic, they can always look up the full notes on my blog. That means I don’t have to worry about following the script word for word. So if it turns out I have less time than expected, or more time than expected, or I forget something or people want to learn more about something, I can adapt.

And then there’s the blog post on the day of the presentation, and the blog post following up on what I learned from the presentation, and the blog post following up on people’s questions, and the blog post about any revisions, and the blog post about process or content tips (like this one!), and the tweets and Slideshare embeds and all of those other things that mean that the four hours or so invested into preparing a presentation pay off several times over…

Here’s a totally numbers-from-a-hat estimate:

So that’s how I generally prepare my talks. =)