Five Ways To Make People Hang On Your Every Word

ThKristi Hedges, Contributor - The article below comes to use from Kristi Hedges

I knew it would be controversial when I wrote a post a few weeks ago stating that for most professionals, public speaking training is a waste of money. I heard from trainers around the globe that their way was different and uniquely helpful. Which may be true. My point was that the majority of public speaking training is focused on the mechanics of body language and speechifying that while interesting, isn’t what the average professional is being asked to do.

Professionals need to influence others and move groups to action, present to senior executives and boards, and inspire change operationally. Most rising executives want to be noticed and secure a seat at the table.

And yes, you can learn these skills in some presentation trainings — just not in most of them.

To achieve these professional feats, they need presence, credibility, and passion.

My advice to anyone out there who is considering honing their presentation skills: if you opt for training, make sure your instructor will be able to show you how to do the following.

1. Get comfortable.

It’s stating the obvious, but for most people, presenting is difficult when it’s uncomfortable. Staring down a board of directors with bad news, for example, might be one of those times. Or proposing a new business line to the senior team.

You’ll do better if you can find a way to be as calm as possible, given the stressful situation. For many people, this means practicing so you feel you have the information down pat. For others, it’s figuring out what gets you in the zone — deep breathing, music, laughter, warm-up conversations in the room, etc. I recommend setting a situational intention to focus your conscious thoughts behind the emotion you want to impart to others.

2. Accept discomfort.

If the stakes are high, no matter how much you try to get comfortable, some butterflies are going to remain. Instead of trying to eradicate the feeling or letting it spiral, accept the anxiousness. Acknowledge it, and realize that it has no bearing on your performance. At all. You can physically perform just as well, nervous or not.

Plus, nerves can even help you emote and show energy. After all, nervousness is excitement directed inward.

3. Speak to the individuals, not the group.

Common public speaking advice is to know your audience. But in typical corporate presentations, which are to groups and teams, you do know them. The problem is that they are all over the map in what they care about so it can be hard to tailor comments. A frequent misstep is to try to cover everyone’s concerns or speak to the middle.

Learning to top-line your points to hit the right ones is a critical skill. For mixed groups, my general advice is to speak to the highest level in the room in the level of detail they care to know. Let the others ask questions to fill in the gaps or clarify specifics. Meetings gravitate to the highest level naturally.

Remember, you are speaking to individuals with individual concerns. Don’t litter your comments with what you care about the most, and beware of falling in love with your content. It’s about the other person, not about you.

4. Bring double the passion, and half the content.

Corporate presentations generally have too much detail, slides, and content and are delivered flatly. Now we do this with good intent. We want to make sure we cover any questions and show that we know our stuff. Unfortunately though, well-cited research shows that people forget about 90% of what they learn within 3-6 days. So while it’s smart to get your content down, we generally over steer on the amount of it. (Hint: Put non-essential slides in an addendum to have just in case.)

If you want to be memorable, put equal focus on bringing energy and passion to your presentation. Show how much you care through stories, examples, imagery, and dialogue. People forget what you said but remember how you made them feel. Your presence plays a large role in that.

5. Ignite discussion, don’t replace it.

Plus, there’s power in a passionate purpose. We invest psychically in people we feel have the wherewithal to make change happen.

Most corporate presentations aren’t speeches at all — they’re discussions. You’re aim is not to use up the air time with your points, but to incite discussion and facilitate outcomes. If people are talking then they’re engaged.

Any presentation can be constructed as facilitation. Create your main points, ask a pointed question, and manage comments. Then repeat. This skill takes practice, so learn it any way you can, whether through a training or observation of others.

People will feel far better about your ideas if they felt that you wanted and accepted their input. Plus, any idea that feels like it’s ours we’re more likely to buy into. And isn’t buy-in of our ideas the ultimate goal?

20 Common HR Metrics

Below are some basic and standard metrics that we find many organizations using to help you get started measuring HR:

Metric	Formula
Absence rate	# days absent in month ÷ (average # of employees during a month x  # of workdays)
Benefit or program costs per employee	total cost of employee benefit/program ÷ total # of employees
Benefits as a percent of salary	annual benefits cost ÷ annual salary
Compensation as a percent of total compensation	annual salary ÷ total compensation (salary + benefits + additional compensation)
Compensation or benefit revenue ratio	compensation or benefit cost ÷ revenue
Cost per hire	recruitment costs ÷ (compensation cost + benefits cost)
Engagement or satisfaction rating	percent of employees engaged or satisfied overall or with a given aspect of the workplace
Percent of performance goals met or exceeded	# of performance goals met or exceeded ÷ total # of performance goals
Percent receiving performance rating	# of employees rated under a given score or rating on their performance evaluation ÷ total # of employees
Revenue per employee	revenue ÷ total # of employees
Return on investment (ROI)	(total benefit – total costs) x 100
Time to fill (average)	total days taken to fill a job ÷ number hired
Training/development hours	sum of total training hours ÷ total # of employees
Tenure	average # of years of service at the organization across all employees
Turnover (annual)	# of employees exiting the job during 12 month period ÷ average actual # of employees during the same period
Turnover costs	total costs of separation + vacancy + replacement + training
Utilization percent	total number of employees utilizing a program/service/benefit  ÷ total number of employees eligible to utilize a program/service/benefit
Workers’ compensation cost per employee	total workers compensation cost for year ÷ average number of employees
Workers’ compensation incident rate	(number of injuries and/or illnesses per 100 full-time employees ∕ total hours worked by all employees during the calendar year) x 200,000
Yield ratio	percentage of applicants from a recruitment source that make it to the next stage of the selection process

IT Project Failures - Michael Krigsman

CIO analysis: Why 37 percent of projects fail

By Michael Krigsman

Summary: New research identifies five important reasons that projects fail.

A study by project management consulting company, PM Solutions, identifies top causes of IT failure.

The report, called Strategies for Project Recovery (PDF), covers 163 companies roughly split between small, medium, and large organizations. On average, respondents manage $200 million in projects each year, of which approximately 37 percent are “at risk.” The average company in the study therefore faces $74 million of “at risk” projects each year.

The study identifies five top causes of troubled projects:

1.Requirements: Unclear, lack of agreement, lack of priority, contradictory, ambiguous, imprecise.

2.Resources: Lack of resources, resource conflicts, turnover of key resources, poor planning.

3.Schedules: Too tight, unrealistic, overly optimistic.

4.Planning: Based on insufficient data, missing items, insufficient details, poor estimates.

5.Risks: Unidentified or assumed, not managed.


According to the survey, the most common obstacles that interfere with recovering failed projects are:

•Getting stakeholders to accept the changes needed to bring the projects back on track-whether they are changes in scope, budget, resources, etc.

•Poor communication and stakeholder engagement; lack of clarity and trust.

•Conflicting priorities and politics.

•Finding enough qualified resources needed to complete the projects.

•Lack of a process or methodology to help bring the project back on track.


STRATEGIC ANALYSIS

This study is useful but not groundbreaking; it sheds light on a common problem, reaffirms existing beliefs on causes of failure, and brings attention to important issues.

The 37 percent failure rate is notable because it falls within the broad range of statistics (thirty to seventy percent) that most studies report, even though it is somewhat surprising the number is so low. This report did not focus on failure rates, but instead emphasized project recovery, which could have affected these specific results.

Failure rates are notoriously difficult to measure and virtually impossible to compare across multiple studies by different researchers. Therefore, consider specific failure rates as suggesting problems and relative magnitude of seriousness; failure statistics are not absolute indicators.

Nonetheless, it’s incredible to consider that over a third of projects in this study are likely to have serious problems. The financial impact of these failures is significant and meaningful, to say the least.

It’s easy to brush aside the five causes of failure listed above, thinking they offer nothing new. However, such superficial views do not help solve the problem. It’s far better to acknowledge the challenge and difficulty of aligning expectations and perceptions across a diverse set of stakeholders, which is a fundamental obstacle to project success. That’s why this blog discusses change management so frequently.
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CIO perspective: Acknowledge the reality of project risk — vulnerabilities from so-called “obvious” sources represent a clear and present danger to your organization. To address these inherent risks, develop improved methods for communication, collaboration, and information sharing across silos and departments, both inside your organization and with external partners.
In addition, consider methods for making your projects more adaptive. On many projects, decision-making is a step function where information gathered over a relatively lengthy period culminates in periodic review and analysis. Reduce these decision cycle times to keep your projects responsive to changing conditions and requirements.
Solving the IT failures problem is difficult precisely because there is neither a silver bullet nor a clear target at which to aim. Forward thinking CIOs will recognize these realities and innovate by constructing a broad-based, long-term campaign to ensure that project outcomes align with organizational interests.

The LinkedIn Hack by Skip Freeman

Great tips by Skip Freeman


The LinkedIn “Hack”
By: Skip Freeman on June 23rd, 2011 at 1:30 pm

In Job Searching, Networking, Personal Branding, Positioning, Social Media

Throughout my series of blogs, as well as all of the other great ones featured on this site, you have been learning powerful ways to create your brand and position yourself for success. That, of course, helps you to know what message to get in front of a hiring manager or other persons of influence. Equally important, though, is determining precisely who the hiring manager (or other persons of influence) is that you need to get that information in front of. In this blog, I will show you how to quickly and easily make that all-important determination using the LinkedIn “hack.”
Your LinkedIn connections

Most everyone knows the tremendous power of LinkedIn. Still, there are also limitations, and two of the more significant ones are the following:

•You need CONNECTIONS; and

•In order to see most of those connections (beyond your first degree), you need a PAID account.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could view over 95% of ALL profiles on LinkedIn whether or not they are in your network—without a paid account? Well, actually, you can! Let me explain how that’s possible. (Significant to note here, however, is that the technique covered here does NOT negate the tremendous value of a LinkedIn paid account; It actually complements it.)

Google indexes public profiles from LinkedIn. The LinkedIn “hack” is an easy and powerful way to access those profiles in Google.

The LinkedIn “Hack” – An Example

•Go to www.google.com

•Copy and paste the following search string into Google:

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (“Chemical engineer” AND “Georgia Tech” AND “Georgia Pacific”) -intitle:profile -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -intitle:jobs -intitle:groups -intitle:events -intitle:answers

The phrases within the parentheses are the variables which you can modify depending upon the people you want to target. (Change the company, the school, etc. You may, for example, want to search for “vice president” AND “general electric” AND sales.)

The phrases outside the parentheses are the “required” constants. These constants force Google to only look at people’s profiles and eliminates discussions, questions, answers to questions, job postings, polls and all of the other information available on LinkedIn. (Remember: “who” to get your brand in front of is our objective here.)

Two limitations to this approach

There are, however, two limitations to this approach: (1) If a profile is marked “private” Google won’t find it; and (2) The person has to have put the key words you are looking for in his/her profile.

So, for example, if you are looking for a “Georgia Tech” graduate, the person has to have used “Georgia Tech” in building his or her profile. If they used “Georgia Institute of Technology,” for example, then you won’t find them unless you do a second search using those key words. (Other Boolean operators such as OR and NOT don’t work as well in this so-called “hack,” so you should stick with the AND operator.)

Results:

•If I use the above search string, I find 3 people who either are or were a “chemical engineer” at “Georgia Pacific,” from “Georgia Tech,” and who have a public profile on LinkedIn, and who used those particular words in their profile.

•If I change “Georgia Tech” to “Georgia Institute of Technology,” I now find 15 people.

•If I want to find all Georgia Tech grads at Georgia Pacific, I would take out “chemical engineer” and use the following:

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (“Georgia Tech” AND “Georgia Pacific”) -intitle:profile -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -intitle:jobs -intitle:groups -intitle:events -intitle:answers

With this search string I NOW get 2,840 results!


•If I want to find ALL names at Georgia Pacific, I can try to find hiring managers, people to network with, et al. I would use:

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (“Georgia Pacific”) -intitle:profile -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -intitle:jobs -intitle:groups -intitle:events -intitle:answers


When I do that, I get 45,000 results.

Clearly more than I can handle but a great start for finding people of interest to network with and/or contact.


•As a point of comparison, I have a very robust network (over 19 million out to my 3rd degree). When I search for Georgia Pacific people within my network, I get 10,500 results. Thus, you can see how the “hack” greatly extends your view into the world of LinkedIn.

•A way to manage this quantity of information is to go back and put in qualifying key words. For example, if I go back and put in a qualifying key word such as “sales” I get 24,000 results.

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (sales AND “Georgia Pacific”) -intitle:profile -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -intitle:jobs -intitle:groups -intitle:events -intitle:answers


So, if you’ve become frustrated and discouraged using the more traditional methods of trying to find just the right people to put your information in front of, then you should seriously consider using this powerful, highly workable LinkedIn “hack.” It can literally save you hundreds of hours of time and eliminate a great deal of frustration and effort.


A personal success story

Let me conclude this week’s blog with a personal success story using the LinkedIn “hack.”

Last year our daughter, who is a university student studying public relations and communications, was seeking an internship in Nashville, specifically at Gaylord Entertainment. Even within my robust community on LinkedIn only 200 or so people were either “current” or “past” employees of Gaylord Entertainment. Enter the LinkedIn “hack.”

Using the “hack,” we uncovered over 2,300 people, and among that group was exactly someone she needed to reach out to. She crafted a powerful cover letter positioning her brand and what she could do for Gaylord, mailed it via certified mail, followed up with a phone call and email, got an interview and landed the internship! And, by the way, the person she contacted would never have been able to have been easily identified using traditional methods.

Dirty little secrets of HR

(TechRepublic By Toni Bowers March 16, 2011)


Takeaway: Those bad assumptions you’ve made about HR? They might be true.

I got into work this morning and started plowing through my inbox. I saw an email from Readers’ Digest about an upcoming stories on what HR really thinks when it comes to the hiring process.

I seem to remember Readers’ Digest being this kind of mild little magazine, not particularly known for its cynicism, with regular features that ranged from corny jokes to stories in which someone had to fend off a deranged grizzly bear for four days. The stories were, ultimately, uplifting. So that’s the kind of expectation I had when I took a peek into the upcoming stories.

After the peek? I think I’d rather take my chances with the deranged grizzly bear. It’s not that I didn’t know all this, I just didn’t think HR would be so proud of it. Here are some examples:

In what HR really thinks about your resume:

• “When it comes to getting a job, who you know really does matter. No matter how nice your résumé is or how great your experience may be, it’s all about connections.” -HR director at a health-care facility
• “We will judge you based on your e-mail address. Especially if it’s something inappropriate likekinkyboots101@hotmail.com or johnnylikestodrink@gmail.com.” -Rich DeMatteo, a recruiting consultant in Philadelphia
• “Résumés don’t need color to stand out. When I see a little color, I smirk. And when I see a ton of color, I cringe. And walking in and dropping off your resume is no longer seen as a good thing. It’s actually a little creepy.” -Rich DeMatteo

On what HR won’t tell you about interviews:

• “It’s amazing when people come in for an interview and say, ‘Can you tell me about your business?’ Seriously, people. There’s an Internet. Look it up.” -HR professional in New York City
• “A lot of managers don’t want to hire people with young kids, and they use all sorts of tricks to find that out, illegally. One woman kept a picture of two really cute children on her desk even though she didn’t have children [hoping job candidates would ask about them]. Another guy used to walk people out to their car to see whether they had car seats.” -Cynthia Shapiro, former human resources executive and author of Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know
• “Is it harder to get the job if you’re fat? Absolutely. Like George Clooney’s character said in Up in the Air, ‘I stereotype. It’s faster.’” -Suzanne Lucas, a former HR executive and the Evil HR Lady on bnet.com
• “If you’ve got a weak handshake, I make a note of it.” -HR manager at a medical-equipment sales firm
• “If you’re a candidate and the hiring manager spends 45 minutes talking about himself, the company or his Harley, let him. He’s going to come out of the interview saying you’re a great candidate.”  -Kris Dunn, chief human resources officer at Atlanta-based Kinetix, who blogs athrcapitalist.com

On HR and salary negotiations:

• “There’s one website that drives all HR people crazy: salary.com. It supposedly lists average salaries for different industries, but if you look up any job, the salary it gives you always seems to be $10,000 to $20,000 higher than it actually is. That just makes people mad.” -HR directorat a public relations agency
• “On salary, some companies try to lock you in early. At the first interview, they’ll tell me to say, ‘The budget for this position is 40K to 45K. Is that acceptable to you?’ If the candidate accepts, they’ll know they’ve got him or her stuck in that little area.” -Ben Eubanks, HR professional in Alabama
• “You think you’re all wonderful and deserve a higher salary, but here in HR, we know the truth. And the truth is, a lot of you aren’t very good at your jobs, and you’re definitely not as good as you think you are.” -HR professional at a midsize firm in North Carolina