Your Presentation Best

Make That Boss Happy Managing Your Boss's Expectations: 5 Things To Think About. "The more we manage expectations, the better we can manage the future." Stanley L. Boswell, Jr. It's almost always useful to understand and manage our counterparts' expectations, especially our Boss's. It minimizes the chance for disappointment and maximizes the chance for satisfying the Boss. Here are five tactics to consider, practice and get good at (and, where possible, get in writing): 1. Confirm boss’s expectations. Duh! But far too often we think we understand (when we don't) or we're afraid to look dumb is we ask for confirmation/clarification. 2. Get commitment on priorities. Here we want to make sure that the new task is important and valuable enough to replace one of your current Top 3 tasks. If so, then one current task has to be re-assigned, delayed or killed. Don’t commit to new tasks until priorities are re-evaluated.   3. Reach common agreement on what = su

Yo-Yoing Between Tasks? Why Switch When You Can Batch? A study of Microsoft employees found that when they were interrupted by an email, they needed fifteen minutes to fully regain their train of thought. Switching back and forth between tasks is costly in time and energy. To see this switching cost in action, try this basic exercise:   Say “abcdefgh” then immediately after that say “12345678”. Notice how long it takes you to do this.  Now mix the two: say “a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8”. It takes more time and mental energy while switching between letters and numbers. A useful tool to combat our switching habits at work is “batching “. You can work fewer hours, and work less hard during those hours, by batching your tasks more effectively.  Batching means grouping together similar tasks, so you spend less time and energy switching between different types of activity.  In the “a1b2c3 . . .” exercise, it’s like handling all the letters first, in one batch, then handling the numbers together, in a se

  You Stole 2 Hours Of My Life. I Hate You! “I can't believe we just wasted two hours at that presentation.What was the $%?!&*-ing point? That's two hours that I will never get back. Aaaaaand we’ve still got two hours togo?$%&!!*@!" Ever thought that. Your not alone. What do you want out of a presentation when you are in the audience? It's a good question to ask yourself the next time your preapring your presentation.                                Think about what you hate when watching others present. Maybe it's endless PowerPoint slides filled with lots of text that the presenter is reading to you?  Or a presentation that bores you to death because there is nothing in it for you, your stakeholders, or pain points? Or any number of other things that drive you crazy, put you to sleep, or make you pray that it would just end? If you hate wasting your valuable time at a presentation that sucks, make sure you aren't making the same mistakes when you prese

Rejection Can SUCK…If You Let It. Every time we get rejected it hurts a bit. That’s human. Actually, rejection is nothing more than redirection. The key is to stop, take a breath, and ask: What is that rejection offering me? A chance to improve a chance to let go of something that was holding me back, a chance to better understand what my counterpart really wants, a chance to move on? All of the above? Rejection is actually a valuable lesson to bring us forward, if we choose to see it sa such. A lot of people choose to dwell on the hurt, the „bad guys who just don’t get it“, or any number of negative feelings. Don’t be that person.  Be better than that, and see it for what it really is: An invitation to redirect and keep going… Be Your Absolute Best. Turn Rejection Into Redirection.