Year End Goal Setting Self Coaching Questions

It's the time of the year again where people reflect on what they have achieved the rest of the year. Some reactions include regret (Why didn't I do it?), satisfaction (Thank God I quit that job!), shock (What? Year end already?) and ignorance (I don't need goals to be successful!).

To make personal and professional changes and move one step closer to having your dreams fulfilled, personal reflection is needed. It's like driving a car and looking at the rear view mirror to make sure all is safe and we are on the right track.

One of the most powerful tools to do the above is Self Coaching. Coaching is basically asking powerful questions that make people reflect on their problems or issues and come up with their own solutions. It creates empowerment. Coaching can be done one to one, group or on self.

Below are some powerful coaching questions that can be asked for self reflection (for goal setting);

1. What is the purpose of my life?
2. What makes me happy and fulfilled?
3. What are my strength?
4. How can I use my strength and achieve fulfillment?
5. What are my weaknesses?
6. How will my weaknesses prevent me from achieving my goals?
7. What can I do to control or manage my weaknesses?
8. What do I want to achieve next year?
9. How will I achieve my new year goals?
10. What possible barriers that prevent me from achieving my goals?
11. What can I do to remove or manage the barriers?
12. Who do I need to bring to achieve my goals?
13. How do I measure my progress in term of my new year goals?
14. What makes the goals important to me?
15. What have I achieved so far in my life? this year?
16. Am I happy with my progress? 
17. How can I make myself happier?
18. What kind of system do I need to put in place to help me achieve my goals?
19. How will I reward myself once I achieve my goals?
20. What changes do I need to make to get closer to my goals?

All the best in your year end reflection and may you achieve your goals in 2015.        

Asking Coaching Questions Using GROW Model

As mentioned in the previous article, coaching is one of the tools that leaders can use to improve productivity, increase performance and boost morale. One of the most popular coaching model used by many coaches around the world is the GROW  model.

In this conversation model, a coach asks questions that explore the coachee's Goal, Reality of current situation, Options for improvement and Will to do them.

Let us look at some of the questions that a coach can ask using this GROW  model;

Goal questions

1. What do you want to achieve in life?
2. What is your career goal?
3. What do you want to achieve x years from now?
4. Where do you see yourself 3 years from now in this organization?
5. Which area in your job that you want to improve?
6. What do you want to discuss in our coaching session today?

Reality questions

1. Where are you now relative to your career goal?
2. What aspects of your job that give you the greatest pleasure?
3. Which areas in your job that you want to improve?
4. What makes you happy and fulfilled?
5. What have you achieved so far in your career? life? finance? etc

Options questions

1. What are you planning to do to achieve your goals?
2. What actions will you take to improve yourself?
3. What kind of support do you need to move you closer to your goals?
4. When are you planning to implement your plan?
5. How do you measure your success in moving towards your goals?
6. What new skills, knowledge or attitude that you need to have to move you closer to your goals?

Will questions

1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how motivated are you to achieve your goals?
2. What are the possible challenges that you will face to move towards your goals?
3. How will you overcome the challenges? What is your plan?
4. On an emotional level, what emotions can prevent you from achieving your goals? How will you manage them?
5. How will you motivate your self to stay focus on your goals?
6. How will you reward your self when you achieve the milestones in moving toward your goals?

These are some possible questions that can be asked when coaching using this model. You can create your own questions to be asked as well. Don't limit yourself to the ones above. 

Even though the model provides a step by step guide, in real coaching session, things will not go as smoothly as in the model. A good coach knows when to move forward with the questions or stay on the questions until the coachee is clear with what he wants or when to backtrack and go to the previous steps. The key is to stay flexible and sensitive to the need of the coachee.

Try the questions in your coaching session today and you will see the results in your coachee. 

Coaching Using GROW Model

In the previous 2 articles, we discussed about the meaning of coaching and characteristics of a good coach and coachee. Once we understand the meaning of coaching and selected our coach and coachee, now comes the most critical part.

Coaching is using the Socratic method of 'teaching'. I used the term 'teaching' in a loose manner. In coaching, the coach 'teaches' (or guides) his coachee by making him reflect on his current situation, his goals and ways to get there by asking questions. 

This is powerful in empowering the coachee because it makes him reflect and comes up with his own solutions. Nobody understands his own problem other than himself. As such, by asking powerful questions, a coach guides his coachee to find the solutions. The coach acts as a mirror where the coachee reflects on himself.

The most common model used in coaching is the 4-step questioning technique known as GROW. Below are the details of each steps;

1. Goal - The first step is to determine the goal, short term and long term, of the coaching session. This is important as it determines the final outcome to be achieved by the coaching session. It sets the 'mood', approach and time frame of the session.

2. Reality - In this step, the coach asks questions to enable coachee to determine his current situation in perspective of his goals in step 1. Some common issues explored include present performance, challenges, motives and others.

3. Options - Next, after determining goal and current situation, coach explores, with coachee the possible solutions to achive the pre-determined goals. Possible obstacles, resources, emotional response, action plans, etc are explored.

4. Will and Wrap Up - Lastly, detailed plan is formulated and the coach asks questions to explore commitment, time frame, support structure, etc to ensure the plan is actionable. Here, both coach and coachee will agree on the next meeting to discuss progress.

In our next article, we will discuss questions to be asked at each step of the GROW Model.        

Improving Performance Through Coaching (Part 2)

As we have discussed earlier, coaching is one of performance improvement tools that leaders can use to make positive changes in the workplace. However, not everybody can be can be a coach or coachee. As the coaching process involves long term commitment, patience and good interpersonal skills, selection of coach and coachee needs to be done carefully. 

Generally, characteristics of good and effective coach include;

1. Possess good communication skills especially listening and asking great questions.
2. Formally trained and well verse in the coaching principles and processes.
3. Patient and committed.
4. Believe in human potentials.
5. Strive on challenges.
6. Flexible but firm.
7. Able to feel empathy without personally attached to it.
8. Withhold judgments.
9. Not imposing his values, beliefs and knowledge on coachee.
10. Able to think on his feet and adapt.   

To select a coachee, we need to consider characteristics such as;

1. Committed in term of time and other resources.
2. Doer of planned actions.
3. Willingness to change and improve.
4. Curious.
5. Positive learning attitude.
6. Good listener
7. Humble.
8. Having an open mind.
9. Willing to share personal experiences.
10. Accepting own strength and weaknesses.

In the next article, we will discuss the step by step process of coaching.

Improving Performance Through Coaching (Part 1)

John C. Maxwell, an international expert in leadership once said that all successful people had others helping them along the way. I am sure you can recall your teachers, friends, colleagues and even parents that have supported you to become where you are now in life.

One of the best way to build others is through coaching. What is coaching? Coaching is a process used to guide others to achieve their objectives or goals in life and work. It is basically a performance improvement 'tool' to enhance productivity, increase motivation and improve job or life performance. 

The origin of coaching came from the sports world where a coach guide his 'coachee' to achive certain targets or performance benchmark. The idea was picked up by management about 3 decades ago. It has been proven to improve individual's performance. Many organizations nowadays include coaching as an important tool to grow new leaders, improve productivity and many others.

Coaching can be done in a 1 to 1 situation or in groups. It can be done formally or informally. In the next article, we will discuss what makes a good coach and coachee.  

The Right Way To Prioritize

When I am conducting time management workshop, one of the tools that I like to share with my learners are the Urgent Important Matrix. This tool is made famous in the classic book by Stephen R Covey titled "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". It is also known as the Eisenhower Matrix.

The main idea in the tool is that we can categorize our activities by urgency (needs to be done now or suffer serious consequences) or importance. By drawing each axis, we have four categories as shown below.

Next, we categorize our activities into each boxes and start tackling them one by one. Start with activities in the urgent-important category first. As for activities in the not-urgent-important box, we need to allocate time for them in our timetable. Activities in the other two boxes can be ignored, delegated or abandoned altogether.

Give it a try and see your productivity improve today.

  

Stories That Change Lives

We all love stories. They make us cry, laugh and reflect. Stories are powerful tools that can be used to teach life-changing lessons. Look at the great religious leaders of our time. All of them used stories to transfer key lessons and teachings.

Life-changing stories have certain structures that make them easy to follow, understand and remember. The next time you want to use stories to impart lessons to your team members, remember the acronym SEAL.

Short (in time and characters). Entertaining stories are short for obvious reasons as mentioned above. How short is a story? Personally, I prefer them not to exceed 5 minutes. We also need to limit the characters in the stories to not more than three. Why? If it is more than three, we will find it hard to tell the stories and worst still, our audience find it hard to understand.

Entertaining. Our stories need to be entertaining. How to achieve this? Tell them with passion and enthusiasm. Use dialogues to bring the characters to life. Tell of the struggles and how your heroes (or heroines) overcome them. Use your body language and vocal varieties to give your stories more impact.

Audience-appropriate. Avoid stories that may offend people. Sexist, racist and stories that ridicule certain segments of societies need to be avoided at all costs. Study and get to know your audience before you decide which story to tell them.

Learning-oriented. Good stories have learning points. Before ending your stories, make your audience reflect on them by mentioning key learning points. I love to ask my audience what their thoughts or lessons that they can learn after I tell my stories. This will make them reflect and when they reflect, change happens.
So the next time you want to tell stories to your teams, use the acronym SEAL above to ensure your stories have all the elements they need to inspire change.  

Trust Busters

It is always easy to destroy than to build. The same goes for trust. It takes years to build and seconds to loose. In our interpersonal relations with others, many at times we ignore the little things that can break that fragile trust we have with our colleagues.

Below are some of the trust busters habits that we need to be aware in our daily interactions with our colleagues and loved ones;

1. Failure to keep promises
2. Showing incompetence
3. Lack of respect towards others
4. Not listening enough
5. Untidy and poor hygiene
6. Not respecting time
7. Over promise
8. Withholding information
9. Talking bad about others
10. Cutting people in the middle of their sentence

I am sure you can list some other trust busting habits that you observe in the workplace or home. The idea here is to be aware of them and take some kind of action to manage or control the habits. Trust is important in teamwork environment. If we are not aware of these habits, we may end up destroying the one thing that makes our team effective.

21 Habits That Destroy Interpersonal Relationship.

I have just finished reading (twice) the classic book written by world renowned executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith titled 'What Get You Here Won't Get You There'. In the book he listed 21 habits that we might not be aware of that can potentially destroy our relationship with our colleagues and family members. As you go through the list below, try to reflect on yourself. As they say, awareness is the beginning of change.

The 21 habits are;

1. Winning too much - the need to win at all costs and at all situations.
2. Adding too much value - adding our 2 cents into every discussions
3. Passing judgement - the need to rate and judge others using our standard
4. Making destructive comments
5. Starting with 'No', 'But' or 'However'
6. Telling the world how smart we are
7. Speaking when angry
8. Negativity
9. Withholding information
10. Failing to give proper recognition
11. Claiming credit that we don't deserve.
12. Making excuses
13. Clinging to the past
14. Playing favorites
15. Refusing to express regret
16. Not listening
17. Punishing the messenger
18. Failing to express gratitude
19. Passing the buck
20. Excessive need to be 'me'.
21. Goal obsession - winning at all costs.

 

Tips For Effective Mentoring (Part 2)

Not all can be good mentors. Reasons for poor mentoring program sometimes lies partly because wrong people are chosen to mentor others.

What are the characteristics of good mentors? Below are some of them that we can use when we choose who to mentor others.

1. Has the right experience.
2. Willing and able to mentor.
3. Committed to help others.
4. Possess good listening skills.
5. Comfortable with people.
6. Able to ask great questions.
7. Willing to work the extra mile to serve others.
8. Believe in the potential of others.
9. Patient and kind.
10. Has basic mentoring skills.

The list above is not complete. When we choose a mentor, we need to remind ourselves that in the eyes of their mentees, mentors are leaders. Are we choosing the right person to lead others?

Tips for Effective Mentoring (Part 1)

Mentoring is a powerful tool to increase productivity and performance in the workplace. What is mentoring? It is a deliberate process to improve job performance through consultation and sharing of experience.

Normally it is done on a 1 to 1 basis between a mentor (the one providing the guidance) and a mentee. However, group or team mentoring are also popular in many organizations.

In order for mentoring to be effective, there are several issues to consider;

• Top management commitment (manpower, time, money, etc)
• Able and willing mentors
• Able and willing mentees
• Clear mentoring purpose and objectives
• Mentoring training for mentors
• Reward systems for mentors and mentees
• Support structure for both mentors and mentees
• Communication systems to encourage mentoring culture

In the next article, we will discuss characteristics of an effective mentors.  

    

Earning Trust From Others

Trust is the glue that binds a team together. In my team building program, I spend quite some time discussing this topic with my participants. In general, trust has to be earned and like all the good things in life, it takes time and conscious effort.

How to build trust? I can think of a few practical steps that we can take to build trust with our team members such as;

1. Be an expert in what we do. Invest in building our competencies to perform our job better. Attending courses, reading books and learning from a coach are some of the things that can build our expertise in our jobs.

2. Keep a secret. When our colleague spill to us their innermost secrets, we can build trust with them by keeping that secret a secret. Do not spill out other people's secret as well as we will be perceived to be dishonest by others. Nothing breaks trust as fast as dishonesty.

3. Be a good listener. Strive to listen to others with the intend to understand, not to reply. When we listen to understand, we will see the deep desires, struggles and ambitions of our fellow colleagues. Over time, this will help us understand them better and build good working relationship.

4. Walk the talk. Between actions and words we say, people will trust actions more. So, strive to walk our talk. Be punctual, submit that report as promised and follow up on that calls.

5. Stand up for something. Create a personal mission statement and stick to it. When our colleagues see that we have values, they will tend to trust us more.

6. Don't over promise. Sometimes, at the spur of the moment, we promise others the star and moon, only to regret it later. Be extra careful when making promises. The mantra 'under promise, over deliver' may save our relationships and keep that trust blooming.        

Avoiding Work-Related Burnout

Work-related burnout is a silent killer in the workplace. It is believed to have caused serious long term health problems such as heart disease, hypertension, ulcer and cancer.

What is a burnout? It is basically the physical and mental conditions that are characterized by tiredness, lack of focus, low desire to work and others. If left untreated, burnout can cause serious health problems mentioned above.

Causes of work related burnout include relationship problem with colleagues, overwork, lack of resources, financial problems, poor health  and many others.

How to avoid workplace burnout? Maybe you can try some of the tips below;

1. Be a better communicator at work. Most of problems at work are caused by misunderstanding. Learn to 'read' people better, a good listener and polish your skills to ask quality decisions.

2. Build good work relationship. We spend most of our day time at work the entire week. Having good work relationship will help us to feel appreciated, cared for and loved. These are strong emotions that can be great motivators and killers of work related burnout.

3. Manage time effectively. Multi-tasking is a common thing today. So, on a weekly or daily basis, plan how you will use your time, taking into account not only work related activities but time for families, God, personal development and hobbies.

4. Exercise regularly. One of the best ways to beat work-related burnout is by being physically fit. Activities such as brisk walk, jogging, swimming or cycling 3 times a week will do wonders to your body and guard you against burnout at work.

5. Nurture your spiritual growth. Humans that live for something bigger than themselves normally can withstand many challenges in life. They are found to be more positive thinking, disciplined and motivated. If you feel the symptoms of burnout, maybe now is the time for you to go to that spiritual retreat than you have planned but postponed many times before.  

Slaying The Procrastination Giant

Procrastination or delaying tasks that are supposed to do now is one of the greatest thieves of time and the enemy of productivity. Millions of hours are lost daily (not to mention personal productivity) due to procrastination.

I once read that everybody procrastinates. The issue is whether we procrastinate 'productively or not'. If we procrastinate or delaying doing things that are not productive such as gossiping, updating our facebook or other similar tasks, then we are practicing productive procrastination. The opposite is also true.

What strategies can we use to slay this giant called procrastination? Maybe the next time you stare at your 'To-do List' and start to think of delaying completing them, try some suggestions below;

1. Just Do It. Most of us procrastinate because we want to get 'that feeling' or sudden rush of motivation to complete our tasks. Unfortunately, most of the time, it will not happen. It's like waiting for a bus that never comes. Rather than waiting to get the right feeling, why not start doing it first regardless of how we feel? Normally, after we complete 1 or 2 tasks, that feeling of wanting to complete more tasks start to kick in. Psychologists called this feeling 'flow'. Once we are in 'flow', we will be on an automatic mode to complete them so much so that we forget about time and maybe that cup of coffee too.

2. Eat That Elephant. How to eat a 1-ton elephant? One bite at a time. A great way to beat procrastination is to divide our tasks into smaller ones and tackle them 'one bite at a time'. Usually, we get motivated or excited after we completed smaller tasks and crossed them from out 'to-do list'.

3. Make Them Visible. Use visual boards, white board or personal calendar to list down all the tasks that we want to complete. Better still if we can write them in bold red letters. This will unconsciously create a sense of urgency to complete the tasks on time.

4. Make Them Easy & Within Reach. Say you have been procrastinating to exercise. One way to beat this, according to experts, is to make it easy for you to decide to exercise. How to do this? Well, for a start, you can put your exercise attire, shoes etc on your living room table. The moment you reach home, it is much easier for you to decide to exercise than if you were to look for your attire in your closet and your shoes in the shoe rack. The same goes for other tasks either at home or in the office.

5. Use Your Reminder. Set your smartphone alarm or other apps to remind you to start doing your tasks. Like most others, I made lots of excuses not to make cold calls to prospects. However, I beat this problem by setting my phone alarm at a certain time on weekdays to remind me to call my prospects. After a while, it has become a habit.

So the next time the giant 'procrastination' stares you on the face and tempts you to postpone completing  your tasks, remember to apply the above strategies to beat him and you are well on your way to a more productive team player in your organization.            

The Power Of 1-Minute Praise

All of us long to be praised for a job well done whether we want to admit it or not. Sincere praise has the power to boost morale, motivate employees and increase productivity.

However, how often do we receive and give sincere praise to others? In my training workshops, most participants lamented that when their bosses call them, most of the time it is because the bosses want to reprimand them. 

Even though giving negative feedback do improve productivity if done correctly, it has to be balanced with sincere praise as well.

Giving sincere praise for a job well done doesn't have to take too long. From my experience, most of the time it will only take 1 minute or so. How to give a powerful 1-minute praise that can make the morale shoot through the roof? 

Three simple steps in the form of the acronym BIT will help you the next time you want to give a 1-minute praise to your team members.

Behavior : State the positive behavior that you observed your team member has performed. Be specific as much as you can. For example, you can say something like this ; "Steve, I really liked the way you handle that phone call with our client Mr Smith. You were respectful and polite even though Mr Smith was angry and raised his voice at that time."    

Impact : Next, explain the positive impact or outcome of his behavior that you have observed. Your conversation can go like this ; "Because you were respectful and polite, we are able to keep Mr Smith as our client". 

Thank you : Lastly, end your 1-minute praise by giving sincere appreciation and thank him for a job well done. You can close your conversation similar to this ; "I really appreciate your effort and would like to thank you for a job well done. Thank you." 

These three steps will help you to give sincere, morale-boosting 1 minute praise in a more structured and well-organized way. Try it today and get ready to see the positive changes in your team members. 

Making The First 30 Seconds A Life Changing Experience.

What can 30 seconds of interaction with other people do to your career and life? Apparently a lot, according to many studies done in the US. 

People unconsciously decide whether to like or dislike us within the first 30 seconds. Just think of the many opportunities we missed be them career advancement, new jobs and even business opportunities because we fail to make a great first impression within the first 30 seconds.

Below are four practical things that we can do to make our first 30 seconds contact a life changing one. 

Firstly, we need to smile. Nothing is more contagious than a genuine smile. My friend used to say that a smile opens up a thousand doors. A smile is a universal language of acceptance and rapport. The key here is genuine smile. People will know it if we fake a smile. How to create a genuine smile? Create the feeling in our heart and project it on our face. Then let go and let that smile flies away.

Next we need to have good eye contact. As they say, the eye is the window to the soul. Giving the other person good eye contact is a sign of respect and telling him "I am paying attention to you and only you". Just be careful not to stare at the person for too long (especially if he or she is of the opposite gender).

Thirdly, offer a handshake. In the old days, a handshake is a sign that you don't have ill intention towards the other party. During time of war, a handshake ie holding the other person hands with open palm are signals that they don't have hidden weapons. Today, a good handshake is a sign of trust. In some culture, a handshake is a binding contract.

Lastly, greet the other person appropriately. Greetings are the appetizer that opens up conversations. Although different cultures have their own way of greeting people, 'universal greetings' such as 'Good morning, Good afternoon, Good evening etc' are pleasantries that can open up countless possibilities.

So the next time you meet someone be in in a formal interview, on a bus or in a plane, follow the four steps above to create 30 seconds of contact that may change your life. Who knows where that 30 seconds might lead you?        

Making your Speeches Memorable

How can we make people remember and understand the points that we are trying to make in our speeches? Some speakers keep on rambling points after points without clear explanation, examples or elaborations. Others keep on telling stories one after another that finally make the audience go into 'screen saver mode'.

You can avoid all the above if you use the 4As below to spice, color and anchor your speeches for better retention and understanding;

Anecdotes - Anecdotes are short stories that help to explain your key points. Use wisely, it will keep your audience entertained, More importantly, it will help you to illustrate the point better and clearer. Just make sure that the story is short (2-3 minutes), simple and without any complicated plots. Then, tie up the story with the point that you want to deliver.

Analogy - Analogy uses the concept of prior knowledge of the audience to explain your ideas. For example, if you are talking about financial savings, then you can use the analogy of planting a tree and watching it grows to illustrate the concept of growing one's assets. One caveat to this idea is to use simple analogy that all of your audience can follow and understand.

Activity - Short and content-relevant activity is another powerful tool to explain a point. The classic activity to teach the audience about resistance to change is the 'arm folding' activity. To make it more impactful, debriefing is a must at the end of every activity. One key point to remember is to keep it sort ie 2-3 minutes.

Acronym - Acronym is another attention grabber that help to hammer your points to your ideas. For motivational speeches to youths and students, I use the acronym DREAM to illustrate and explain my points. Just ensure that your acronym is not too long ie less than 9 letters as audience will have problems remembering them if it is too long.            

Traffic Light Technique to Manage Stress

Exposure to prolonged high level of stress can damage our health, lower productivity and affect relationships. One of the fact that we need to accept is that, as long as we are still here on earth, stress is our way of life. The main issue now is how to manage stress more effectively so that we can maintain our productivity at work and home.

One of the simplest method to manage stress is the Traffic Light Technique. It is easy to use, fast and highly effective. It helps us to reorient ourselves and refocus on bigger, more important issues at hand.

Using the traffic light as an analogy, red signals that we need to stop that ever that we are doing at that particular moment that causes us to be under stress. It can be an argument with a colleague, feeling overwhelmed doing that pile of paper work or cursing that driver that suddenly overtakes you in a dangerous manner.

Next, orange means that we need to reorient and refocus ourselves internally. Feel that tense feelings in our body, that fast heartbeat, short breathing or stiff shoulders. Acknowledge that we are now under stress. There is no point in fighting the symptoms. The best way is to feel them inside our body. Once we are aware of them, it signals the brain that we are in control (it takes away the control from our more primitive brain - the amygdala and passes it to our more advanced brain - the neo cortex).

Lastly, green means that we actively do something to let that stress feelings (or symptoms) go. The easiest way is to take several deep breaths, inhaling through our nose and exhaling through our mouth. You will feel you heartbeat slowly going down, your muscles starting to loosen up and a sense of inner peace comes to you. Taking a short walk or doing light stretching are some of the other methods to let go of that stress symptoms.

The next time you feel stressful, remember the traffic light; red - stop, orange - reorient and refocus and  green - letting go of the symptoms by actively doing something.Try it today!

How to Give Morale-Boosting Praise

Experts said that most managers catch their subordinates doing something wrong rather than doing something right. Let us put ourselves in the shoes of that poor subordinate. How would he or she feel? Dejected? Unmotivated? Unappreciated? You bet!

Catching them doing something right and doing it properly on the other hand, will boost their morale, increase productivity and most importantly, reinforce the positive behaviour being praised.

So, how to give that morale-boosting praise? The acronym SIPS can guide us.

Specific - Our praise needs to be specific. What behaviours are we praising? What are the effects of that positive behaviour? Congratulating Donna for handling that difficult phone call from Mr Joe last Friday and because of that he is still our customer is an example of specific praise. Telling Alex he did a good job last week without going into the specifics, on the other hand is vague.

Immediate - We need to praise someone within 24 hours after a particular behaviour is shown. Telling Ahmad that he did a wonderful job assisting a customer 3 months ago will have little effect on him.

Personal - Muthu loves being praised and rewarded in front of a big crowd. Siti however, prefers a personal note or phone call. Not all people wants to be praised in public. Study our team members and choose the best praise method for them.  

Sincere - An example of insincere praise goes like this, "John, you did well last Monday for helping Mandy with the department's proposal. Because of that, the proposal was submitted on time. Great job! By the way, could you sit in for Tony tonight and do over time? His kid is sick and he needs to be home". Do not sugar coat request with praise because it is the fastest way to kill its effect.

So, a great way to boost morale is to catch our team members doing something right. The next time you do that, remember SIPS to give that morale-boosting praise.

3T Method to Use Visual Aids Effectively

Have you seen a speaker talking to a flip chart or a PowerPoint slide? Are you the speaker?

Sometimes, in the heat of our presentation, we tend to get carried away with the points and ideas on the visual aid and ignore the most important aspect of our presentation, which is our audience. After all, they are the reason we do the presentation.

To avoid talking to our visual aids such as flip charts or PowerPoint slides (any slides for that matter), we can use what I call the 3T Method. 3T which are; Touch, Turn and Talk are the steps that we can use when presenting with visual aids to be more effective.

When we want to refer to a point on our visual aid say, a flip chart, we Touch it (either with our palm, preferably open palm - it is more respectful; or we point it with a laser pointer) and quickly glance (not read) the points.

After glancing at the points on the visual aids (by now we know what to elaborate), we Turn and face our audience. This is the crucial part of the 3T Method as when we face our audience, we are connecting with them logically and emotionally. We are building a bridge each time we face them.

The last part of the 3T Method is Talk where we explain the points to our audience. We can do this using stories, acronym, metaphors and others. The key idea is this - each time we talk, we need to face our audience. As long as we remember this very important idea then we are doing our job as a speaker.

Try the 3T Method in your next presentation today and feel the positive results.      

Ladder of Abstraction For Better Clarity

Do you want your future speeches to be clearer and easily understood by your audience? Then you may want to consider using the Ladder of Abstraction Technique. Using this technique will help your audience more focused, engaged and motivated to follow your speech as they find it easier to understand.

Imagine your speech is like a ladder that you can move up or down on. As you explain vague concepts such as 'poverty', you are moving up the ladder. Some in your audience have no problems in following your speech. However, as you might have known, you will also have other types of audiences on the floor, the ones that may find it a bit difficult to grasp the concepts.

To address their needs you need to move down the ladder. Using the example above, when talking about vague concept such as poverty, you can give specific examples of poverty etc. Thus, each time you have vague concepts in your speech (up the ladder) you will illustrate them with specific examples (down the ladder). By doing this, you are sure to address all the needs of your audience and increase your effectiveness as a speaker or presenter. Try it in your next speech.