Posts Tagged ‘teleclass’

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The Leader’s Quagmire – The Need to be Right (Part 1)

Monday, May 18th, 2009

People thrive when they accomplish things. Accomplishment is a root source for feeling self-confident and self-assured. Unfortunately, some leaders employ a destructive shortcut in attempting to accomplish a team task. The leader mistakenly confuses his or her need to be right with making smart business decisions.

The need to be right is an essential human need that one must fill on a consistent basis. It is unproductive expression of that need in business that must be controlled. Imagine the chaos that a team of seven people would experience if all of them had the same goal of getting their personal need to be right met during one of your meetings!

Question:
How often do you express your need to be right?

Make a list of the places you most strongly need to be right first in your business life and then your personal life. Often our business life is used to compensate for failings in our personal life. The key to being a productive leader is to get most of your needs met in your personal life.

Breakdowns in life (business and personal) can be traced to two main sources – failure in communication and/or relationships. Think of any successful person and most likely, you’ll see high skill levels in both communication and relationships.

As a coach, I saw a common trend with my clients. The more my clients successfully handled their personal life, the better their business life. What actions do you need to take around being right in your personal life? Spend the next couple of months working on that and you’ll be surprised at how much easier it is to lead your work teams. As always, the solution is to take baby steps to improve your personal and business relationships. It is this slow pace that often drives leaders crazy. Welcome to the leader’s quagmire!

Shortcuts produce short-term gain at the expense of long-term success. (Note: optimizing a process is not the same as a shortcut.) IF you still want a shortcut strategy, try this one: look for and formally acknowledge every person on your team each time they are right. Do this for both big and small things yet be subtle – a casual remark about how Mary or Tom were right about something. At some point, the need each person has to be right will be temporarily satisfied. This is known as the leader’s hamster wheel. Until you and your team find a way to fully get the need met (hint – hire a good coach), you will continue to be the person responsible for filling their need to be right. Short-term productivity will improve yet long-term you’ll burnout. This is not sustainable.

Next post I’ll give you three strategies to get your need to be right met.

Posted by Byron Van Arsdale
Twitter: @headset
Author – 6 Principles of Powerful Conference Calls
ConferenceCallTraining.com

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Is it Time to be a Purist?

Monday, December 15th, 2008

In the effort to “break it if it isn’t broken” we sometimes roll past best practices as we experiment with new ways of doing things. The advance in technology has given us high speed downloads, iPhones, Blackberry’s, smart phones, cell phones, iPods and other mp3 players, laptops, 24/7 access to Solitaire, PDAs, email, text messages, RSS feeds, blogs, and of course, tweets! When leading a conference call or presenting your product via webinar, you might ask yourself:

“How will this (fill in the blank) piece of technology support my ability to communicate AND engage with my participants?”

People praise athletes for their ability to accomplish amazing results when they are  “in the zone.” We are not talking about consuming high quantities of Mountain Dew or Red Bull and playing Grand Theft Auto 4 for 10 hours straight! Picture Tiger Woods in competition or the Dali Lama in meditation. Your focus is only on one thing. There is no multi-tasking.

Question:

If you approached your conference call or webinar with the same single-minded focus as Tiger Woods and all of your technology was disconnected, what could you accomplish?

It would be easy to dismiss this question as a nice theoretical exercise and go right back to the status quo. So let’s make it a bit more competitive just to see who has the guts to give it a go? I challenge you to lead one call or webinar where you have no distraction from technology.

Step One: lead a conference call (or webinar, teleclass, etc.), as you would normally do so. This is to establish a firm status quo in your mind as to how you divide your attention between technology, participants, IM or text messages, and your presentation. Write down your observations including any feelings you had during the presentation.

Step Two: lead a conference call (or webinar, teleclass, etc.), with all technology off other than essentials. If you are on a conference call, put your computer to sleep, turn off cell/smart phones, and even clear your desk of everything except what is needed for the call. If you are leading a webinar, have someone else drive the presentation so you can completely focus on the participants. Again, write down your observations and feelings.

Step Three: compare and contrast your experiences from Step One and Two. What was the difference? Did cutting out all other distractions improve your ability to lead and obtain results? Was your level of self-confidence higher or lower in Step 2?

Rarely do we change our behaviors or try something new in the absence of pain or frustration. This is the silver lining of the current financial mess – status quo is completely disrupted and we have the chance to review our strategies, assumptions, and behaviors. In 2009, your ability to confidently lead great meetings via conference calls, webinars, teleclasses, and virtually is more important than ever. Congratulations for taking on any part of this exercise. Testing your skills and then growing them to meet your expectations will see you experiencing more success in leading any type of meeting.

Would a model help you understand how to lead effective phone, face-to-face, and virtual meetings? You’d be surprised at how easy it is to run great meetings.

Posted by Byron Van Arsdale
Twitter: @headset
Author – 6 Principles of Powerful Conference Calls
ConferenceCallTraining.com

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The Risky Business of Using Cell Phones on Conference Calls

Friday, September 5th, 2008

cellphoneHave you tried telling a customer you couldn’t attend the conference call you set up because your cell phone didn’t work?

On September 3, 2008, AppleInsider.com posted an article titled: “AT&T wireless networks go down on East Coast.” As I read the article, pictures of professionals unsuccessfully attempting to call into conference calls with their cell phones filled my mind. It must have been a mess!

There is one important lesson to learn here:

• If your presence is absolutely required on a conference call, do everything within your power to call in from a landline phone.

Cell phones and VoIP phones do not have 100% uptime. Period. If your presence is required and you are using VoIP or a cell phone to call in, you DO so at your own risk. The good news is that most of the time everything will be fine. The bad news is that you’ll never know when it won’t work.

There are times when you’ll be traveling or finishing a client meeting and you simply will have to use your cell phone to be on the conference call. (Hint: planning the call at a different time might be smart!) Having a backup plan to cover you in case of emergency outage will support both you and your team to be more effective. A little “what if” planning will eliminate most of the stress.

Do you have a great road warrior story of cell phone or Internet failure where you found a quick work around? Thanks in advance for adding your comments and telling others about my blog.

Posted by Byron Van Arsdale
Author – 16 Secrets to a Great Conference Call
ConferenceCallTraining.com

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Posted in Leadership Tips | 1 Comment »

How Do You Handle Introductions During Virtual Meetings and Conference Calls?

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

Thanks S.B. for the question and the answer is simple. Do it quickly! Virtual meetings of any type are focused around a topic and participants are ready to begin at the appointed start time. Any delay is seen as a strike against the leader of the call and, if applicable, against the company responsible for setting up the call.

Here’s a typical situation: the call begins on time yet the leader gives “please introduce yourself” as the only direction for introducing yourself. Participants then normally give a variety of responses, long and short, that may or may not include information relevant to the purpose of the call. Recall any networking event where people stood up and introduced themselves with some variation of the 10-second to 45-second elevator pitch. While barely acceptable in face-to-face meetings (actually, it isn’t even acceptable in face-to-face meetings yet no one knows how to stop this monster once it begins creeping around the room!), this kind of introduction will kill the energy and momentum of your call.

Here’s what I recommend: give specific instructions and then make sure everyone, even the CEO, follows the rule. If someone gets creative with the rule, immediately and gently ask them to “pause” (see Step 2 of Improving Skype Based Conference Calls!) and remind them of the specific information required. If you allow one or more people to break the rule without correcting it immediately, you have lost the opportunity to make a correction. Again, if you are going to correct someone, do it immediately and tactfully.

Here’s an example of a specific instruction for an introduction: “Let’s begin with a short introduction. Please tell us your full name and what department you are from.” Another example is: “Please tell us your first name and using only one (1) word, what do you want to get from today’s call.” The key here is to keep ALL introductions as simple and short as possible. Write out how you will ask participants to introduce themselves before you get on the call! Then repeat exactly what you have written when conducting the introduction.

If you are clear and concise in giving the instructions for introductions, others are more likely to follow your lead. However, if you ramble when giving the instructions, don’t expect your participants to be clear and concise!

With practice, you’ll have a fast, concise introduction that will get your virtual meetings and conference calls started on the right foot!

Posted by Byron Van Arsdale
Author – 16 Secrets to a Great Conference Call
ConferenceCallTraining.com

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Connection is the New Black in Presentations

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

It is also the Original and Future Black in any type of virtual meeting and presentation you are involved in. Special thanks to my friend and social media maven, Connie Reece or @conniereece on Twitter) for her Tweet:

conniereece Retweet @Armano: @KathySierra being a good presenter is overrated. Connecting with your audience is not. [Connie sez: amen, amen] 01:55 PM August 05, 2008 from TweetDeck

My response was simple: “connecting with your audience = good presenter. New paradigm for presenters in any medium.”

Regardless of what medium you are presenting it, virtual meeting, web meeting, conference call, teleclass, training room, keynote, team meeting, webinar, teleseminar, etc., your credibility, trustworthiness, and effectiveness will depend directly upon your ability to connect with your audience.

If you want to be a good presenter, here is your biggest secret: quit thinking about you and how you are doing.

Focus 100% of your attention on your participants and help them get the information they require to accomplish their current tasks.

As usual, what sounds simple is rarely easy to accomplish. And that is the case here. The good news (or bad news!) is that your audience will remind you over and over again that it is indeed not about you. It is about them – always has been, always will be. Take a close look at a trusted mentor or role model and you’ll find this trait present.

Oh, and for those using the “fake it until you make it” strategy, it gets harder and harder to let go of the strategy the longer you use it.

Looking for something to speed you along the path to being able to connect with any virtual or in person audience? Here are three effective options to grow your skills. Subscribe for, read, and make comments to the PowerConferenceCalls.com blog. Invest in any of the three Audio training CDs covering my 6 Principle model. For personalized service, contact me directly about working with you or your team.

You can follow me on Twitter by typing @headset in the Twitter.com home page. A little business, a little personal, always an adventure!

Posted by Byron Van Arsdale
Author – 6 Principles of Powerful Conference Calls
ConferenceCallTraining.com

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