2-Minute Tip: Keep Your Shirt Off
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day (if you believe “Big Breakfast”). When travelling to give a talk, we may start the day with room service breakfast in a hotel room while we putter about getting ready for the day. That makes it really easy to spill coffee or jelly on your presentation outfit if you get fully dressed before eating. The simplest way to avoid that is to keep your presentation shirt off until it’s time to leave.
Post Tip Discussion
As a general rule, we all want to be successful in our talks, our careers, and our personal lives. But how often do we stop and define just what success means? The fact is success can mean a lot of different things depending on the context. That’s why it’s so important to think about the criteria for success and define it early on. Once you have a definition of success for the specific context you are in, then you can develop the appropriate plan to achieve success.
Problems and disputes arise when we don’t agree on criteria. If you think you are successful, but your boss does not, then you have a problem. Is it because your work wasn’t as good as you thought or was it because you did the wrong work? Working through criteria for success in advance helps eliminate those conflicts.
Before you prepare your presentation:
- Think about what success looks like.
- Define the criteria for that success.
- Get buy-in from your key stakeholders.
- Ensure your Call To Action supports your criteria for success.
Call To Action
- Subscribe to 2-Minute Talk Tips so you never miss an episode.
- Follow me on Twitter: @CurrentlyBill
- Do you have a story about criteria or how a disagreement over criteria impacted a talk you gave? Share it in the comments below.
- When you’re on the road, keep your shirt on until it’s time to leave the room.
- Don’t get best…get better.