Preshift Meetings (3/3)

Below is a shout out to improve the prestart meeting from an individual leader’s perspective, but can be used by senior leaders / support staff to coach leaders into being better presenters and getting those crucial messages across

What to improve:

1. Connect with your audience to increase engagement
   • Participation increases attention spans and makes information sticky
2. Know your content for confident delivery
   • No one likes someone reading a sheet – don’t be that person who can’t pre-read the information 10 minutes before the prestart
3. Transfer the information succinctly and clearly
   • Project your voice in short crisp sentences that carry to the rear of the room or area
4. Incorporate your personal style
   • Being genuine and natural allows people to relate to you and improves engagement.
5. Leverage other content producers / presenters
   • Work isn’t a solo mission, get others to assist to increase engagement, “volunteer” others if need be, some people just need a push
6. Acknowledge attendee influencers
   • Ensure that key individuals (not necessarily management or formal leaders) understand the message and are on board prior to delivery. If you aren’t clear with your message others will look to those informal leaders to identify how they interpreted your message.
7. Use stories to convey messages
   • Facts tell, stories sell. Incorporating stories into the meeting allow people to connect through shared experience and builds rapport & bonds within the group.
8. Bumper sticker to improve stickiness
   • No one remembers a paragraph, everyone remembers the one-liners. Summarise important messages to memorable one liners to assist retention of information.
9. Acknowledge memory retention and understanding
   • Use your window of opportunity and identify critical info, desired info and helpful info which the attendees need to retain for the shift. Cut your message in half if unsure and leave out the fluff.
10. Variety is the spice of life
    • The same content, speaker, time, location and information aint motivating anyone. Change up your speaking location, or the whole location, or the structure but do something. Imagine your meeting as a movie – would you want to attend the same move over and over?
11. Use Props or other visual representations
    • Everyone has a preferred style of receiving information yet by only utilizing verbal communications you are not capturing the other sections of the audience which prefer visual or written means of communication.
12. Source feedback to improve
    • Incorporate material seen elsewhere or methods to increase engagement, adopt principles or activities from other areas / presenters you see. Don’t be afraid to take something from standup comedy, scenes from movies or political figures to broaden and deepen your delivery style.

When we start the day in a positive, clear and mindful place we enjoy our struggles and don’t resent the challenges of the day. It makes that hill not so large, that deadline increasingly possible and that conflict not so unresolvable.

Hat tip to Gabrielle Dolan for some of the above points which are found in her book “Ignite” which I thoroughly recommend that all leaders read at least twice