The Leader's Guide to Speaking with Presence: How to Project Confidence, Conviction, and Authority

by John Baldoni

Overview

Whether in a meeting or a presentation, a watercooler conversation or a formal speech, a leader's most important job is to.

Your idea may be groundbreaking. The potential profits might be exhilarating. The time to act may be right now, but if you're not able to craft and deliver a clear message that doesn't lead the audience to gain your perspective, that can be the difference between your pitch being transformational and becoming forgettable.

Executive coach and leadership expert John Baldoni provides this concise tool kit containing more than 100 practical tips for creating and communicating meaningful messages with presence and authority.

In The Leader's Guide to Speaking with Presence, you will discover how to:

Present their ideas clearly and provide context

Radiate confidence and put the audience at ease

Refine their delivery

Use stories to inform, involve, and inspire

Leverage the energy of any room

Convey optimism tempered with reality to gain buy-in

Turn PowerPoint presentations into performances

When a leader learns to own the room with an authentic and persuasive speech, the audience will become putty in their hands. The Leader's Guide to Speaking with Presence helps leaders achieve the kind of genuine presence that evolves into lasting trust and quantifiable influence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814433799
Publisher:	AMACOM
Publication date:	11/05/2013
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

JOHN BALDONI, president of Baldoni Consulting LLC, is an internationally recognized executive coach, speaker, and author of a dozen leadership books. In 2013, Global Gurus International ranked John No. 14 on its list of the world's top 30 leadership experts. John has written over 400 columns for the online sites of Harvard Business Review, Forbes and

FastCompany.

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION TO AUTHENTIC COMMUNICATION

What do people want most from leaders?

The real deal!

This is especially true when leaders open their mouths to speak. How they say it may be as important as what they say. Whether the person speaking is your boss or our president, we want to know that he or she knows we are listening and respects us for doing so.

Another word for this is authenticity.

We want people in charge to be honest and we want their words to ring with integrity. Never is this truer than when the leader is making a formal presentation or delivering a speech.

The words are crafted but the delivery must be authentic. It must reflect the honesty of the speaker, or something I like to call “leadership presence.”

Leadership presence is the reflection of the leader’s inner self. It should be the real deal. Presence, however, is not simply a sense of being; it is a determination of action. Leadership presence, as I wrote in 12 Steps to Power Presence, is a form of “earned authority.” Authority comes from the title of a leader, but it is earned by example.

A leader’s job is to bring people together for a common purpose, so credibility is critical. That will only come when people trust their leader and want to follow his or her lead. Communication opens the door to understanding what the leader is and what he or she stands for.

The Leader’s Guide to Speaking with Presence focuses on delivering the authentic message and doing it as a leader full of presence. There are chapters on crafting the presentation as well as on delivering it. I have also included information on using PowerPoint as a tool for enabling more authentic communications.

The Leader’s Guide to Speaking with Presence is a result of lessons I have taught in my coaching practice, as well as tips I have learned from watching good speakers deliver. The handbook contains more than a hundred tips on what to do when speaking aloud, not simply from a stage or a podium but also when connecting one-on-one or in small groups.

Communication opens the door to authenticity. A leader’s presence affirms that what the leader says is an indication of what he or she believes. And when we sense that the leader means well, we will lend the leader our ears and will be inclined to follow his or her leadership.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Introduction to Authentic Communication 1

CHAPTER 1 The Sound of Your Leadership Speech 3

CHAPTER 2 Present as a Leader 9

CHAPTER 3 Make the Audience Feel Welcome (and Banish Stage Fright) 13

CHAPTER 4 Stand Up Straight (and Don’t Forget to Breathe) 17

CHAPTER 5 Lead Your Presentation, Don’t Have It Lead You 21

CHAPTER 6 Turn PowerPoint into Performance Art 27

CHAPTER 7 “Tell Me a Story” 31

CHAPTER 8 Project Optimism the Right Way 35

CHAPTER 9 Master the Art of Meeting and Mingling 39

CHAPTER 10 Leverage the Energy of the Room 43

CHAPTER 11 Avoid Nuance When You Speak Out Loud 47

CHAPTER 12 Develop Your Leadership Presentation 51

Handbook on Communicating Leadership Presence 55

Notes 65

Index 67

About the Author 70

Editorial Reviews

"If you are looking to take a team to the next level or up your influence in a certain environment, check out what Baldoni has to say." --Attitudes 4 Innovation

"...concise tool kit containing more than 100 practical tips for creating and communicating meaningful messages with presence and authority." --Examiner.com

From the Publisher