From a self-leadership perspective, the answer lies in the question – to change we must change our ‘selves’. ‘Self’  is a matrix of frames of mind which includes our self beliefs and values which make up our ‘identify’ and we tend to conform to our identity. In short you behave to meet your expectations of how your ‘see’ yourself.

Ignoring the philosophical problem of who is the self that sees the self, the key to making a change in behaviour and a resoltion that sticks is to see your self in a new way.

In Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) there is technique known as the SWISH pattern and Positive Psychology has a similar intervention known as Best Possible Self.

The Swish works by imagining yourself as “the you for whom there is no problem”. For example if you procrastinate to exercise, overspend on  your credit card or lack confidence with new people, then you construct a ‘mental image’ of the you that can easily and successfully handle these, and other, situations. Once you have a rich and comprehensive idea of what the ‘new you’ would look like, sound like and feel like, you ‘step into’ this identity and believe and value this as the you that will move into the future.

Best Possible Self is similar with a diary option. 1 ) Imagine yourself in the future. 2) Imagine everything has gone about as well as it could have, and you have gotten most of the things that are important to you. 3) Spend 10 to 20 minutes of free writing describing this person.

You have heard of self-fulfilling prophesy, so why not write the prophesy you want fulfilled? Personally I am going to combine both techniques to ensure my 2011 is my best year ever. What about you?

 The evening meal had finished and a man stands, the group falls silent but with excited curiosity about what the man might say. The man, who was not old by our standards but had an appearance that communicated his wisdom and authority, starts to speak. He commences by taking his audience back in time to events that anchored them to deeds of courage, endurance and sacrifice. His words entrance each listener and carry them on a journey inside themselves so that they relive each story; even if they had not been present.

 Sometimes the storyteller would just recount passed events but other times when the group was facing a new challenge he would draw analogies from nature to prepare the group for ordeals to come. After the stories the group would sleep and dream and wake the next morning renewed, refreshed and ready to face the day.

 The storyteller has a special magic that allows the listener to travel in time and space and access states and resources from their unconsciousness. Storytellers have been with us from since man first learned to speak and have survived the printing press and the advent of electronic entertainment. Today, a leader, speaker or trainer who wishes to bypass resistance, prepare hearts and minds and facilitate lasting changes for his or her audience will be wise to study and practice the structure and delivery of story and metaphor.

 Neuro Linguistic Programming and Metaphor

 The early developers of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) modelled a great storyteller, the founder of modern hypnosis, Milton Erickson. Erickson’s stories are ingenious, enchanting and extraordinary examples of the art of persuasion. According to Sidney Rosen MD, a student of Erickson’s, anybody who listned to Erickson was likely to experience varying levels of hypnotic trance. In trance we are most open to the messages, suggestions and influences embedded in the stories. Erickson also believed that if the listener “forgot” a story – developed amnesia for it – its effect could be even more potent. To this end, Erickson and subsequent NLP trainers would create story loops, by nesting one story inside another, inside another taking the listener deeper into trance and increasing the chance of amnesia.

 Stories and metaphors can be used to:

•  Induce emotional states
• Cause the listener to access mental resources
• Reframe a situation
• Reduce resistance to change or new ideas
• Build rapport
• Entertain
• Break negative states
• Punctuate speeches or trainings

What is a Metaphor?

The world ‘metaphor’ comes from Meta, meaning above or about and Phorine, which means meaning, it can also be translated as ‘to transfer’ or ‘carry over’. When we use a metaphor we cause the listener to go meta to meaning which creates awareness which creates choice and choice allows change.

We meta state when we use metaphors by putting one thing in hierarchy to another. The philosopher Aristotle (circa 300BC), knew this when he said, “Metaphor is the application to one thing of the name belonging to another.”

 In linguistics, a metaphor is the act or process of denoting one concept (the tenor) with a sign conventionally tied to another (the vehicle), with the purpose of (i) emphasising certain associations of the tenor over others (my dentist is a butcher); (ii) enriching the conceptual structure of the tenor by analogy with another domain (the CPU is the brain of the computer); (iii) conveying some aspect of the tenor which defies conventional lexicalization (the leg of the chair, the neck of the bottle).

 The dictionary defines a metaphor as, “A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another by way of suggesting a likeness or analogy between them”

 One of the exercises I ask my NLP students to do is to write five metaphors that can be used for a specific purpose such as a training. If you were put in this position your first reaction might be to run out and buy a book on metaphors – I know, that was my first reaction when given the same task. It’s not necessary, the best metaphors are staring you right in the face, you are living them, and they are everywhere. It’s like the fish asking, “Where is the water?” In fact it is more difficult to find something that is not a metaphor.

 Just prior to writing this I was coaching a client on the phone who was berating himself for personalising someone else’s anger. “Can you imagine someone learning to shoot basketball hoops”, I said, “Some shots they get in and some they miss. Eventually they get more in than they miss. You have only just learned about Self-leadership, so it’s OK to drop the ball occasionally as long as you learn and improve.”

 The Construction of a Metaphor

 There are a number or ways to construct metaphor depending on whether you are using it for a state induction or for helping an individual or group to overcome a particular challenge.To create a basic metaphor use the following steps.

 Displace the focus
It’s axiomatic that nobody likes to be told; they like to discover the answers for themselves. By changing the focus of the story from the listener to some other time, place or person reduces resistance by allowing the listener to draw their own meanings. For examples of this refer to the parables of Jesus of Nazareth eg. Casting seeds, faith like a mustard seed etc.

 Get the listener to search their unconscious
By using non-specific descriptions your metaphor will induce trance by causing the listener to go inside and to fill in the details from their own mental map or experience. An example would be; “Perhaps if you were in a similar situation you would have an idea as to what to do.”

Pace the Structure
For the metaphor to be effective it needs to have the same stucture as the problem it sets out to gain perspective on. So if the listeners are facing a challenge and don’t know how to resolve it then the subjects of the metaphor will also face a challenge. The difference is the outcome.

 An Outcome
The metaphor needs an outcome or resolution that will add resources to the listener; this will often be in the form of a reframe of what the situation means, for example “they discovered that the challenge was in fact an opportunity to do things better.”

 The Delivery of metaphor

If you are not already a natural storyteller, set an outcome to hone your skills, listen to others who have the ‘gift’ and then practice. If you have children, read them bedtime stories and then practice creating your own. If you can enthrall a child you are well on you way. 

A metaphor must be meaningful; it needs to pace the elements of the listeners intellectual level, experience and current situation. Good storytellers gather information about their audience and not only pace content but pace their delivery. No two audiences are the same and so a single story may vary in length and detail depending on how it is being received.

Just as with state induction the storyteller must use his or her voice and physiology to act out the story for maximum impact.

So learning to tell stories is like learning to cook, at first you start with a few simple ingredients but after a few tries you can add flavour and spice and make a meal that is both satisfying and memorable.

Footnote: Experienced NLP practitioners will recognise the embedded frames and state inductions in this video.

Now while I never present the genius state as a hypnotic process and state, it absolutely is.  When you experience this naturally occurring state (and everybody does at some time), it seems to happen to you, to come upon you, and when you look back on it, you typically remember it as a wonderful experience.

What induces it?  Usually something that’s very important to you, something that you actively engage with and when you do, you get lost in it.  You become thrilled and absorbed in it.  It could be reading a book, it could be walking in a Redwood forest, it could be gardening, it could be playing catch with your dogs, writing, watching a great movie, having a fantastic conversation with a friend, making love, climbing a rock wall, playing a video game, and on and on the list goes.

The key is absorption in something that you care about, an absorption that pulls you into it so much so that you can get lost in it.  Then, in that moment when you are in that “flow” state, you are not multi-tracking.  You have lost all of your meta-mind awarenesses about all of the other things you need to do and track and you have become of one mind about the absorption.   Now in that moment, you won’t realize this!  If you were aware of it, you would be double-tracking.  But you’re not.

It is only later when you look back on the experience that you realize that you during that time you were all there— fully and completely. And during that time you realize that many of the central factors of your consciousness disappeared.  Time disappeared and you were lost in the now, this moment, and your awareness of time just vanished.  So did the world and others and even your self vanished.  These facets of the matrix of your mind were still there, but you lost consciousness of them.  You became self-forgetful, time forgetful, world forgetful.  All you were aware of was the subject of whatever the focus was about.

Athletes experience this as when a gymnast disappears the audience and they are there alone with the high bars or the floor.  A baseball pitcher similarly disappears a whole stadium.  In their focus-flow-genius state all that is there is the ball and the batter.  When an athlete goes into this special state, they typically call it being in the zone. And a couple years ago Tim Goodenough and Mike Cooper, two Meta-Coaches modeled out 13 distinctions from top South African athletes (Olympiads and national champions) in their Neuro-Semantic book, In the Zone.

In the field of NLP the first work on the prerequisites of the “personal genius state” was developed by John Grinder and Judith DeLozer (1983- 1987).  The processes that they came up with were interesting, but quite convoluted and therefore ineffective.  They were fooling around with meta-levels as they were trying to figure out how to utilize the guidance of Gregory Bateson and his principles of the higher levels.  And they even wrote that they knew the secret would tie in somehow with managing the meta-levels.  They got thta from Bateson, they just didn’t know how to apply it.  That came later after I created the Meta-States model (1994).  One of my very first applications of Meta-States was to the genius state prerequisites and that brought about the Accessing Your Personal Genius state or induction (and hence the APG training).

What Meta-States was able to do as a process, and as the ultimate hypnotic state, was to set the required meta-levels (as meta-states or frames) over the primary state so that you can let go of the meta-awarenesses and be fully present in the primary state. Doing this commissions the higher meta-states to operate as an out-side of conscious awareness structure.  It’s paradoxical, as is many hypnotic states.  To release the multi-tracking kind of consciousness, you learn how to embrace your meta-level states and use them so that you are freed for letting them go— from your immediate awareness.

Then you can be all there— with all of your resources available for the flow or in-the-zone state.  Then when you read, you fully comprehend because you are there (and not elsewhere!).  Then when you write, you don’t suffer the dreaded “writer’s block.”  Then when you are there with a client or loved one, you are there and they can feel your full presence. And now you know why we use the APG training to create your genius coaching state, genius training state, genius writing state, wealth creation state, etc.  It is the ultimate Neuro-Semantic state for operating from your highest and best.  So that makes it a self-actualizing state.  And now you know why APG — Accessing Personal Genius— is the flagship training of Neuro-Semantics.

NLP is a model of how humans think, feel, behave and communicate. When NLP was developed in the 1970′s by Bandler and Grinder it was a radical departure from the field of psychology, which at the time was focused more on human dysfunction than peak performance.

Today, with the acceptance of positive psychology, NLP appears less radical can be viewed as an excellent framework for learning to communicate effectively, to model people and systems and to design strategies for peak performance. Learning NLP can improve the performance of athletes, sales people, business people, coaches, trainers, teachers, therapists and parents.

NLP for Consulting, Training and Coaching

I use NLP and NeuroSemantics in my consulting, training and coaching and I enjoy sharing the technology through public programs that I hold in Singapore and other parts of SE Asia. You can get a list of the upcoming programs by clicking here. I highly recommend NLP Communication and  Coaching Essentials which is the first 3-day of a NLP Practitioner program and covers how to communicate and coach effectively plus we are conducting  a full NLP Master Practitioner training in October.

NLP  Association of Singapore Video

If you like watching videos on YouTube then you can watch part of my presentation to the Singapore NLP Association.

At our self leadership programs we emphasise the importance of turning ideas into action or closing the ‘knowing-doing’ gap. Zurina is the embodiment of this principle and once again she has demonstrated her commitment to transform thoughts into reality.

Zurina loves taking photographs and one year ago decided that she would like to make her passion a career – not a new concept but the difference is how she executed this idea. In April 2009 she charged for her first professional shoot, today (12 months later) she is a busy photographer and is having her first gallery exhibition, ‘Shades of Pink’. The exhibition showcases 30 pieces of her work around a theme and for the benefit of the Breast Cancer Foundation;  plus, 150 people have bought tickets for tonight’s charity launch!

The exhibition was put together in 3 months during which time Zurina was also a mother of 2 toddlers and a director of Self Leadership International. When I asked Zurina to share with our blog readers her secret for being able to manifest so quickly, she answered that she uses many of the steps of the NLP Well Formed Outcome Pattern. Here are the steps she used:

1. Visualise the big picture – what will the end result look like.
2. Cover off the details such as; pick a realistic but ambitious date for the exhibition, locate a suitable venue, come up with a list of topics to photograph.
3. Identify the required resources such as; sponsors for the event, volunteers and subjects to be photographed.
4. Take action – start shooting and editing.
5. Make Adjustments – when things do not work out quite as planned make changes and then take action again.
6. Be consistent – do a bit or a lot every day.
7. Create excitement about the project – this translates into the marketing which resulted in paying customers whilst maintaining relationships.

There is of course a ‘secret’ ingredient that she believed it could be done. It is my experience that many a good idea never reaches frution because of a lack of self-belief, planning and action. Do you have a good idea locked inside you?

Since the 1970s, futurists have been telling us that the world is changing, that the change itself is changing, and that the changing change is also accelerating.  And much of this change is how the world is getting smaller.  When I first read Alvin Tofler in the 1970s (Future Shock), it seemed like science fiction, but no longer.  The predictions that life on this planet would one day be like a village, a global village—that day seems to have arrived.  Thomas L. Friedman calls this “the flattening of the world” in The World is Flat (2005).  In that book he identifies ten “flatteners” beginning with the fall of the Berlin Wall to the introduction of Windows to open-sourcing, outsourcing, offshoring, insourcing, and so on.

The world is not only smaller, it is faster.  News today occurs on thousands of cable and internet channels—24/7 / 360 days of the year.  News today travels around the world not merely in hours or even minutes, but in seconds.  In moments, information about political crisis, armed invasions, tsunamias, earthquakes, Britany Spears, the price of oil, a suicide bomb explosion, etc. can be in our email inboxes and on hundreds of news programs.  So today we have the “soft” science of economics is governed by other “soft” sciences (psychology, linguistics, wealth, etc.) that is now influenced and affected by more and more variables.  And that means the world is becoming more and more systemic.

As a soft science, economics is influenced as much by beliefs, frames-of-mind, representations, interpretations, emotions, values, states and meta-states as it is by anything tangible like houses or mortgages.  What is the value of a house?  Above and beyond the materials that go into the construction and its cost, the supply of houses, the demand for them, the value depends on what people think, how much they want them, how much sellers think they can ask for, etc.  It depends on fallible human states and meta-states.  That’s why they can be so over-valued that they can mess up the economy.

Similarly with the human decision to lend money to a buyer for a mortgage.  It depends on the criteria they set for determining who they can trust to be dependable in repaying the loan.  And once a mortgage company creates a subprime loan for people with no or little down payment, who don’t have the financial resources, but who believe that the value of the house will increase at such a rate that it will have, say $100,000 equity in 12 months, and then someone sells these high return loans to Wall Street who then offers them on a world market … then people can believe and feel confident about returns, and borrow more money on the assumed value of the increased and increasing equity and somewhere along the line we all move to La-La land assuming that if we believe it or think it, it will happen.

Then reality hits.  The balloon payment on the loan comes due and people begin to default on their loans.  This lowers the confident feelings of others about the loans, which is communicated by the sensational bad-news “News” organizations thereby creating more fear and worry about the home mortgage market, then a negative spiral begins and suddenly market value drops around the world.  And the nature of the world— smaller, faster, and more systemic is amplifying all of this.

There’s now one more quality.  It is more psychological. Did you notice the number of states and meta-states in these descriptions?  How many did you notice?  We call all of this economics, yet it is actually psycho-economics. The psycho- part is the role of people’s assumptions and interpretations of value or dis-value, their emotional states of confidence or fear, of optimism or apprehensiveness and how these states play such a critical role in economics.

Apparently the banking industry has lost a trillion dollars worth of value and the US Congress has voted to spend more than a trillion dollars to deal with it.  A trillion dollars!  How much is that?  On one program someone said that if you had a trillion dollars in one dollar bills, it would be 67.8 miles tall (over 100 kilometers).  Or if you went out on a spending spree — and you could spend a million dollars a day (a million!!) — and you started today, it would take you more than 2,000 years to spend it.

Okay, so if the economy or the banks lost a trillion dollars, where did all of that money go?  Who got it?  The weird thing is that much of it didn’t go anywhere.  Much of it existed on paper as a record of the way people were thinking, expecting, valuing, feeling confident or worried, etc.  One day people made certain evaluations about their trust and confidence in certain homes, businesses, markets, and futures and presto— there was a trillion dollars of value.  At a later time, they lost confidence—and a trillion dollars of value disappeared.

What is this downturn about?  Perhaps it is just a market correction, perhaps it is another aspect of the flattening of the world, perhaps it is a call to recognize the role of our meta-states in creating our social realities.  Whatever it is, it is a call to your resilience, state management, and ability to know that your highest asset is your ability to add value.

I think it is also a call for a belief in responsible abundance.  That is, if our psycho-economics play such a crucial role in all of this, we now have to resist the temptation to play into the hands of the negative press.  It is the psychology of the press to sensationalize whatever they can and turn facts into negative catastrophes.  After all, if in the small, fast, systemic, and psychological world—our beliefs, fears, worries, hopes, optimism, resilience (and many other states and meta-states) are now key factors determining whether we set in motion a negative downward spiraling or an upward positive spiraling —then we have to be more responsible to fear-mongering, fear-spreading, negative-forecasting and more committed to intelligent optimism that fosters resilience, persistence, and hope.

What’s needed is an army of people committed to actualizing their own potentials and those of others.  What’s needed is a community of people who believe in an abundance of possibilities and potentials—if people are given a chance.  What’s needed are a global village of people who will resist the negatively-oriented media and do their part to unleash more and more possibilities.

“We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: if you’ve got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out. But with opportunity comes responsibility. Companies today aren’t managing their employees’ careers; knowledge workers must, effectively, be their own chief executive officers. It’s up to you to carve out your place, to know when to change course, and to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50 years.”  –

Self Development is intrinsic to self-leadership as leadership and learning are inseparable. So as Drucker says, we must take responsibility for our own growth and success – we must be the CEO of our own mind and body.

Self Development includes, developing healthy self esteem, self knowledge, self image, self belief and self confidence so that you can develop your unique talents and abilities and contribute.

Through Self development and self leadership we can find meaning and significance in our lives, attain states of self efficacy (Bandura), flow (Csikszentmihalyi) and self actualisation (Maslow).

• Self-efficacy is the belief that you are capable of performing in a certain way to attain your goals It is the belief that you have the capabilities to execute the courses of actions required to manage prospective situations. Self-efficacy is the opposite of helplessness (Seligman) it means you are the captain of your ship and you can set a course and navigate obstacles to reach your desired destination and win the prize.
• Flow is that mental state in which you are fully immersed in what you are doing doing; you experience  feelings of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. You experience flow states when you challenge your abilities with an appropriate task, so that time goes away and you are fully in the moment. Surprisingly we find we are happiest when we are full engaged by work rather that slacking off and resting.
• Self actualisation is the desire to become everything that you arecapable of becoming and to find meaning in what you do. Self actualisation is the big “Why” question, it answers why you are here and why you are doing what you do.

Some organisations view self development in human capital but in the current financial climate it is more likely that your self development is up to you.

What are you doing about your self development?

• Are you regularly reading books or blogs that enrich your mind?
• Are you associating with people that challenge your thinking?
• Are you attending seminars or webinars that expand your perspective?
• Are you spending time in quiet reflection and evaluating what’s important to you and your community?

At Self Leadership International we include self development and positive psychology in all our programmes, in addition we teach certification programmes in Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), NeuroSemantics and Coaching.

• NLP is essentially a model of learning and demonstrates that we can model human thinking, behaviour and communication.
• Neuro-Semantics is about translating great ideas into reality, about performing our highest meanings, about enriching our performances with the most compelling intentions, and getting to the heart of things via communication.
• Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them. Clients say that coaching brings out their best by helping them focus, break down tasks and clarify their values.

Through these technologies you can learn to lead your mind and body to create the results you want in your life.

To your highest and best!

Communication

Good communication skills are essential to lead yourself and influence others. Poor communication causes pain, conflict, loss of productivity and profit.

Listen to a  podcast on Communication Skills.

To win the communication game you must know and apply the rules of the game; and the #1 rule of communication is that -  All communication occurs inside a frame.

A communication frame gives the listener reference points to know how to handle the information they hear from you. A communication frame points the listener’s mind in a particular direction and when used correctly will create trust and remove misunderstandings.

Any time we say “In terms of …” we set the boundaries of the discussion and hence the frame. Often two or more people in conflict are actually discussing different topics or perspectives, using “in terms of…” allows us to focus on the specific topic or to challenge people who have gone off topic.

For example:

• “In terms of reaching a decision in the next hour, let me make this point…”
• “In terms of us working together in this team, how would you like me to interpret your behaviour?”
• “In terms of our stated budget, do you think this is a wise purchase?”

Here are some other simple examples of communication frames and how to use them:

The Workshop Frame:
“Just work shopping – what if we did…x”. This frame is great for putting ideas out; it reduces reactions because it sets the frame that it is ok for the other person to give input.

The Sharing Frame:
“I’m just sharing, this is the way I feel about… x”. This frame allows you to share your feelings without the other person needing to take your emotional state personally.

The ‘What if’ Frame:
“I know we have never done this before, but what if we did?” This is a great frame for setting for pushing the boundaries and creative thinking.

There are, of course, frames that you already use and many more you could learn to use. The frames we use in language often reflect our frames of mind, do you have a ‘can do’ frame’? Or do you operate from a ‘can’t do’ frame?

Training yourself to become aware of your frames of mind and frames of speech is a fundamental of self-leadership and using the technology of Neuro Semantics (an evolution of NLP) we can set frames for great relationships, health and even wealth.

Want to know more? For Communication Skills Workshops in Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, India or the Middle East  contact us.

A lack of effective presentation skills (public speaking) will seriously harm your career prospects. Whether you are starting out in a company or are the CEO, you will be judged on your ability to present ideas in way that engage the audience.

But fear not! The ability to present or speak well is within everyone’s grasp. I have coached the most boring of CEO’s and the most timid of junior staff to speak and present with impact.

Firstly, realize that we live in a multi-sensory interactive world and your audience will respond warmly if you remember this. So an effective presentation in the 21st century is NOT just talking AT your audience, nor is it ‘DEATH by POWERPOINT’.

My first rule of effective presentations is “NO Engagement NO Interest.”

This is plainly intuitive, if you have sat through a boring presentation, your interest will first wain then wander. So the question is, “how to get engagement?”

The easiest way to create engagement is to create involvement. Your audience is not a passive receptor of your message; they are a dynamic part of it. Right at the beginning of your presentation, pose a question or use a quick activity that causes the audience to think about and feel the importance of your message.

The question or activity, must ‘pace’ the audiences current reality. If I am presenting to a group that has been told, “You HAVE to be there” I might ask “What would you rather be doing rather than be at this presentation?” Or I might ask the audience to show their partner, using body language, how they feel about an issue related to my presentation topic.

Having created some engagement through involvement we can link this to the subject of the presentation like this, “Realising you think or feel ‘X’ about ‘Y’ let’s talk about ….”

My second rule of presentation skills is, “Confidence + Competence.”

I have seen competent people lack confidence in presenting and confident people lack competence (nothing is as dangerous as a confident fool!).

When coaching people to feel confident to present well, I use the NLP technique of finding a trigger of something you are already confident doing such as boiling an egg, riding a bike etc. and amplifying this feeling of confidence so that you can access this feeling in your mind and body before presenting. With some rehearsal it is possible to feel confident and apply this confidence to the act of presenting. For those with an actual fear of presenting click here. It is a catch 22 that we must feel some confidence to attempt to present well and only when we do this will we gain the competence; and with competence comes confidence!

An effective presenter is also competent in the subject matter of their presentation. Sometimes this just means you are competent to share your perspective on a limited piece of information. My daughter started a playschool drama class when she was just 18 months old. One of the first things they were taught was to confidently and competently respond to the question, “what’s your name?” She is now 3 years old and is competent to speak on a number of topics including, Barbie and the movie ‘Mama Mia’.

If you must present, learn everything you can about the subject and Prepare, Prepare, Prepare. You may only speak about 2% of what you know but your competence will show when you can make the complex simple.

This brings me to my third rule, “Make it Sticky”

People will only remember one or two or three points from your presentation, so plan your presentation so that those 2-3 points will stick with them. Techniques for making a point stick include:

• Repetition – remember kinder garden and repeating your ABC’s over and over.

• Gestures or Actions – get the knowledge from the mind into the body with a powerful physical trigger.

• Visuals or Video – we live in a multimedia world so use powerful graphic or short videos to create a visual link to your sticky points.

• Humor – if you can make them laugh you light up their brain with feel good chemicals (endorphins) and increase retention.

• KISS – keep it super simple is an acronym and acronyms can be great memory triggers.

• Summarise – tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them.

So in Summary, here are my 3 Rules for Effective Presentation Skills

1. No engagement = No interest
2. Confidence + Competence
3. Make it ‘Sticky’

And for those of you who want to know more I am available for coaching and training in how to create powerful and persuasive presentations in Singapore and Australasia and we have specialist trainers on how to handle the media.