SagePresence is a firm that specializes in preparing people for "make or break moments," those times when you need to communicate something you care about and win over your audience. By definition, leading and sponsoring change are "make or break moments" for your change agents and executive sponsors (which together comprise your change team):
- The change team needs to send communications that resonate with their target audience, highlighting what the audience cares about and how the change will make their current world better;
- The change team needs to visibly demonstrate their commitment to (and belief in) the change through their words and actions;
- Executive sponsors need to chair a steering committee of their peers to gain additional executive support for the change;
- The change team needs to recruit employees to join communities of practice; and then
- The change team needs to facilitate the communities of practice to promote the change, exchange ideas, collaborate, and learn from feedback to create a change that employees actually adopt.
Dean Hyers from SagePresence's Winning Presence for Business Presenters is a fantastic book to prepare the members of your change team to discover the passion that drives all of you to want to change the way your corporation operates, as well as the tools to become more confident as you step in front of your peers and start leading.
Everything we are, and everything we become, is the result of how we present. We win our clients and our projects in presentations. We gain our employment through presenting ourselves during an interview. And most likely, those interviews happened because of the way we presented ourselves in networking. People listen to us, believe in us, finance us, follow us, notice us, select us, fall in love with us, agree with us, align with us and buy from us when we present well.
In Winning Presence, Dean emphasizes something we have blogged about, that authenticity and vulnerability (not bravado) are what win the hearts and minds of your employees:
Authenticity is the prime directive in speaking, presenting yourself or going out on a limb to convince anyone to do, share or think what you want them to. It doesn't matter who you are. Powerful presence is authentic, and authenticity is an integration of strength and vulnerability.