How Good Are Your Presentation Skills?

Nearly a year ago a 12 year old boy from Kenya by the name of Richard Turere got the attention of the TED team who were scouting for stories near his home town. Richard grew up on a farm that raised cattle and protecting them from lions was a time consuming pastime. He told the TED team how lighting torches didn’t keep the lions away but if he walked the perimeter with a torch they stayed away. TED found his story so compelling that they invited him to talk about it at the noteworthy TED conference. There was only one problem – Richard had zero presentation skills or public speaking experience. With a little coaching from the folks at TED and a little practice, Richard took to the stage at Long Beach, California and gave his talk, being the shy yet charismatic boy that he was. When he finished, the crowd gave him a standing ovation!

What constitutes good presentation skills? If a 12 year old boy from a Kenyan village could give a TED worthy lecture, is it possible that we might be able to pull of a good one ourselves? There is often the misconception that presentations have to be full of flair, bravado and sophistication in order to keep the listeners’ attention. But this is far from the truth. Presentation skills are more than that; it is about speaking from the heart, being genuine, straddling the line of data and narrative with finesse and poise. Obviously in order to give a presentation one must first have something to present. But we must also keep in mind that human beings love stories. And a major part of giving a captivating presentation is to take the audience on a journey – a journey of experience mixed with information and emotion mixed with intellect. A successful presentation can be measured by how differently the audience might see the world when you are done. On short, a good presentation must begin with the subject, why you as the speaker care about it deeply and must end with why the audience must care about it just as much as you do.

 Presentation Skills Training is an important program that companies invest in heavily to equip their employees with the right tools and resources to be able to communicate ideas and agendas confidently and efficiently.

MMM Training Solutions conducts Soft Skills Training, corporate training, soft skills training, cross cultural training and leadership training programs for corporates in India and abroad.

Team Building Lessons From The Hare and The Tortoise

Let us take the age-old story of the story of the Hare and the Tortoise and look at what lessons it has to offer in the 21^st century mantra of ‘enhancing corporate team building’. I am a storyteller and I took some liberties to create situations other than the one that we are familiar with in this story to use analogy to remember some core team building principles.

After the Hare and the Tortoise had run the infamous race, the Hare did some introspection and realised that its overconfidence was the reason for its failure. It challenged the tortoise to another race. This time the Hare was very diligent and easily won the race.

The learning - while it is good to be slow and steady, in organisations it is the fast and steady who are successful.

The story does not end here….

The tortoise did some introspection and realised that it would never be able to win the race in the way it is now designed. So it challenged the hare to a different type of race. The hare agreed. In this race the Hare sped over the Tortoise on land but as the second part of the race it had to cross a river to reach the goal post. The Hare was not able to do so and the Tortoise ended up winning the race.

The learning - we all have our core competencies and we have to create opportunities that help us capitalise our core competencies.

The story does not end here…

The Hare and the Tortoise had become good friends by now and they introspected on ways to create a win-win situation. As per the new plan, the hare carried the tortoise over land and while crossing the river the tortoise carried the Hare on its back. Both the Hare and the Tortoise won the race!

The learning - they realised that though they may have their own competencies, it is the ability to leverage off of various competencies that create powerful teamwork.

"Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much." --Helen Keller

Team Building Training, which focuses on activities to download learning, has been shown to have great impact on the performance of teams. All leaders will uniformly agree that teambuilding gets the greatest attention in business today.

MMM Training Solutions conducts Soft Skills Training, corporate training, soft skills training, cross cultural training and leadership training programs for corporates in India and abroad.

Leadership Lessons From Hanuman

Hanuman is one of the central characters of the Ramayana. Hanuman was known as an ardent follower of Lord Rama. The qualities he displayed reveal that he was a great leader himself. Through the many vicissitudes of life he displayed his leadership qualities with great alacrity.

In the epic, Hanuman was entrusted with the task of travelling to Lanka and finding Sita. The Gods and the Gandharvas who wanted to test his intelligence, courage and integrity put him through a lot of challenging situations. The Ramayana enlists numerous obstacles that Hanuman faced in this journey.One such situation occurred with the serpent Goddess Surasa when Hanuman was flying to Lanka. The Gods approached Surasa, the mother of the Snakes, and asked her to assume the form of a terrible demoness in order to test Hanuman. Surasa agreed and waylaid Hanuman in his journey and informed him that the only way he could reach Lanka was go through her mouth and be expelled on the other side. Hanuman knew that this was impossible as Surasa would close her mouth as soon as he entered and devour him. Hanuman pleaded to with her to let him go; however, she did not agree. Left with no other choice, Hanuman challenged her to open her mouth wide enough to devour him. She started expanding her jaws to the maximum extent possible. In the meantime Hanuman expanded his form too as he had decided to overwhelm her with his massive form. But he realized that his insecurity caused him to rely on his ego. He took a step back and re-examined the situation and changed course! He assumed a tiny form, the size of a thumb and zoomed out at the other end before Surasa had time to close her mouth. His ability to abandon ego and think of the higher good with his quick thinking earned Surasa’s blessing!

Many leadership lessons can be harvested from Indian Mythology. Different heroes had different styles of leadership; however, one thing that stood out is that they were all great personalities who displayed leadership qualities that others desired to emulate.  Leadership training that uses the learning from the lives of people, who have left an undeniable impact on generations, is an excellent way to learn desirable leadership skills.

MMM Training Solutions conducts Soft Skills Training, corporate training, soft skills training, cross cultural training and leadership training programs for corporates in India and abroad.