Kristin is pleased and honored to have been interviewed on behalf of NSA by Kelly Isley of the Scottsdale Women’s Business Examiner.
To read entire article click below:
Business Leaders Thrive with the National Speakers Association
To book Kristin to speak or view her products go to http://www.extraordinaryteam.com/
Some good friends of ours, Eddie and Linda Doiron, invited us to their church on Christmas Eve for an hour of music, passion plays and a brief sermon. Pastor Edwin Rideout compared the gifting of presents to the gift of God’s presence…by holding a wrapped box in his hand. Nice prop, Pastor!
He then extended the analogy by asking Ryan, one of the young people in the audience, to join him on stage. As soon as Ryan came up to the front, EVERYONE in the church was engaged. You see, when you ask a member of the audience to join you, you have just asked EVERYONE to join you….the presentation shifts from being a sermon to being a conversation. It’s not scripted. It’s live reality TV. And we all want to see what happens.
The ensuing five minutes was a charming banter back and forth between the Pastor and Ryan. The Pastor’s points were made while asking Ryan specific questions – and Ryan played along – even to the point of dropping on the floor! The whole interaction was funny, yes, but memorable too. And isn’t that the point?
Welcome to the Fall 2009 issue of the Extraordinary Team Newsletter, a quarterly newsletter full of stories, tips and techniques to improve the way your teams work.
Download it here.
In this issue:
- Is it Ewe-Stress or Distress?
- Anchor Your Main Idea
- Gateway Leadership, Inc.
- Practical Team Activities: What’s Your Shoe Style?
- From the Bookshelf: Sticky Wisdom
- Quote of the Quarter: Gaius Petronius
- What’s New with Kristin & Joseph
Please enjoy this newsletter and forward it on to your teammates.
Question: Have you read our Fall newsletter yet?
Find interviews with Small Business experts on the Small Business Advocate show
Michael Podolinsky
I was talking to my fellow professional speaker, Michael Podolinsky, CSP, President of the Professional Speaking and Training Institute about the travesty of speakers using their PowerPoint slides as a handout. He had this to say:
“I’m shocked at how many speakers give their slides out as “handouts”. If the participants have your slides in their hands, why would they look at the screen? Also, where’s the surprise?
To engage participants, your handouts should parallel the slides, not be easy-to-reproduce clones. Handouts should be different enough and interactive so both are worth looking at. They should include some (but not too much) fill-in-the-blank answers and activities. They should have different photos and graphics, space to write and be uncrowded. One big goal is to get participants to take notes. Writing is a clarifier of thinking and aids in the transference of knowledge, both memory recall and from short-term to long-term memory. Giving an audience pages of 6 slides per page (for example) of detailed slides accomplishes none of these important learning points.”
I concur wholeheartedly.
For those who want to tap into the simplicity of using your PowerPoint as a handout, but still create some functionality as Michael describes, you might want to checkout a new product called George! It’s an add-in to PowerPoint that allows you to customize your handout or workbook. It goes way beyond the “handout” print function, creating a title page, an acknowledgements page, table of contents. It transfers your PowerPoint into Word and you can edit them using a variety of different templates and tools. Best feature is that these pages sync with your Powerpoint!!! So when you make a change on your slides, it will make the change in your Word Document. How cool is that?
I was recently interviewed by the NBC affiliate in Phoenix during the National Speakers Association Convention. Check it out!
Just came back from the Halifax Chapter Meeting of the Canadian Association for Professional Speakers (CAPS). Our guest speaker was Jeff Tobe talking about “Coloring Outside the Lines.”
Jeff used an autoresponder (when you have trained the audience to respond with a specific answer) beautifully and absolutely worth mentioning:
First, he asked for permission. He asked the audience to respond with an energetic “ABSOLUTELY” whenever they were in agreement to a question he asked.
Second, he modeled the behavior by asking, “Can you do that?” while leaning forward with the expectation that the audience would respond with the correct answer.
Then, he reinforced the behavior. When he got a strong response, he acknowledged it. When it was rather wimpy (which it usually is the first or second time until the audience “gets it”), he would tease the audience into participating.
It then became “natural” for the audience to listen for and respond to a question with an energetic “Absolutely!”
Do us all a favor….start with something snappy rather than saying “hello” and expecting the audience to chime in with a hearty “hello” back to you. Start off with an observation, a poignant question, a quotation, a startling statistic, an anecdote, a piece of humor….
Anything BUT “Hello” (pause….waiting for a thunderous response, only to be disappointed with the audience). ”I can’t hear you” or “You can do better than that!”. Not only are you telling the audience they don’t measure up to your expectations from the get-go, but you are asking for feedback because YOU need their energy! This whole intro is about YOU….and for a presentation to be engaging, your speech has got to be about THEM.
I pitied the keynote speaker at an awards banquet last night. Not only was he competing with the American Idol final results show, but he was put in a dreadful situation from the get-go:
1) As he started his speech, the salad was being served. How rude! This is just bad timing on the meeting planner’s part. There is no reason why the spinach salad could not have been pre-set on the table for the hungry diners to eat something to absorb the alcohol from the open bar. Or have him speak after dinner! To insult to injury, after he finished his speech (and dinner, complete with dessert had been served during his entire speech), they took a 20 minute break to mingle. This schedule made no sense to me and I was severely disappointed as I came to hear the speaker. (No, I didn’t get an award, either!).
2) Oh, and we couldn’t hear the speaker. He had a laveliere clipped on to his shirt – not the optimal solution, especially since he likes to walk around alot. To keep this from happening, I use a Samson SE50 omnidirectional headset that has four interchangeable connections that match just about any belt pack. But that wasn’t the biggest issue…the room was actually two separate rooms with the dividing wall removed. The acoustics were terrible. Even the sound guy wasn’t able to mix it so that we could hear what he was saying at the back of the room.
The end result? He had to work much harder to engage the audience. Sitting in the back, I missed about 25% of his speech. I’m sure it was good. I just felt sorry for him.
I just posted my quarterly newsletter, The Extraordinary Team online. It’s full of stories, tips and techniques to improve the way your teams work.
Download it now here.
In this issue, you’ll find:
- The Dwight Schrute Effect
- Go Ahead and Smile
- Punch It Up!
- Quote of the Quarter
- What’s New with Kristin & Joseph
- Practical Team Activities: You Are Superb!
- From the Bookshelf: Thank God It’s Monday
- Millennials and the RoCs.
