Category: Everything else

The NUS Workshop: Thrill Your Audience with That Killer Presentation

I was at my alma mater, NUS i.e. National University of Singapore last wednesday for a workshop on ‘Killer Presentations’ organized by the NUS Career Centre. We had a good response (60 out of the 100 registrants showed up which fits with the usual 60% response expectation I generally have with all free workshops).
As for the content itself, the workshop’s focus was purely on 1 thing – The ‘Approach‘ to a ‘Killer’ Presentation. And we focused on the approach by working on our own Self Introductions. The idea was that if you learnt how to approach your own self introduction at the end of the 90 minutes and make it a ‘killer’ self introduction, you could do the same with any presentation!
Slides and Video:
(This is an edited version of the slides – they would hopefully provide a snapshot for those who are interested in the topic and help all the attendees as well.)
In addition, we were well organized enough to actually have videos of the event as well. These are now on Youtube. Click here to go to the video.
Content available Online:
2 of our break outs revolved around content from 2 great videos online. They were
1. BNET’s analysis on ‘How to Present like Steve Jobs’ (Click Here)
2. Simon Sinek’s TEDx talk on ‘How Great Leaders Inspire Action’ (Click Here)
Reception:
Overall, the workshop was well received with an average rating of 8.4/10 – which I take as being in the ‘Very Good’ zone. There was lot of good feedback about the content and the style and it did feel like everyone benefited. I am very glad about that.
My Learnings:
As always, quite a few learning points –
– People learn most when you let them take action. They key here is to create an environment where they feel encouraged to take shots. We had 10 brave souls take a shot at their self introductions in front of the group. And aside from the fact that they gave it their best, they probably took LOTS away from the experience as well!
– I am glad this was a ‘workshop’. Things i.e. ‘work’ got done. It was nice to go through the whole action and debrief process with everyone. Reinforced the importance of this iterative process to me.
– Interestingly, the biggest gripe from the participants was that the air conditioning was too cold (~ Half the group!). A big one for me – monitoring the environment is key.
– We didn’t take photos! We were so focused on putting a video together that we forgot about photos. And we thought we were well prepared.. :)
– The principle of (Preparation)^3 -> Action -> (Follow Up)^2 holds true in these things. The workshop took a fair amount of preparation and follow up. The easiest part, as always, was the stage performance i.e. the Action. The other 2 are always underestimated..
– Understanding yourself helps. In my case, as driven and excited as I was to facilitate this (it IS a pet topic!), I was even more excited to work with an old teammate who was keen to learn how to get workshops done. So, I requested him to join.. and it was a win-win there.
And this very talented young man, EB (see his sketching and book learning websites) was an important reason the workshop went well – not only because he helped out with the back end but also because he gave me that extra bit of drive.
– You never get anywhere alone. Special Thanks to friends – Abishek, Shweta and Nishanth for helping on and before the day.
All in all, it was a fun experience. I learnt a lot from it. Due thanks to Allan Seow from the NUS Career Centre for making it happen.
Note to the Participants:
Thank you so much for making it! It was a lot of fun and I am hoping you learnt something practical that you have already begun to apply in your lives.
Do leave any additional comments you might have and/or any learnings. Looking forward to staying in touch!

Gifting Books

During my cash-crunched university years, ‘gifting’ was an alien concept for all practical purposes. It was not until my last year that I realized how big a difference giving gifts makes.
The difficulty in the early days was to find a suitable gifts. I did a bit of experimentation – clothes, hobby equipment (eg: paint brushes, pencils for an artist friend) but eventually, I have settled down on books as a rule. The biggest motivation here is that this is a gift that has a shot at ‘going the distance’ and hopefully making a meaningful difference in their lives. When I write my customary 1st page note wishing friends a ‘Happy Birthday’, I hope they will rediscover the book 30 years later and go down memory lane..
It’s a dreamers wish.. but hey, that’s why we call it a ‘wish’.
This doesn’t work as well for my ‘auditary’ friends to whom I gift audio books but then again, I hope that they will remember the books many years later as it would, hopefully, have changed their life in some ways.
And, on this note, I am reminded of the quote from Robin Sharma (paraphrased)
‘Keep reading for there will come a book that will change your life.. and you don’t know which one that is’

Change Your Questions, Change Your Life

This book claims to be a ‘word-of-mouth’ bestseller.
I can see why. Since buying the book myself 2 weeks ago, I have gifted 7 copies to friends and intend to gift a few more.
2 others have also bought the book thanks to my insistence.
And I have never done this before.

What do I love about the book? It’s depth and inherent simplicity. I still don’t rate it above my bible – ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ but I would definitely recommend this book to more people because it covers a simple concept in great depth.. with astounding simplicity.

This book is the source of the Choice Map, which deserves a special post in itself.
This book comes highly recommended.

On ‘Even a Penny Will Help’

This week’s learning draws inspiration from ‘Influence’ by Robert Cialdini, Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin.

2 test groups of people were asked to donate to a Cancer cause.

The 1st group was asked – ‘Would you be able to help by giving a donation?’

While the 2nd was asked – ‘Would you be able to help by giving a donation? Even a penny with help.’

They found that this small disc in copper and zinc (i.e. the penny) was worth its weight in persuasive gold! People in the ‘Even a penny will help’ were almost twice as likely to donate to the cause – 50% vs 28.6%.

But, what about donation size? Again, the research team were amazed – there was NO difference in the average donation per contributor.

Small changes to our sentence formation make huge difference in determining our persuasive power

3 Applications that came to mind –

‘Even a minute will help’ – To a member of senior management with whom we want a meeting

‘Even a brief initial phone call will help’ – To a client who doesn’t seem to have the time

‘Even a penny will help’ – If we are indeed collecting donations!

Here’s to trying ‘Even a penny will help‘ this week!

The ‘Sent from my iPhone’ Thing

Smartphones are taking over the world and we see more emails with the familiar ‘Sent from my iPhone’ signature.
Lifehacker has a good article on Email Annoyances that is worth a read.
For those who would like the executive summary, one best practice might be to have a line like
‘Sent from my mobile. Please excuse the brevity, spelling and punctuation.’


I use ‘Sent from Handheld. Please ignore any typos’ myself.

Build Your Own Board of Directors

I’ve said this many a time on this blog. It sometime helps to think of ourselves as a venture – ‘Me Inc’. We are the CEO’s and the Chief Investors in this venture. It is our responsibility to make sure this venture is successful and happy.
Just like any real world company, it is vital we have our ‘Board of Directors’. Typically, this board consists of respected people who would like to see this venture be successful. The more committed this board of directors are to the venture’s success, the better the venture’s strategic decisions are.
In our own lives, this ‘Board of Directors’ is a set of respected mentors to whom we go for advice.
Over the years, as I have come to realize that ‘The World is My Family’, I’ve had more help than I could have imagined from my own ‘Board of Directors’. There have been few who have stayed with me, some who have come and left but this group’s care, love and belief in me have constantly left me amazed.
While I will write about the difficulties of engaging mentors some other time, I think the simple idea here is to find a mentor/mentors if you don’t have one. And if you don’t know where to start from, try and find people a couple of years older who you would like to emulate/be like and then reach out to them and try and keep them engaged with what’s happening in your life.
And if you are nervous about reaching out, do keep in mind that there is 1 thing that will probably go your way – if those you are reaching out to are indeed doing well, then they probably haven’t gotten there alone. So, you have every chance they will atleast understand where you are coming from and be of help.
Universities/schools of education encourage ‘independence’ in their bid to get us ‘standing on our own feet.’ The issue is that the fact remains that in the ‘real world’, nobody gets to where they are, alone. We need all the support we can get. And just like it is a CEO’s responsibility to ensure he has a board he can rely on, it is our duty to do so in our lives as well!

Keeping Perspective

It often amazes me as to how we all live in worlds of our own and how we are kept so incredibly busy in them.
I am always amazed by the idea that every person walking on the street has a story of his/her own complete with drama, hopes, fears and a mixture of emotions.
And hence, the simple idea that perspective is the most valuable commodity on the planet is a powerful one. For we can get so very entrenched in our own worlds that we often lose sense of what’s on the outside.
Today was one of those days when I felt humbled after a long conversation. It wasn’t that I was feeling particularly ‘high’ but I guess the act of looking ahead at the many challenges that lie ahead made me reflect on the past, and look ahead at the same time with the sort of perspective that doesn’t allow for bullish confidence nor fear.
Some might call it ‘inner peace’ but to me, it was just an act of keeping perspective. It helps greatly to meet with people outside our immediate circle, often even people who are way above our league in intelligence, achievement, age etc (if we can manage to find some time) because it always helps give a different perspective. And that is always useful.