The Business Exchange Swindon & Wiltshire Edition 38: Aug/Sept 2018 | Page 17
BUSINESS ADVICE
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
SUCCESSFUL LEADERS
What is crucial for success in business?
What made England’s national football team
manager Gareth Southgate successful? How
does a publisher lead a magazine like The
Business Exchange and her team to a 5-year
milestone success?
Is it money? Skill?
Having a great
idea for new
technology or just
plain luck?
We work
with many
leaders juggling
huge financial
responsibilities
and a large span
of control and
public reputations to manage too - here in
the UK, but also much further afield.
Psychological research and our
experience of assessing and assisting such
senior leaders to further their leadership
development points to the following crucial
characteristics of successful leaders:
Leaders who are effective are able to
inspire their people: intellectually and
emotionally. These leaders are only able
to do this because they are trusted by
their followers. They tend to be credible,
confident and trustworthy. Trust, in short,
only exists if the leader has sufficient
soon the competition unexpectedly appears
from left-field to replace the market with a
service that was until then misunderstood
or underestimated. Leaders and leadership
teams need to constantly reinvent
themselves in order to remain ahead of the
game – just like businesses need to.
Finally, these brilliant leaders create
a culture of reflexivity, of learning – from
failures and successes.
Healthy teams are the product of
deliberate effort to create and maintain
them. Their members complement each
other and their individual strengths and
limitations, linked to their personalities, are
well-known: they are realistically assessed.
Emotional stability, conscientiousness,
openness to new experiences, extroversion,
agreeableness… The level to which these
aspects are found in leaders influences
how they lead. And how successful they are
likely to be.
The need for successful organisations
to have effective leadership is greater than
ever. The work of business psychologists is
essential to enable such leadership.
“Healthy teams are the product of deliberate
effort to create and maintain them”
competence, cares enough, and shows
consistency and courage.
These leaders not only inspire: they focus
the work of the organisation in the right
direction. This relates to such aspects as
discipline, prioritisation, conscientiousness,
and, as Martina Navratilova said: “Always
keeping your eye on the ball”.
These leaders are only successful
because they then also enable their people
do to a good job; their people are given
ownership and resources to perform, also
avoiding micromanagement. Where focus is
about what people need to do, enablement
makes it possible. Closely linked is how
performance and behaviours are managed,
reinforced and rewarded.
Strong leaders are good at
sensemaking: they are able to make
sense of what is happening out there.
This is an aspect of a strategic leadership
mindset. Such leaders are able to detect
that yesterday’s plan will be obsolete when
Contact People Business Psychology Ltd. ®
to get to know more about the leadership
in your organisation and how to make that
leadership even more successful.
www.peoplebusinesspsychology.com
@peepbizpsych
[email protected]
02034 783253
Dread that moment?
Dreading the moment when you get up
to speak? Here’s how to make that
presentation perfect
Presenting and public speaking often go
hand in hand with running a business.
Everyone from SME business owners and
directors, to department heads, to the IT
team may be called upon to deliver a talk.
According to Swindon public speaking
and presentation trainer Chris Dawes,
your level of presenting skills can be the
differentiator between your business over a
competitor’s. But all too often, a talk fails to
hit the mark and the speaker is left feeling
he or she could have done better.
Chris is a professional motorsports
commentator, voice over artist and public
speaker, with a background in sales. His
company, Open Dawes Training, offers CPD
accredited one-to-one and group training.
“Whenever you have to give a talk you
should remember there are three versions,”
says Chris. “There is the talk you intend to
give, the talk you actually give and the talk
that you wish you had given. And we work
with people to make sure there’s not a
fourth: the talk you wish you hadn’t given!
“Our training is comprehensive and
covers everything from preparing and
coping with nerves, to delivery on the day
and post talk analysis. We aren’t trying to
turn our clients into different people, we are
trying to help them be a better version of
themselves – them plus 10% - so that on the
day they deliver a fantastic talk and leave the
audience wanting more.
“But even with a few simple steps,
everybody can make improvements to their
public speaking, whether that is for a formal
presentation or just talking at a meeting.”
Top tips for delivering that
killer presentation
Before the event:
• Prepare but don’t learn lines. Aim to have
some bullet points that you can refer to
(on cards, or a tablet), make sure you
have a really memorable opening, maybe
start with “Once upon a time …” or a fact
or anecdote that makes the audience
sit up and take notice. Never deliver a
speech verbatim.
• Ma ke sure you are familiar with the venue
– what is the lighting like, the acoustics,
do they have the relevant IT?
• Pack carefully. Remember your laptop,
leads, spare leads – belt and braces so
you are prepared for all eventualities.
During your talk:
• Slow down, pause, take deep breaths.
What to you may seem like a long pause
won’t do so to the audience, and this will
also help you to calm your nerves. Keep
your brain one step ahead of your mouth
and not the other way around; if you talk
too fast, that’s when you race on and
forget what you are saying, mid-flow
• Nerves are part and parcel of public
speaking. It is the fight or flight reaction
that kicks in, but use nerves to your
advantage
• Treat it as a conversation not a lecture
and if you forget some bits, or things go
out of order don’t worry: only you will
know, the audience won’t
At the end:
• Provide a recap
• Don’t finish with questions. After a Q&A
bring your audience back up to peak
interest by giving them the one thing you
really want them to remember. Say last
what you want remembered most
• Leave the audience wanting more.
Including finishing ahead of schedule, not
going on for longer.
Chris says: “One tip I give all clients is not
to be too narcissistic. The presentation isn’t
about us, it’s about our audience and what
we want to tell them and what we want
them to learn or take away. If you can think
more about them and less about yourself,
that will go a long way towards helping you
deliver a really good presentation, and you
suddenly realise that you haven’t had time to
think about your own apprehension.”
For help, advice and training in public
speaking get in touch with Chris and his
team at
www.opendawestraining.co.uk
email [email protected]
01793 238259
THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2018
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