Becoming a Connecting Communicator is a Process

Chapter 6 of Maxwell's book was a relief. I love the chapter title: "Connecting is more skill than natural talent". What a relief. In particular, I have a tendency to confuse writing and speaking.

I have had to give two big presentations to the Provost and Deans in the last few months. I found that my first few drafts of the presentations were dry, boring, and overly dependent on details. It took me a lot of practice (and some key feedback in practice) to pare them down to just what was necessary and even to add a little humor (not exactly my forte).

One of the things I plan on studying over the next few months are the skills that make great speakers great. In particular, the use of storytelling and anecdotes to illustrate key points.

4 Components of Connection (p.53)

As I read these four components (connect with people visually, intellectually, emotionally and verbally) I find myself thinking about the concept of credibility.   I came across an article on leadership credibilty and it said that the key ingredient to great leaders is what they called your confidence base.  It's that thing that you are great at.  Sometimes other people recognize this before we ourselves do.  The theory was that confidence base is what gains you credibility and how you transfer that confidence base to make others better or make the organization better is where leadership credibility happens.  It's not just technical competence but it is how you use that technical competenece that matters as well.  You must have both.

So what is your confidence base?

The article provided an example that Bill Gates confidence base was as a programmer.  He was an amazing programmer and he relied on that skill to attract the worlds best programmers and that is how Microsoft took off.

Zodiak Action Plan Update Thread

I'm starting this thread to track all posts related to what you have done with your Zodiak action plan.  Remember, the key is to apply it!  Do something and let us know how it went by posting a comment under this post.  Then we all learn!  I look forward to seeing what we get.