Claudia Raab's Blog

I received a phone call from one of my clients yesterday letting me know that she had indeed received an invitation to give a talk at a specific conference she was wanting (and preparing) to speak at for two years!

She was over the moon since speaking at that particular conference is a terrific opportunity for her to showcase her skills and expertise and, at the same time, bring her one step closer to her goal to establish herself as an expert - one reason why she took up coaching with Raab & Raab.  She knew speaking in public helps tremendously to improve your professional image. However,  being a very shy person who used to avoid giving presentations she was determined to overcome her fear of public speaking to achieve her goal.

With the conference planning being in an early stage she also got the chance to select a particular Time Slot for her presentation. Her question: When would be the best time to give her speech?

What an opportunity! Why? Your allocated Time Slot will effect the impact of your speech! If you get to choose it, you're able to improve the effect of your presentation!

In my clients case, we opted for a time slot in the mid-morning session. The reason why? Her presentation requires her to use Power Point, so she will need the room to be darkened. A darkened room is very challenging for your audience right after lunch or dinner since they are conducive to sleep and this is surely the last thing you want as a presenter!

In case you can't request your time slot, here's is some more advice to make an impact with your presentation:

1. Invited to give a breakfast talk? Be brief and succinct! Everybody got up at least two hours earlier and still have a work day ahead of them. Give them a brief, easy to follow and clear presentation and finish in time. If your audience will run late for work or you have wasted their precious morning time they'll blame you forever.
2. Are you the last one to give a presentation? Cater for it by being in particular brief - plan your speech to be shorter than the time slot you were allocated. Why? Very often presentations run behind schedule. Your audience will be most grateful if you let them leave the conference room in time and will positively remember you.

In any case, seize the chance and look for opportunities to speak at a conference! Speaking engagements are invaluable if you want to achieve your career goals!

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"When it comes to singing your own praises in the workplace, I believe the local workforce would benefit from more of it," says Marianne Mood, Chief Operating Officer of adminstrative and business support recruitment specialist Select Appointments in the latest issue of Australia's "Management Today" issue

"Making your value known within your organisation does not need to be blatant, nor communicated across your entire workplace. But will make for a positive work environment and contribute to job security, career progression and show you are willing to take responsibility and ownership for your work," Marianne Mood is quoted in the magazine.

We vehemently agree with Marianne's statement and in our coaching sessions and seminar strongly emphasise and work with our coachees on the importance of promoting yourself, your skills and expertise to relevant people to get noticed. In fact, it was one of the triggers why we created and designed our successful "Get Noticed! Get Promoted!" Coaching sessions.

These sessions have successfully helped many women and men overcoming a certain degree of shyness most of us have when it comes to talk about our virtues and communicate our success to the right people who can positively influence and accelerate our careers resulting in achieving your goals.

Once you know how to do it, promoting yourself is easy and guarantees a great impact on your career. Simply let relevant colleagues and bosses know about your achievements in a subtle but attention getting way to achieve the success you want and deserve!

Not sure how to do it? We are here to help. Simply let us show you how to find the right words, ways and attitude to promote yourself and secure your current or new job. Call 0425 785 143 or email info@raabconsulting.com now!

 

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For some incredibly valueable advice regarding successful public speaking you don't necessarily have to turn to elite educational institutions like Harvard University as we did on Monday. Some lessons are brilliantly taught by skaters - probably half your age if not less - at one of your local Skate Parks just around the corner. For free, by the way.

Never been there? Well, I strongly recommend you go there, sit down and "hang around" for a while. Not only because of the amazing stunts and loopings you can watch that inevitably will take your breath away apart from dangerously making your heart stop for a while.

There's much more to your visit: Watch and listen how these amazingly skilfull kids and teenagers actually get their skills. If you have ever tried to hop on a skateboard and skate away, you'll know how easy it looks but how hard it actually is to gain control over your board and body. Big things don't happen over night. For a stunt pictured in this blog entry weeks of practice are required. That's exactly the point. Watch the kids: What ever figure they want to learn, they pick up their board, hop on and try it again and again and again and again.

Yes, they loose their board, fall over, come down at the wrong angle, twist their feet, get hurt. However, they get back on the board and do try the same thing until it's perfect. Giving up is not an option for them. Instinctively they know:

1. Focus, practice and persistence leads to perfection combined with
2. a healthy portion of risk taking and
3. a lot of encouragement by your friends and coach.

Ingredients that are all equally important if you want to improve your public speaking skills and advance in your career: Focus, practice, persistance, taking the risk to try new techniques, use new words, new body language and a lot of encouragement along the way by your public speaking coach who supports you and keeps you on track, making sure you achieve your goal, deliver that great presentation that will make you stand out and earn your well deserved credits.

We're here to help you learn how to skate brilliantly on the public speaking arena! It's easy simply give us a call on 0425 785 143 or email celine.dubois@raabconsulting.com now!

PS: Want more info about skating? How about checking out Skating in Melbourne and Skate Australia. Have fun!

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Many of us are back at work by now with our brand new diaries filling up quickly with appointments for meetings - external ones with clients or internal ones with colleagues or the board. As we all know, some meetings can be rather difficult:  Never ending, too many contributions that aren't relevant resulting in no tangible outcome and frustrated participants. In a nutshell: a pure waste of time and money. Whether you are chairing a meeting or taking part in it, to guarantee a productive meeting and at the same time earning valuable bonus points from your boss and improve your professional image, make sure you consider before the meeting:

1. its purpose and
2. how you can make valuable contributions to it.

Organising productive meetings is easy if you follow some simple steps:

As a chairperson:

1. Work out a clear and specific purpose for your meeting and clearly expect an outcome. Set up a written agenda with time slots for each topic and have a copy sent to each participant.
2. Be in control of the meeting
3. Set up and inform participants about ground rules for the meetings.
4. Cut contributions short that aren't relevant to the meetings in an appropriate but firm way. Encourage contributions and win-win outcomes.
5. Appreciate contributions and summarise. Keep the time.

As a participant:

1. Know the specific purpose and expected outcome of meeting and contact chairperson if this is not clear enough.
2. Taylor your contributions to your audience and make them relevant for participants and meeting's purpose.
3. Keep to your allocated time slot and the agenda once it is approved.

Easy to do! Charing and participating in meetings is a great way to improve your professional image and get positive attention. Seize the chance and learn to contribute at least once in every meeting! This is most important for your personal and professional success! Call us if you need further information on how to chair or participate in a meeting. We are here to help you! Simply call 0425 785 143 or email celine.dubois@raabconsulting.com now!

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Happy New Year and welcome back to Raab & Raab Performance Consulting in 2009!  Have you made up your resolutions for the New Year? Are you ready for change? Great! We're here to help and support you!

Change is good. However, as we all know, changing is not easy. With 2009 being just 12 days old you might already notice that your New Year's Resolution and best-laid plans for change have slightly started to fall through. Why? Prof. Robert Keagan and Dr. Lisa Lahey of the elite  Harvard Graduate School of Education reveal an answer in their new book "Immunity to change".

The American psychologists and experts in adult learning, who received a significant research grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have studied the phenomena of why people can't change although they're desperate to do so over decades. In a recent interview Prof. Keagan spoke about their findings when working with educational leaders of schools that needed change to achieve better results:

"Despite the best intentions of all parties, we have learned that organizations and individuals have powerful means of "protecting" themselves from the very changes to which they aspire. These "immunities" to change help to hold in place the status quo despite how hard leaders work to improve schools and districts."

What is relevant in the education sector is relevant for any business, government, the public sector or individuals: To address the phenomena of the "Immunities to change". Prof. Keagan's solution: “Instead of regarding these behaviors as obstacles in need of elimination, we take them as unrecognized signals of other, usually unspoken, often unacknowledged, goals or motivations.”

Here's an example: If you're goal is to delegate more and you find yourself  not doingit, the reason could be that you have an "unspoken, unacknowledged goal or motiviation" hindering you: A belief that if you don't get things done, no one else will and the project will end up in a catastrophy. To protect yourself from a bad outcome you subconsciously overthrow your decision to delegate.

Discovering underlying goals that subconsciously are more important to you than your conscious goals and consciously assessing their "real" importance helps you stay on track. Give it a go and remember: We are here to help. We'll help you to achieve your goals and make your New Year's Resolution work. Simply call 0425 785 143 now!

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