I’m proud to say that my latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less is about to go into its third printing. The other day, I got a big order from Toastmasters International. You can pick up a copy of Success Tweets at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com. Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com.
I’m in the home stretch of a series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets. Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 103…
Speak from your heart. Show that you care about yourself and the people with whom you are speaking.
Occasionally I see a presentation that is really great. That was the case a while back. I was at a meeting at a very large pharmaceutical company. This company is working hard to adapt to its changing business environment. They are in the midst of massive organizational change.
Nat Ricciardi is a senior leader at this company. He embodies all of the five keys to success that I discuss in my book Straight Talk for Success. He is self confident. He creates positive personal impact. He has been an outstanding performer over his entire 38 year career. He is a dynamic communicator and one of the most interpersonally competent people I know.
That day, Nat was the last person on a very busy agenda. He took the stage and immediately won over a tired audience. He had to stop because he ran into the dinner hour. But he stayed at the venue, eating dinner with the meeting participants. After dinner, he continued with a Q&A session. He didn’t finish until he made sure that he answered every last question.
Nat delivered a dynamic presentation for a variety of reasons. He knew his material. He knew his audience. He was able to present his thoughts in a manner that addressed the audience’s concerns. It helped that he was a senior executive presenting to a group of employees in a company that is in the midst of massive change.
However, there was one thing that put Nat’s presentation over the top. He spoke from his heart.
It was clear to everybody in the audience that Nat not only knew his material, but that he really cared about what he was saying and how what he was saying impacted them. He told personal stories about his life and career. The strength of his talk was his willingness to share his humanity with the audience.
Nat Ricciardi is a great speaker and a dynamic communicator because he always speaks from his heart – whether he is speaking to one person or an audience of several hundred. He is truly genuine. You can’t fake his type of genuineness. When you are in his presence, you know that you are with somebody who cares about what he does, and who cares about the people around him.
And that’s the common sense career success coach point here. If you want to become a dynamic communicator, follow the career advice in Tweet 103 in Success Tweets. “Speak from your heart. Show that you care about yourself and the people with whom you are speaking.” Make sure that the person with whom you are in conversation or the audience to whom you are speaking knows that you care about them as much as you care about what you are discussing or the information you are presenting. Here’s some important career advice. Give people more than a glimpse of you as a person. Let them see who you are. Share your stories; your triumphs and failures, as well as your thoughts and feelings on your topic. Show that you care – about yourself, your material and the people to who you are speaking — and other people will hang on your every word.
That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 103, and the importance of speaking from your heart. What’s yours? Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts. Also, please tell us about the best conversationalist you know or the best presentation you’ve ever seen – and what made it so. As always, thanks for reading – and writing.
Bud
Good Blog! Thanks