Speech Making Success Tip

Eye contact is a wonderful tool to convey sincerity. It is also useful to help you to stay aware of how the audience is reacting to you. Stay aware and adapt by changing your presentation style and content to keep their attention and interest.

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Publicity Strategy for your organisation

I have taken this strategy from a suggestion made by John Stanley, a conference speaker and retail consultant. He was writing to encourage publicity for libraries, but the idea would work just as well for many organisations. He writes, “An advertiser’s dream is to hit its target audience when they are not distracted by other advertisers and have time to absorb the promotion. In today’s hectic world those situations are rare, hence the high dollars to get product placement adverts on movies. … Café menu holders featuring a promotion are used in other retail sectors. The objective is to educate and promote whilst the person is having a cup of coffee. Coffee shops often have Perspex menu holders and you can use these to promote [your organisation], services and [programmes]. The great thing about these holders is that people read them while having a relaxing cup of coffee … Placing adverts in newspapers is not the way to grow [organisations], we need to be innovators and the opportunities are there.” John Stanley Associates website is http://www.jstanley.com.au
So how can we use this idea? Do you meet in a café? Then could you arrange to have your publicity displayed there? Do you know someone who owns a café who could display for your organisation? Otherwise, what do you have to offer your local café owners to persuade them to display your promotional materials? Think about it. Do you could offer training? What would it cost to advertise in your local café? How much of a year’s training does that amount to? Try offering that to the café owner. Maybe they have a friend or family member who would benefit from your training. Who from your organisation has the skills to offer this trade? If no one in the club will take it on, maybe you have a friend or relative who could negotiate for you … the options are yours.

Communication Success Tip - Listening

In conversation, listening is vital because:
- Constant talking does not contribute to the conversation
- It allows you time to consider what you are going to say next
- It allows you to polish what you are going to say for maximum impact and timing
- It allows you to watch and feel the emotions and tenor of that the others are saying
- Attentive, sincere silence offers sympathy of attention even when you do not agree and encourages confidence and the sense of appreciation that brings out the best in people

Develop your listening skills through evaluation at ITC. Visit a club

Nine Steps of Planning in your Organisation

Even though everyone in your organisation may be fairly aware of what is to be achieved, and what your organisational goals are, the goal-setting, planning process is useful to focus awareness on the aims and processes and to ensure that everyone knows exactly what their roles are.

These steps can also be used in any decision-making situation, or any problem solving session.

Planning, must, however, never stop. It is constantly adapting to new situations.

1. Assess the situation
2. Select objectives and strategies to realize objectives.
3. Develop action plans for entire long-range plan
4. Develop detailed action plans for current year
5. Establish a way to monitor activites and insure feedback (reporting).
6. Develop a budget and implement ways to meet funding requirements.
7. Measure performance; analyze feedback; compare progress with plan.
8. Act on findings: give green light to successful activities, take corrective action when needed.
9. Signoff on completed plans - abandon ones not achieving your objective or when the objective changes (as they do).

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Leadership Success Tip

This week's tip comes from Ron Sargent, CEO of the big office resources firm, Staples. He made a point of being involved in customer service. "Get your hands dirty," he said. "Before you can be a great leader, you need to understand the inner workings of the business and where and how the greatest impact can be made."

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PR The Power of a smile in selling your organisation

A smile adds value to all that you do. It makes you approachable (an opening to talk aboutyour organisation!), and adds value to your conversation (makes you more believable before you start talking about it), and it makes your message about your group far more powerful.

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FINDING YOUR VOICE - LEADERSHIP SUCCESS

In November 2005, Stephen Covey finally released the follow-=up to his Seven habits series. The book is entitled The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, and instructs readers how to "find your voice and inspire others to find theirs." It took much longer than expected to write, and is 50 pages longer than the total number of pages in the previous seven put together.
"Simply, Habit 8 asserts that everyone has an inner longing to seize the day and live a life of contribution," USA Today's Del Jones writes in a recent article about Covey. "It requires heavy lifting, and Covey challenges readers to get there."
We will watch to see if Habit 8 sells as well as "The 7 Habits," which has sold 15 million copies in the 15 years since it was first published.

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Speech Making Success Tip for the Week

If you want to get a message across, people need to be able to hear it, to be able to hear each word. That means articulating every word very clearly. So pay particular attention to beginnings and especially endings. Then there can be no confusion between similar words such as taken and taking, or pass and past.

To practise your public speaking skills in a supportive environment with constructive feedback, visit a club: