July 2023 – James Osborn

Practice

Practicing helps you to be prepared for what’s coming up. Doing it by yourself is certainly effective, but it’s even better if you enlist some support.

Practicing in the open, with some trusted support, can really help you get on top of the extra value you could provide. It’s all about how what you are doing will land with others, which is super important in a business context.

Getting support in this way is where you take the practice to the next level.

Imagine you are giving a 10 minute presentation. Create your outline, put some slides around it and get your script in place. Work out the big blocks, and then you are good to get some support.

Book an hour to practice in person. Go for a first run through. Ask your supporter “What did you take from the presentation?”. If they hit your key message, then that’s great, jump to refinements. If not, shift up the approach to try and land that core message.

If you are refining, then ask about what felt weak, and what felt strong. Squash the weak parts, edit out the waffle, reframe so the punchy statements hit first.

Make sure that the strong parts come together nicely, that you have a good pace and the story flows.

Then go again, start by giving the slides that you’ve changed the most. Are they landing well with the audience? If not, go again.

Run this loop for the middle 30 minutes of your session.

In the last 15, give the presentation again, and take a fresh round of feedback. It should be loads better. Stronger message, better put together and lands well with your audience.

Preparation is key, practicing in the open takes it up to the next level.

Trust

Trust is a brilliant thing. Trust people to perform and they are much more likely to knock it out of the park. When you are trusted you see a lot fewer of the bad behaviours that can make your working life tougher than it needs to be.

So building up trust is a super power, and accelerating that build-up really compounds the benefits.

It’s simple, but not always easy, to build up trust when you have the power. When you are the boss, you can just ask people to do something and tell them you trust them to achieve it. The bit that comes next, which can be hard, is that you need to let them go away and do the thing. No backseat driving or looming over the shoulder. Instead, figure out a plan to check in at the start, and stick with it.

Then just keep doing that!

On the flip side, where you don’t have the power, it’s about this fundamental statement. “Do what you said you’d do, when you said you’d do it”.

Both parts are key, one without the other is useless for building trust. Doing less or being late will both erode trust, and can do so quickly. It’s harder to build up trust than it is to lose it.

Again, this is simple to say, but might not be easy to do. You both need to have a strong understanding of the “what” and the “when”, and clear agreement on what these look like.

You need to keep doing it. Start with small things, do what you said you’d do, when you said you’d do it. Do it again. And again.

Consistency is key, a bedrock to the formation of trust.

With trust you’ll do more, you will be happier, your org will be happier and you’ll achieve more!