Tag: #performance

How to create personal impact in 7 days

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I was glancing along my “office” bookshelf earlier and came across a “Teach Yourself in a Week” book on personal impact by Christine Harvey.  It must have been several years since I last read it as I don’t recall it at all. It can help both in the workplace, but also when we consider #bellringing recruitment opportunities, when we are giving talks or presenting information about #bellringing.

The layout gives a bite sized topic for each day for seven days.  This one sets out:

Sunday – conquer non-verbal power

Monday – avoid embarrassment and discrediting yourself

Tuesday – structure your presentation to prove your point masterfully

Wednesday – make your point stick using incidents, analogies and humour

Thursday – grasp 13 ways to grab and hold attention

Friday – Build you fool-proof presentation planning matrix

Saturday – put icing on the cake of professionalism

Rome wasn’t built in a day but apparently we can learn in a week what experts learn in a lifetime. If only it were that simple. I thought I’d give it another read, one day at a time.

The first thing is to learn the three main aspects of impact: words, voice and non-verbal movement and actions. Harvey claims that the most accepted findings on what percentage impact each of these elements has is 7%, 38% and 55% respectively.  Therefore, it doesn’t matter what words you use, more the tone and what else you do that matters.  The five aspects of non-verbal impact are eye contact, stance, walking, gestures and projection of conviction with researchers finding that audiences give speakers 40% less effectiveness rating where there is no eye contact. So Rome wasn’t built in a day but if the Italian art of gesticular communication is anything to go by, this has a greater impact than a sedentary encounter.

The next thing to do is create credibility, personal, expert and reputable source credibility and draw upon your strengths to discuss any topic that comes your way. By providing credible facts or information this helps your listener take notice.

Then we can use emotional and logical proof to help get your point across. Using numbers or statistics, quotes and references give gravitas to your conversation. Using analogies, humour and incidents help create a picture, or a story.  It helps your audience make an emotional connection to your message that will stick with them.

In order to grab and hold attention it’s a good idea to have powerful opening, use questions, get the audience involved, use objects, create suspense and have a powerful close. I always try to do very little using Powerpoint or formal presentation styles, I’d much rather sit round a table with the audience and give them something to create that they can take away with them, especially if I’m teaching rather than presenting.

If you find yourself giving a more formal presentation its worth thinking about your main message, what are you trying to get across, plot the story so it flows.  Time your presentation so as not to go over any allotted time, or ramble on too long. Nothing so dull as someone droning on for longer than say, half an hour, about something you are not familiar with and can’t engage with. I usually find the Q&A session at the end more stressful.  Giving a presentation is easy enough if I’ve written it and know what the topic is, but you can’t foresee the sorts of questions you might be asked.  I will always admit if I don’t know the answer, or draw others in to help respond if possible, or even ask the questioner how they might tackle whatever problem they are enquiring about.

Having skim read this book again, I have refamiliarised myself with a number of useful pointers to employ next time I need to present or run a workshop (which will be quite soon apparently)!

Being in the Zone

I’ve just watched a 2 minute excerpt from a TED talk given by learning expert Eduardo Briceno on what he considers to be the key to high performance. https://www.ted.com/talks/eduardo_briceno_how_to_get_better_at_the_things_you_care_about?utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social&utm_content=2021-3-18-cutdown

We all go through life trying to do the best we can, and equating that to #bellringing, we all turn up at practice night, or Sunday service ringing, or for a wedding or special practice, or quarter or peal attempt or, at the moment virtual practice, with full intention to do the best we can.  To ring the method accurately.  To strike our bell in the right place.  But at a practice night we’re there to try to learn new things as well and extend our repertoire (if we want to).

Briceno offers that sometimes, despite our best intentions we might not always get any better at the things we want to achieve, despite working hard at them.  What he learned from his research is that we should deliberately alternate between two different zones.

Learning Zone: here the goal is to improve.  So we undertake activities that help that improvement.  This could be attending a training day, reading around the subject, watching YouTube videos, asking others for advice, standing behind someone while they ring, asking for feedback and so on. Here, we spend time concentrating on what we haven’t mastered yet, and expect to make mistakes along the way knowing that we will learn from them.

Performance Zone: is where the goal is to do something as best as we can, to execute it.  Where we concentrate on what we already have mastered and try to minimise the mistakes.  This might be ringing for a special event or a peal attempt, or a striking competition.

Briceno suggests that we should be deliberately alternating between the two zones to purposefully build our skills in the learning zone in order to apply them in the performance zone.  Being clear about when we want to be in each of these zones, with what goal, focus and execution in mind helps us better perform and improve. The performance zone maximises our immediate performance, whilst our learning zone maximises our growth and future performance. The more time we spend in the learning zone the more we will improve in the performance zone.

To be able to spend more time in the learning zone we need to believe that we can improve, we must want to improve that particular skill, we must have an idea about what we can do to improve. Just performing the same method over and over again doesn’t necessarily help us improve. Without the process of practice, making mistakes, getting feedback and revision we will tend to stagnate in our current “safe” zone; methods that are familiar and easy, that we won’t feel like we’d be ridiculed for if we go wrong.  My favourite is “if in doubt, ring the Treble”, that way I’ll stand a better change of not going wrong, or mucking it up for everyone else. The trouble with that is, I don’t progress myself.

In our #bellringing context this could be the difference between learning the theory of a new method and practicing it on a practice night on using an ringing simulator, in order to perform it to the best of our ability of a Sunday morning, or during a striking competition, or a quarter peal or peal. I also know that I’m really bad at this too.  Often I might turn up to a practice having not put enough effort into the learning part, and then hash my way through it, or do enough to just get by without making too much of a pigs ear, but I haven’t learned it properly and will immediately forget it because I’ve not gone back over the bits I find difficult, or asked for help.

My latest thing is to try to learn to ring handbells.  I don’t particularly want to ring handbells quarters or peals, but I want to be able to hold my own if I were asked if I could ring something simple.  It’s been nearly 40 years since I learnt to ring a tower bell so going back to the beginning to ring handbells, to unlearn some of the things I’ve learned on tower bells and learn them in a different way, has been, so far, really quite difficult.  However, I must persevere if I am to reach a decent performance zone.  I must make that effort and spend that time in the learning zone, read, watch, listen, practice, make mistakes, get feedback, try again and eventually I will improve.