The key to giving unprepared talks isn’t having any number of topics ‘stored up’ in your head ready to be rolled out when the occasion demands. The key is getting very familiar with, and really comfortable with, the essential structure of a good short talk, and then practicing threading any topic that you might briefly speak about into that structure.
In a nutshell, the essential talk or presentation consists of:
the introduction – you tell them what you’re going to tell them and how you are going to do this
the talk – you tell them and or show them three main points
the recap – you tell them what you’ve told them
This structure is extremely flexible and allows you to concentrate on the bit in the middle that really matters – the talk – and create it out of only three or four ‘main points’. ‘Making three points’ is a far less scary proposition than ‘giving an unrehearsed speech’.
The 4Mat principal is based on :
Why
What
How
Where else and what if?
In the Thomas Cook suggested outline they follow the following guideline and refer to it as “like reading the News”:
Presentation to Keith and Jonathan @ 11:00 local TCX Hangar Main Boardroom
Check over for VAK and positives
Time 00:00 (What) Good morning Jonathan, good morning Keith. My name is Andrew Hardman and going to talk to you today about HOW anybody can change their behaviour by simply changing their physiology.
(Why/why not) I’m going to share this simple yet very powerful insights from NLP with you for two reasons, firstly because I thought you may be interested in it and secondly because you may see an application for it with CRM.
Time 00:30 (Credibility) Now I was first introduced to it about 20 years ago and I’ve been studying NLP seriously for about 5 years. I’m now qualified as an NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner although I have lots more to learn.
So what is NLP – well it stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming and for the purposes of today’s session it’s the Study of HOW people tick or HOW we make sense of the world around us.
As with all things NLP I encourage you to be sceptical and please don’t take my word for it. Test it out for yourself. Try some of these ideas out and come to your own conclusions. If it works then brilliant, if it doesn’t then bin the idea and stick with what you currently do. The choice is yours. One of the great things that NLP can do for us is to increase our options which is always a good thing.
Please ask questions at the end unless there’s something that you don’t understand and I’ll deal with it right now.
Time 01:30 (How)
I’m going to use an example
Introduce you to the NLP concept and then
Have a look at what happens when we apply these ideas to our example.
Time 02:00 You are stuck in a traffic jam on the way to an airport where you are about to fly to Vancouver. As usual your ticket is non refundable, cheapskate, non transferable and you must catch this flight or lose £650. How do you think you could be behaving guys?
04:00 First Bit – second best remembered.
Imagine a circle with a Mercedes Benz symbol in the middle. Better still take out a piece of paper and draw it out. Now label these three segments with the words:
Thinking
Physiology and
Mood or the way that we feel at that moment
It doesn’t matter which way you orientate these words because what I invite you to consider is that they are all inter-dependent on each other. In other words – change one and the other two will change in some way.
06:00 Middle Bit – least remembered.
So let’s explain these labels in a little more detail.
Thinking – internal processing – map of the world – internal representation – VAK
Mood – by this I mean how you are feeling. Down Confident Excited Nervous Anxious Happy Sad Fearful Envious Loving.
Physiology – basically our movement – or lack of, our breathing rate and depth, pulse rate, posture, gestures, eye focus and gaze, muscle tension, limb positions, facial expressions and the alignment of our spine and head.
Remember that if we change one the others will change in some way.
.
07:00 End Bit mostly remembered.
So what? Well here’s a thing. Our Mood drives our behaviour and not the other way round. So now draw an arrow from your Mood segment and label that Behaviour.
08:00 So back in our car guys how can we change our physiology then?
Breathing – slow down Huna
Head position – Look up
Be aware of our gestures – tense – tapping, gripping, clenched teeth, heart rate
Temperature
Posture – move!
And in turn this will change our thinking and our emotional state and ultimately our behaviour.
09:00 So to summarise NLP offers us a way of changing our behaviour to a more resourceful one by changing our mood. I’ve used the example of driving a car and i’m sure you can think of examples where this approach could be used at TCX whether it’s going through security or dealing with a difficult passenger.
10:00 Thanks to you for your attention and do you have any questions?
Currently reading this edition of Rapport. Youu can get a “lite” version free of charge from the following address: http://issuu.com/rapportmag
INTRODUCING NLP 16
I like the idea at the bottom of the article paragraph 6. Personal debrief and a summing up of the session by asking:
So how much more have you learnt today?
What else do you now know about yourself?
How will this knowledge help you to move forward?
What might you have to be cautious about now?
What is now possible?
I think that leaving some time at the end of a session will help to re-emphasise the benefits from the time spent together. It will also draw a nice end to the proceedings with a positive message and stuff to think about moving forward.
