Fire Them Up!

Fire Them Up!  promises to reveal 7 simple secrets to:

1)    Inspire colleagues, customers, and clients.

2)    Sell yourself, your vision, and your values.

3)    Communicate with charisma and confidence.

 

After reading the book, I can truly say that it delivers what it promises.

 

Fire Them Up! is one of those books that makes it hard for the reviewer to write a review and do it justice—every part of the book is extraordinary. However, since I am always looking for ways to improve my presentations, I am going to focus more on “Chapter 4: Paint a Picture—Tell Powerful, Memorable, and Actionable Stories.”

 

Give a Popping Presentation

Did you know that Al Gore’s award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth started out as a PowerPoint presentation? Did you know that a Houston trail lawyer used a simple PowerPoint presentation to convince a jury to award a $253 million settlement against the drug giant Merck? Well, it is true. Thus, don’t underestimate the importance of a well-crafted and well-delivered presentation.

 

In Fire Them UP! Carmine Gallo shares the secrets used by Al Gore, Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton to create powerful and persuasive presentations.

 

In order to understand the elements of a good presentation, Carmine takes us back to the ancient Greeks who were the first to discover and study the incredible power of language to inspire and persuade. “The Greek outline for a persuasive speech…has never been significantly improved upon. It is the chief insight the Greeks have to offer that can still significantly strengthen your presentation today, 2,500 years later.” As Carmine explains, the Greek rhetorical structure was made up of five parts: introduction, narrative, argument, refutation, and conclusion. A phenomenal presentation must contain these five parts.

 

Introduction

 

The introduction needs to make an emotional connection with the audience through stories and observations. In his We’re In It Together presentation, Barack Obama begins with a story about a visit by Robert Kennedy to the Mississippi Delta. During this visit, Robert Kennedy meets a hungry and listless child who has suffered so much that his attempts to talk to the child are futile. He then turns to the reporters traveling with him and asks, “How can a country like this allow it?” It’s a question Obama uses to set the stage for his argument about poverty in America. In addition, the story is told by Obama against the backdrop of Weinland Park in Columbus, Ohio—a city struggling with poverty. It’s an excellent example of an introduction that quickly makes an emotional connection with the audience through stories and observations.

 

The Narrative

 

After introducing the audience to your message through emotional stories and observations, “…you must get to the heart of the matter, whether it involves something you want your listeners to do, something you wish to persuade them of, or something you want to tell them about.”

 

Hillary Clinton’s infamous Telephone Ringing at 3A.M. presentation, does an excellent job of illustrating the effective use of this element in a presentation.  The commercial begins with scenes of children sleeping and a phone ringing. Then, the narrator begins with the narrative of the presentation:

 

“It’s 3AM and your children are safe and asleep. But there is a phone in the White House ringing. Something is happening in the world and your vote will decide who answers that phone. Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military. Someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It’s 3AM and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want to answer the phone?”

 

Hillary’s presentation does a superb job of using the narrative element. It asks its listeners to do something—vote for Hillary. It attempts to persuade the audience that voting for Hillary will keep your children safe at night. Lastly, it tells the audience a little bit about Hillary’s experience working with world leaders and the military.

 

It’s a very compelling message that reinforces Hillary’s claim that she has  more experience and knowledge when it comes to working with international leaders and the military.

 

The Argument

 

Once you have introduction your message and presented the heart of your message, you must present the proof for your thesis, or message. In other words, you have to present facts that support your claim–an argument. We can claim we are the best HR manager in the world, and tell everyone that we are, but until we provide the proof that we are, it is just an opinion. 

 

In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore supports his message with graphs, charts, statistics, and facts. For most presenters, this is probably the hardest part of pulling off an inspirational presentation. Let’s face it, for most of us, numbers, charts, and linear lines are boring. Yet, without facts, you will leave your audience wondering if the claims you are making are really true.

 

Facts can be made entertaining. Al Gore makes the graphs and charts in his presentation entertaining by using a mechanical lift to point to points of the graph where there are increases in the levels of CO2 emissions. His actions garner a bit of laughter from his audience. After presenting the facts, the presenter is now ready to move to the fourth part of a good presentation.

 

The Refutation

Another important element of a good presentation is to address objections and counterarguments, and attack with facts and stories that disprove them. In his, Acceptance Speech at the DNC in Denver, Obama uses the refutation  element so well that most people never realize it. Here are a couple of lines from his speech where he refutes the objections of him not being a viable candidate for President. He says, “I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office.  I don’t fit the typical pedigree, and I haven’t spent my career in the halls of Washington.” He goes on to say, “What the naysayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s about you.” In essence, he knows that he doesn’t fit the typical presidential profile and that’s okay. It isn’t about him, but rather it’s about you (the American people) and the need for change.

 

Later in the speech, he addresses McCain’s comparison to Paris Hilton. He says, “I don’t know what kind of lives John McCain thinks celebrities lead, but this is mine.” In other words, this is Obama’s life and not the life of Paris Hilton. They don’t lead the same life.

 

The Finale

As I was reading Carmine’s explanation of this element of a presentation, I quickly thought about JFK’s Inaugural Address Speech. It’s the speech where he asks, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” It’s a perfect example of what a finale should be. It is powerful, planned, memorized, and memorable. In addition, it makes an appeal for the audience to take action.

 

As I stated at the beginning of this blog, Fire Them Up! , is a difficult book to review, because every word contained in the book is motivational and makes you want to get to work and start using Carmine’s seven simple secrets. It’s written so well that I could write two or three more blogs about it. Thus, you really need to buy Carmine’s book and determine for yourself whether or not it is as good as I am claiming it to be. I guarantee your next presentation will be anything but boring.

 

About Carmine Gallo

Carmine Gallo is the communication’s coach for some of the world’s most admired brands. In addition, he writes the Leadership Communications  column for Businessweek.com. Furthermore, he is an Emmy award-winning journalist for CNN, CBS, CNET, Fox, and Paul Allen’s TechTV.

 

His first book, 10 Simple Secrets of the World’s Greatest Business Communicators, has been translated into more than one dozen languages.

 

If you are interested in contacting Carmine please visit his website.

 

Note: For the sake of space, I didn’t embed the videos highlighted in this post. However, all of them can be viewed on YouTube.

Career Contentment

About the Author 

      In addition to being a coach, speaker and career Human Resources professional, Jeff Garton is an HR innovator who coined the term and developed the concept of career contentment. He is author of the first and only book on this new topic. Jeff’s firm produces one-of-a-kind learning resources and train-the-trainer programs that guide employers through the process of establishing a culture that leverages the increased productivity and financial rewards of a contented workforce. His background prior to starting his business in 2001 includes 23-years inside HR with the Philip Morris Companies.

      I came across Jeff’s book, Careeer Contentment, while looking for something to read on the SHRM website. After reading the overview, I was intrigued and decided that I needed to get a copy of the book and take a closer look regarding Jeff’s notion that everyone can become content in their careers.

      What is career contentment? Jeffrey describes it as the feel-good-feeling you get when “everything in our lives seems to align and both our work and personal life are going so well we feel relaxed, comfortable, and confident about the future.” It is a feeling that must come from within. Interestingly, it doesn’t come from the salary, benefits or other perks provided by our employer. Thus, if you think that finding a job that pays you more will make you more content, you will be disappointed.

      The idea of career contentment was developed based on research in the areas of positive psychology, resilience, self-efficacy, and self-motivation, that were distilled into three principles that employee’s control to enable their own career contentment. They are: 1) choice of work that is meaningful to one’s calling and most meaningful purposes for working; 2) the control of one’s self-reliance, as opposed to remaining dependent on employers to make you satisfied; 3) the control of one’s thoughts and emotions to affect performance enhancing emotions; and 4) reasoning to recognize the agreeable middle ground, and develop a more favorable predisposition to deal with circumstances, rather than being limited to the either/or conditions of job satisfaction.

      What are the benefits of career contentment? According to Jeff, there are three main advantages or benefits, they are 1) career contentment acts like a homing device that provides the emotional link to discovering your true calling and purposes – the closer you get to your calling, the more contentment you feel, and vice versa, and you can experience this independently of what employers do to make you satisfied, dissatisfied, engaged or disengaged; 2) it is the source of an employee’s enduring resilience to deal more effectively with instances of job stress and dissatisfaction. It’s the same principle as your ability to love someone unconditionally, despite their tendencies to frustrate and dissatisfy you; and 3) it is the source of an employee’s self-motivation, improved performance and retention. Contentment enables your mind to focus on what you’re doing as opposed to wasting time and energy complaining.

      The book is divided into two main parts. They are 1) Attracting Meaningful Work, and 2) Choosing to Be Contented with Your Life and Career.  

Attracting meaning work begins by recognizing and building your own sense of career contentment. In other words, what type of work would be meaningful to you? For some of us, we may not know what type of work would be meaningful to us. It’s okay, because Jeffrey’s book provides us with an approach to finding out that he calls the “Four Ps” which contribute to our ability to recognize our contentment. The “Four Ps” are:

1. People-Look for a career where you will work with people who seem to share the same morals, ethics, and values that you do.
2. Place-Seek a workplace that is genuinely stable, safe, and attractive within the community overall.
3. Particulars-Review the whole gamut of the job (e.g. job competencies, expectations, and available resources).
4. Personal-What’s most important about me that makes this the right choice? The reasons should come down to whether you’re pursuing authenticity, passion, emotional maturity, competence, professional image, and balance.

   In Part II: Choosing to Be Contented with Your Life and Career, Jeff explains that most of us confuse contentment with job satisfaction. However, they are not the same. Job satisfaction is usually something we measure in relation to time and talents. In other words, job satisfaction stems from those things we can usually measure. For example, we can measure a job’s income, benefits, training and development and budget and resources. And in most cases, if our career is insufficient in any of these countable items, we usually proclaim job dissatisfaction and see it as “just a job.”

   Conversely, career contentment can’t be measured. It comes from within you. Thus, it is not contingent on other people or material things. In essence, it is defined as our willingness to acknowledge our situation and make the best of it. Yet, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t continue to seek other career options. Career contentment is about loving what is as you work towards what you desire.

      My favorite parts of the whole book are the stories Jeff interjects to illustrate the topic previously discussed and the self-assessments found at the end of the book.

      Now is the perfect time for the HR Practitioner to foray into Jeff’s notion of total job happiness—career contentment. We know, better than anyone else that with the downturn in the economy organizations are scaling back on the amount of pay increases and benefits. Thus, if we are just looking for a job that pays well, we probably aren’t going to find it. As Jeffrey explains in his book, we should be looking for that career which is aligned with our values. If we do not, we will never be happy doing what we do, and we will never reach the blissful state that comes with career contentment.

A Practical Guide to Litigation-Free Management

I recently attended the HR Southwest Conference. I have to say that all four of the sessions I attended were phenomenal. For those of you who did not get the opportunity to attend, I am going to give a brief overview from each session over the next few weeks here on my blog.  

The first session I will be discussing was presented by Michael Mirarchi. Mr. Mirarchi is the founder of the Mirarchi Management Group—a company whose mission is to provide managers with a practical guide to litigation-free management. Mr. Mirarchi is a former defense attorney for Frito-Lay who won every employment-related case that went to trial during the last five years of his eleven-year tenure. Afterwards, he served as the Vice President of Human Resources for UT Southwestern Medical Center.  

Mr. Mirarchi began the session by defining the term “Reset the Clock:” A formal process by which an employer maximizes the effectiveness of its policies and implements changes to them such that policies and the changes are recognized for legal purposes. Thus, if we want to avoid litigation, we must have processes in place that will “reset the clock.”  

Let’s say that an organization has decided that all of customer service associates must score a 90% or better on product-knowledge assessments. In the past, the scores didn’t matter—they just had to take the assessment. Since the standard has now changed, the organization would be required to make sure that this new standard has been communicated to every associate before holding them to this standard. In addition, each associate would have to have been given adequate notice before implementation, the change would have to be reasonable, and the change would have to be presented conspicuously. Once this has been done, they have “reset the clock” and created conditions that should minimize potential litigation.  If any litigation were to follow, they would be entitled to move pre-trial for summary judgment successfully.  

Mr. Mirarchi recommends the following procedure for implementing changes to attendance, performance, or conduct standards:

1)      Meet with employees.

a.      Explain what the change is, why their commitment to it is important and when it is going into effect.

b.     Ask for and answer their questions.

c.      Confirm that they know what they must do to comply with the new standard.

d.      Ask for their commitment to comply with the new standard.      If anyone voices an objection, tell the group: “I’m          available to discuss in private any personal concerns about the new standard.”

e.      State that failure to comply is subject to corrective action.

2)    Document the date and content of the meeting, who conducted it and who attended it.

According to Mr. Mirarchi, following this procedure will validate all new changes to existing policies and procedures implemented in our organizations. In addition, it will help us avoid any liability.  

Mr. Mirarchi concluded the session by illustrating how to address previous unaddressed behavior. This is what he suggested:

1)      Prior to taking any corrective action, have a group meeting.

2)    Tell employees: “We are committed to maintaining a harmonious working environment. As part of our continuing effort to initiate improvements in this regard, I want to discuss with you certain misbehavior. When any of us ___________(identify the misbehavior), our harmonious working environment is disrupted. From this point forward, each one of us must demonstrate a commitment to refrain from such behavior. I know I can count on your cooperation. If, however, someone chooses to ignore their commitment, that act will result in consequences. Irrespective of our past response, from now on such behavior will result in appropriate corrective action.”

3)    If there are any “Free Speech” assertions, respond: “Thanks to the 1^st Amendment, none of us have to worry about being thrown in jail for what we might say at work or anywhere else. It is also good for all of us that his law does not apply to the enforcement of policies designed to maintain a harmonious working environment.”

In summary, Mr. Mirarchi believes that an organization can create a litigation-free environment through the implementation of the ten principles outlined in his training sessions. The implementation starts by training all of the management staff on how to effectively use these principles. Once the management team begins to use these principles, they will be more confident addressing employee issues and holding their employees accountable without fear of litigation. Furthermore, the HR Practitioner will have to spend less time doing investigations and damage control.