Steve Keating

You may learn how to outline a presentation or how to open or close a presentation from reading a book but learning to speak can only come from speaking. If anyone tries to sell you a public speaking class that doesn’t involve speaking be very careful because next they will be trying to sell you ocean front property…in Montana. If you feel the need to apologize for a slide being an “eye chart” then don’t use that slide. You may pull that off once or twice but the list of things that can go wrong when you try to memorize a presentation word for word is so long I can’t mention them all.

Here is one irrefutable fact about leadership: an organization and the bulk of the people who work in it will seldom be more ethical than the organization’s leadership. When key leaders in an organization demonstrate less than ethical behavior it gives permission for the entire organization to behave the same way. Truly ethical leaders know that ethics are not a part time kind of thing. They don’t talk about business ethics or personal ethics, they simply talk and demonstrate ethics at all times.

You most certainly have and it’s likely that you are willing to cut yourself a fair amount of slack for saying or doing whatever. You cut yourself that slack because you realize that you were emotional. You may enter into a discussion with one set of expectations but that doesn’t mean your expectations can’t change as a result of the discussion. Personally I try to remember that I can be wrong about most anything at almost any time.

Great leaders wouldn’t do that because they provide feedback for their people constantly. If you’re a leader who waits for an annual review to give feedback to your people then you’re limiting their potential for success. I recommend you schedule time in your day to provide consistent meaningful feedback in a casual setting. Don’t wait to provide feedback because your people need to know!