Presentation Skills HQ

After initial training and experience in accounting disciplines I moved through a variety of sales marketing and commercial roles with Cadbury Schweppes. I then undertook significant management, PR and marketing responsibilities with Trade Indemnity Australia, Mattel Toys and Farm Pride Foods. For the last 18 years I have been helping companies with their communication strategies and to win and grow business. This was initially with Rogen International and for the last 15 years in my own consultancy. I am currently also a sessional tutor and lecturer at Swinburne University in Melbourne Victoria.

Justin O’Brien – Facilitator and Coach

I am a coach, facilitator and lecturer in communication. My 15 years senior executive experience and 15 years coaching and facilitation experience enables me to help executives and teams increase effectiveness, improve communication skills and learn the art of pitching.

This is achieved through coaching and facilitating them and their teams to ultimately perform at their peak under pressure. At the same time, they win more business, get proposals accepted, become less stressed, have greater clarity for better decisions and are more connected.

Our offering on the following pages can be categorised into

• presentation skills, including presenting complex information
• performance coaching, which includes using bio feedback
• facilitation of either bespoke programs or current topical workshops

Presenting With Confidence – Overcoming Presentation Anxiety

It doesn’t matter which list you look at but the fear of public speaking (Glossophobia) still ranks highly in people’s personal fears. Just behind spiders, snakes, germs and death!

We have been coaching people in presentation skills for the last 16 years and helped nearly everyone to achieve a high degree of comfort. In recent years though we have been able to put a lot more science behind our approach and achieved some outstanding results for people.

The objectives of the program are to:

• Help you to understand why you feel anxious,
• Assist you in finding the tools that work for you to ease the accompanying pressure,
• Give you more confidence when you need it most.

Presentation Delivery – The Art of Presence

“A good presentation squanders the opportunity of being a great presentation” – Nick Morgan Publicwords.com

This is quite often because the good work done on the strategy and presentation design is undone by poor delivery. The presenter’s nerves get in the way and the presenter loses their place or the presenter is either apathetic or over enthusiastic which erodes the intent of the message.

The Art of Presence program teaches how to deliver a presentation on a physical, emotional and logical level. If we are able to ensure that our presentation is delivered on these three levels then we will optimize our chance of success and deliver a great presentation that is also truly authentic.

Advanced Presentation Strategy & Design – Extreme Presentation Method ^tm

A recent study by a pharmaceutical company found that as much as 30% of some employee’s time was being consumed in the creation of Power Point slides. This results in the 40-slide, text-heavy PowerPoint™ presentation which is not very effective under the best of circumstances, let alone when you are trying to communicate complex or controversial information.

Our audiences have become more distracted, demanding and sceptical. Therefore, every presentation must impact them and compel them to act, if we are to retain or gain their confidence.

This program teaches the work of Dr. Andrew Abela, the author of Advanced Presentation by Design, and the Extreme Presentation Method program – a ten step process for designing presentations.

By undertaking the program, you will develop a new mindset and method for developing influential, powerful, elegant and brief presentations that drive your audience to action.

Pitch Consulting – Winning Major Bids

The cost of responding to tenders or submitting proposals can be an expensive exercise, the pressure to win is great and the competition is strong. Therefore, we need to ensure that every dollar spent on an RFT response or proposal generates the necessary return on that investment. One way to do this is to use a pitch methodology that leaves no stone unturned and maximises the chances of success.

Our method enables you to:

• develop pitch presentations based on a clear situational analysis and sound strategies and design principles that drive your audience to action.
• use presentation delivery skills that are authentic and connect with the audience.

Performance Coaching

Stress related absenteeism is costing the Australian economy $14.81 billion a year and directly costing employers $10.11 billion per year. This means that those left to carry the load are placed under immense pressure and run the risk becoming a statistic themselves and burning out.

We live in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world and the pressure on organisations is not going to lessen. Our inability to respond to this world means mediocre performance and poor well-being.

In this program we teach participants how to perform better by achieving physiological and emotional coherence. This in turn equips employees to not only handle job stress but to improve performance

By learning these techniques individuals then; become more alert, have clarity of thought, demonstrate greater intuition, are more creative, and make better decisions under pressure.

Typologies

We use two typologies in our programs:

Strength Deployment Inventory 2.0
Rather than focusing on WHAT we do, the SDI 2.0® helps us understand WHY we behave and HOW we relate to each other. Using Relationship Intelligence (RQ), the SDI 2.0 provides a common language for understanding what’s important.

Relationship building is more than a soft skill, and the SDI 2.0 plays a direct role in helping us relate to others – building our ability to improve dialogue.

With a focus on our Motives, the SDI 2.0 provides a critical connection to a key leadership skill – the “art of influence.” It is easier to communicate with and influence someone when what’s important to them is understood. This insight helps you choose the best approach for engaging people whose thinking and behaviour appear much different from your own.

MSCEIT

The Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test
MSCEIT measures the capacity to reason using feelings, and the capacity of feelings to enhance thought. The authors of MSCEIT define emotional intelligence more specifically as the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so they promote emotional and intellectual growth. MSCEIT is an ability-based scale that measures how well people perform tasks and solve emotional problems as opposed to relying on an individual’s subjective assessment of their perceived emotional skills.

MSCEIT was developed from an intelligence-testing tradition formed by the emerging scientific understanding of emotions and their function and from the first published ability measure specifically intended to measure emotional intelligence, namely Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS).

In general, the abilities measured by MSCEIT are distinct in relation to other personality scales, scales of academic intelligence, and other similar tools. That is, no other test or combination of tests captures what MSCEIT measures. Its wide applicability can provide information of value in corporate, educational, clinical, medical, and research settings.

MSCEIT is versatile in business environments; for instance, it can assist in the process of hiring emotionally intelligent, potentially successful personnel, and by making the employee recruitment and selection process more reliable and efficient. MSCEIT can also be used with current employees to evaluate their ongoing level of functioning and well being, and as a tool for gauging the impact and effectiveness of organizational training.
MSCEIT has the flexibility of being administered individually or to a group. Group administration may be more appropriate if MSCEIT is being used as part of the selection process, as a pre-screening tool or as a team development or leadership tool.

Technologies

Heart Rate Variability

HRV is an important indicator of both physiological resiliency and behavioural flexibility, reflecting the individual’s capacity to adapt effectively to stress and environmental demands.

As a result of technological advancements, HRV analysis in a business context is able to provide us with insights we have never had before. Real time accurate measures of physiological balance can be derived in a non-intrusive way.

We use a pulse sensor ear clip connected to a lap top or PC.
This real time feedback brings a valuable dimension to the program.

For the majority of participants they are able to see for the first time changes in their physiology as a result of undertaking prescribed exercises.