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12/04/2020 By David Rigby

Deportment 2020: Know how to ‘talk the talk’ and ‘Zoom the Zoom’

Deportment 2020: Know how to ‘talk the talk’ and ‘Zoom the Zoom’

In these days of COVID-19 you not only have to ‘talk the talk’ and ‘walk the walk’ but you have to appear good on Zoom. Not only do you have to sound good you have to look good too, And not just you – you are most likely to be working and broadcasting from home – so the view of your home must also give the right impression. I notice every one judging what you look like when you have not been able to go to the beauty salon, nail stylist, or hairdresser for weeks and having to do your own cleaning due to lockdown. Tolerance of shady presentation skills won’t be accepted for long either – so brush up those skills too!.

While you are practicing your body posture and setting up the appropriate lighting and soundscape for your broadcast, whether a serious business meeting or a chat with a distant neighbour take a look at the article below I wrote for Al Arabiya News about deportment training for some stars in the 1960’s. And note how much still applies today. Below is one of many of these articles as published in 2015.

walking the walk

Deportment: Know how to ‘talk the talk’ and ‘walk the walk’

It’s now the winter holiday season, and just like in the UK and USA, here in the UAE you see the girls dressed in impossible heels and wearing designers while staggering to various social venues. One difference here is that, in general, they are not freezing to death on the way to their chosen location.

It’s now the winter holiday season, and just like in the UK and USA, here in the UAE you see the girls dressed in impossible heels and wearing designers while staggering to various social venues. One difference here is that, in general, they are not freezing to death on the way to their chosen location.

They may have the designer frocks, but few of them know how to walk elegantly or indeed talk elegantly. There is an old British expression “You can take a girl out of Essex, but you can never take Essex out of the girl.”

This is because they don’t know about Deportment.

Way back in the early 1960s there was a developing record business called Motown. Based out of a house called “Hitsville USA” in Detroit. In those early days one of several vocal groups was called The Supremes. They were often known as the ‘no-hits’ Supremes as at the time every record had flopped.

But like everyone else in the Motown roster, they went to American etiquette instructor and talent agent Miss Maxine Powell to learn about deportment.

And this is what The Supremes learnt 
• Perform in front of the mirror – see how you look
• Sing with a smile – not like you are in pain
• Learn how to sit on a barstool elegantly, walk stairs, get out of cars 
• Always introduce yourself first, then the visitor introduce themselves
• Never see anyone for 20 minutes after a show
• Continue to grow until there is no breath in your body

In England you were taught how to handle a dazzling array of cutlery in case you went to an exclusive dinner. But the main message in all of this that you will know what to do when you meet the Queen of England.

And this is the message.

That group of three lean individuals from low grade subsidised government housing in The Brewster Projects went on to become worldwide stars. 12 number one hits in USA in three years. That was just the start.

And in 1965 they performed at Britain’s prestigious Royal Variety performance and indeed met the Queen of England.

And they knew how to conduct themselves! Years of lessons about deportment both on and off stage meant they knew exactly what to do. As did many other stars in the Motown roster which included Martha & The Vandellas, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder – all megastars in their own right. I first saw Stevie Wonder perform when he was 14.

For those who don’t remember The Supremes you may know their lead singer, Diana Ross. In a recording career spanning almost 50 years she sold over 140 million records and is still performing to great reviews today while in her seventies.

But what distinguished them from the rest? In many cases they were the first black girl groups to break into the largely white supper clubs and TV shows. Sure, they can sing, but they could also put on a good show, deal with the audience and not be scared of anyone.

Why could they do this? Because they had deportment.

In the old days in Britain, the rich girls ‘came out’ (different meaning today!) after going to finishing school. They learnt how to walk in heels with a set of books balanced on their heads. These days you can record yourself, take selfies, and video yourself moving around. So observe and improve – sometimes you can’t see it yourself but a coach can help you.

Just putting someone in a posh frock and high heels doesn’t work. To again quote Margaret Thatcher: “If you have to tell people you are a lady – then you aren’t”.And all this applies in a slightly different way to the guys too!

Both need to both ‘talk the talk’ and ‘walk the walk!’

Learn all the skills before it really matters – and when time comes you can walk into the audition or job interview an unknown and come out a star!

David Rigby is a founding director of Smart Coaching & Training. He is based in Europe as an international keynote speaker, trainer, consultant, and executive coach. He developed a training practice focusing on Behavioural Preference Profiling and Signature Corporate Training suite.

Filed Under: Being Confident, Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Growing your Business, Mindset, Motivation, Personal Development, Presenting and Presentations, You and Your Career

11/04/2020 By Halina Jaroszewska

Becoming the leader you want to be

Becoming the leader you want to be

Expectations of leaders and aspiring leaders in business today have never been higher and the demands on them never been greater.

What are these expectations and demands and how can senior executives get the support they need?

First … there is the sheer volume of work: significant number of tasks to accomplish and vast swathes of information to filter. Emails, phone calls, meetings, travel, conferences, presentations, reports, 24-hour connectivity; it’s not surprising if senior executives become exhausted.

Second … the pace of change and the levels of uncertainty surrounding business decisions have never been higher. Executives who are used to striving for specific, measurable goals may not be so great at handling the ambiguity and fluidity that rapidly changing situations can bring.

Third … where companies used to run on a simple top-down command and control basis, it is now widely recognised that the best businesses are those that harness creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. The most effective leaders are those that participate in, encourage and manage collaborative teams.

Fourth … leaders and aspiring leaders play a crucial role in engagement. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) defines engagement as “feeling positive about your job, as well as being prepared to go the extra mile and do the best of your ability.”

Not surprisingly, engagement is linked to a wide range of positive outcomes. Two important drivers are for people to have opportunities to feed their views upwards and to feel well informed about what is happening in their organization. But a key driver of engagement is for people to think their leaders – especially their manager or line manager – is committed to the organization and cares about them.

Fifth … a major study by Watson Wyatt:Connecting Organisational Communication to Financial Performance found that “a significant improvement in communication effectiveness is associated with a 29.5 per cent increase in market value.” Once again, it’s the leader who needs to be communicating.

So, leaders face a greater work load; a more challenging, fluid and ambiguous business environment than ever before; are key drivers in employee engagement, and their effective communication skills and their ability to harness the creativity and entrepreneurship of their teams is essential if the business is to succeed. It’s not surprising that some leaders and aspiring leaders lose focus or wonder if they are doing a good job.

It’s not surprising that some leaders and aspiring leaders lose focus or wonder if they are doing a good job. In Development Dimensions International’s Global Leadership Forecast 2011 only 38% of the 12,423 senior executives participating in the study reported the level of leadership in their organization as ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’

However, the positive news for leaders and aspiring leaders is that help is available and that companies want to invest in supporting their leaders and aspiring leaders.

The Value of Executive Coaching

A DMB study in connection with the Human Capital Institute on emerging practices in executive coaching suggests that organizations are planning to increase their investment in supporting leaders and aspiring leaders in several key areas. Specifically, by helping capable executives reach higher performance, and in supporting high potential executives. Similarly, coaching is seen as having the greatest impact when it is used to groom high potential executives and help high potential executives achieve higher performance, rather then for remedial purposes.

For those respondents who measured the financial impact of coaching, 77% estimated the ROI on coaching to be at least equal to the investment. Some respondents reported the ROI on coaching to be as high as 500%. An earlier study by the International Professional Management Association found that training plus coaching was four times more effective than training alone.

It will pay dividends for any leader or aspiring leader who wants to fulfill their potential and deliver real benefit to their business to make a solid case for the value of executive coaching. While you are making the case for your organization to invest in executive coaching to support you in challenging times, here are a few hints and tips to keep you on track

  • Think about what is most important to you. Not what you do but how you behave. In a tough business environment staying true to your values will give you a guiding star on which to base decisions and choose priorities.
  • Leadership is about values and behaviour – not about having all the solutions. Establish end goals and empower your team to come up with solutions – this will open up far more opportunities and motivate your team.
  • Keep communicating. Explain your thinking and keep up an ongoing narrative with your team about the progress towards your goals. Remember any good story has ups and downs, so don’t be afraid to admit to adversity.
  • Be consistent. If you set up new initiatives or new ways of doing things – especially if they relate to communication or team empowerment – then keep them going. Show real leadership qualities and stay steady regardless of set-backs.
  • Be decisive. Far more damage is done to businesses by delaying decisions than by taking wrong decisions. If you find yourself unable to take a decision ask what additional information you need to make the decision. If that information is not available then staying true to your values will help make a decision.
  • Remember 80% is good enough. Whatever the task, if its 80% good enough, sign it off and move on. Striving for perfection, or taking on too many tasks because only you can do them well enough is a recipe for bottlenecks, frustration, stress and lack of achievement.
  • Flip negative to positive. When facing a set-back, make a conscious effort to look at the opportunities that a challenging situation presents you with, rather than just the problems. The results may surprise you.
  • Focus on your team rather than yourself. If you focus on supporting your people and enabling them to improve their performance in tough times, you will find you are more likely to reach overall goals and less likely run into self- absorption and lack of focus.
  • Be open to learning. Setting out to learn something new, to expand your knowledge or skills is life-enhancing, confidence-boosting and can have a positive effect on other aspects of your performance. Don’t close down in reaction to adversity; open up.

And finally I have no hesitation in repeating point 1 because it is so important …

  1. Think about what is most important to you. Not what you do but how you behave. In a tough business environment staying true to your values will give you a guiding star on which to base decisions and choose priorities.

Halina Jaroszewska is an Executive Coach, professionally certified by the International Coach Federation. Halina helps leaders and aspiring leaders to turn uncertainty into a powerful tool for change and growth. Her aim is to enable clients to take their success to the next level, switch surviving into thriving, and maximise their potential during challenging times

Filed Under: coaching, Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Growing your Business, leadership, Management, Mentoring, People Development, Personal Development, Training Tagged With: executive coaching, leadership training

04/12/2016 By Isla Baliszewska

Presents and Presence – the Values of Christmas

Presents and Presence – the Values of Christmas

Kevin Dooley - Christmas egg scene wtih Snoopy and Woodstock
If your company was able to give something valuable this Christmas what would it be and to whom?  What present would you be giving, and in that giving what presence would you be conveying?

We live in an age when businesses thrive on expressing the right values.  These values should permeate throughout the business, internally and externally.  Christmas presents an opportunity for companies to reflect their values against a background of the Season of giving, caring and sharing.

This Christmas some major household names have come a cropper by not thinking carefully about where their advertising presence is.  John Lewis, Waitrose, Marks & Spencer have all been hauled over the Christmas coals for advertising through the Daily Mail, Daily Express and the Sun, publications that do not expound the same values as those proclaimed by these scions of British retail.   The clash comes as these newspapers are seen to publish ‘dehumanising’ and ‘demonising’ articles which are directly opposed to the values touted in the advertisers’ Christmas campaigns.

Marks & Spencer includes these words in its mission statement: ‘quality, value, service, innovation and trust’ ;  John Lewis’s principles mention ‘happiness, honesty, loyalty, trust, fairness’ – all the values that are intrinsic in the spirit of Christmas.

Presents at ChristmasThere is a lesson with the advertising hoo-ha, to keep a close eye on your business Presence and on your business Presents.  If our values are the presents we would give our people, our customers, our stakeholders, our community, then we need to be present in the right places.

Let us all therefore consider the following before we offer something to our people, our customers, our ‘others’?

  1.  What are the values represented in our company’s mission?

  2.  What is the effect we intend our business to have on the world? (a Biggie!).

  3.   What is our promise?

  4.   What are our aspirations?

   And knowing all the above…

  5.   What are we giving? What is our real present?

This Christmas, Smart Coaching and Training are giving to our customers the chance to gain a valuable insight into how their business could work better. Our present is a sample C-me profile to show how this can be achieved.  This reflects our presence in the business support landscape as a provider of excellence in people development.

Now you may want to find out more so get in touch  with us and we will help you explore some wonderful possibilities!

Isla Baliszewska 04 December 2016

 

 

Filed Under: Growing your Business, Mindset, Personal Development

23/03/2016 By Isla Baliszewska

How mentoring and coaching supports leaders

How mentoring and coaching supports leaders

Following on our theme of  sharing the success stories of some of those we work with and come across, here is the story from Svitlana Surodina, CEO of Skein, another of  the businesses that connected with Halina under the Growth Voucher scheme.  Skein have just been approved by Crown Commercial Services as an official supplier for UK public sector organisations.

“CEO of SkeinSkein is actively growing with some new world-known clients such as TP-link and University of Geneva and we are going  through multiple client project launches and in addition an investment  process for our own projects.

“Developing leadership skills is an integral part of what I do daily, working with a rather large team right now, I need to make sure I communicate the vision and overall business goals by inspiring my team and generating within them the energy and passion that is necessary to proactively make decisions and execute in operations. These skills are developing constantly and as much as they are acquired organically via daily work, sometimes it is important to gain access to professional mentoring advice to more effectively handle new situations or operate in a fast growth environment.

More and more weight is gained by such skills, such as the ability to support a positive and optimistic environment within the team,and understand their aspirations and moods.

For 2016 I am going to focus on scaling up our own product (advertising analytics system, sAnalytix.com) and take a limited number of client technology projects with particular focus on the potential of postive impact the project has. For example, we are working on a library crowd-science project for University of Geneva.  And we’re very pleased that Skein has been approved as an official Crown Commercial Services supplier.”

Skein

 

 

 

www.skein.co

 

Filed Under: Enterprise & innovation, Growing your Business, leadership, Uncategorized

02/02/2016 By Isla Baliszewska

A personal Leadership Journey

A personal Leadership Journey

AT SCT we like to share the success stories of some of those we work with and come across; we love this story from Lorena Oberg, who Halina connected with under the Growth Voucher scheme.  Lorena is on Channel 4’s Bodyshockers on February 10th.  Here is her leadership journey:

Lorena Oberg laser tattoo removal“My personal road to leadership came from a place that many women are in.  Being told for years that I was “always drawing attention to myself” and that I “only ever did anything so I could get thanks” took me to a place where I was very uncomfortable getting praise and heaven forbid being the spot light.

I had to learn that it was ok to have a camera in my face and to talk about a subject that I excelled at because PEOPLE were interested in what I had to say.  I had to learn that it was ok to have celebrity clients and put them on my website.  It was years before I actually did a section on my website with my celebrity clients because I thought it was “pretentious” to do so.  I “didn’t want to toot my own horn”.

I was able to pin point this and I had media training in order to feel more comfortable in front of a camera.

I was right about ONE thing, even back then.  I thought if my work was good enough, the right people would hear about me and hear they did.  I soon began to be invited to lecture at conferences overseas. Now, I also speak in the UK at very prestigious events such as Professional Beauty.  Public speaking was not the issue for me, it was the getting praise that I had the problem with.  The whole things where people come to tell me they follow my work and ask for my autograph still, freaks me out.

I’m at a place in my journey where I’m happy to take credit for what I have achieved professionally and I have accepted that I’m a leader in my industry…ish…..  Anything I do outside of that, my charity work, I try to do it under the radar.  I don’t like it when people make a fuss over something I’ve done that really….any decent human being would do given the chance.  No one will ever find out about that side of my journey.  I prefer to be behind the scenes, quietly, no fuss, often, not even my children know.

So much of what I do is not about physical beauty but about empowering women that come see me.  There is something that children of abuse have, that sixth sense…that we just know when someone is part of our tribe.  I’ve accepted that I’m a role model to many, and I take that very seriously.  Empowering someone can be as easy as looking at them in the eye and telling them that they don’t need to be there because there is nothing wrong with them.

I’m humbled by what I do and proud that I’m one of a handful that can get real results on stretch marks and removal of permanent makeup and take my responsibility very seriously. ”

Lorena Oberg

Print

 

 

 

www.lorenaoberg.co.uk

Filed Under: Enterprise, Growing your Business, leadership

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