John Mattone

Keynote Speaker on Leadership, Talent & Culture: John Mattone

How to Prepare Yourself for Leadership Opportunities

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Maybe you’re not at the point in your career where you’re ready for a top-level leadership position, but that’s fine. Most exceptional leaders started out somewhere other than at the top.

The things you do now as a professional can have a profound bearing on whether you have opportunities to lead, and how well you do so when you seize those opportunities. Whatever your level on the corporate ladder, there are several things you can start doing right now that will help you prepare yourself for leadership. Here are some of the most powerful ones.

Know What Being a Good Follower Means

Thinking of yourself as a “leader in training” rather than a follower is a good start. Whatever your position, you can develop leadership skills, even if no one reports to you. You can do so by setting high standards and demonstrating ethical excellence. You can also do so by showing perseverance when faced with challenges. Take the initiative where you can, even if it’s something small, like showing your team leader a more efficient way of completing a process. Show through your actions that you are committed to the team’s mission.

Continually Work on Problem-Solving Skills

Important problem-solving skills include delegating effectively and appropriately, and handling conflicts in constructive ways. Your problem-solving “tool kit” will be invaluable to you as you grow into new leadership opportunities and challenges. When you’re offered personal development or continuing education training, you should take it if at all possible. And whether or not your profession requires re-certification or continuing education, you should take it upon yourself to work on your skill set regularly, because change is inevitable in any industry.

Listen to Others and Ask for Their Feedback

Put down the phone, turn away from the monitor screen, and really listen to people. If it’s important and you want to be certain you understand them, try paraphrasing back to them what they said. Look people in the eye and show that you are paying attention. Even if you are busy, taking those extra couple of seconds will help ensure you understand what they’re saying so there will be fewer misunderstandings. And don’t be afraid to ask for their feedback, and listen to what they say (rather than what you hope they’ll say).

Excellence in Leadership

Great listening skills are mandatory for excellence in leadership.

Be Accountable to Yourself and Others

Being accountable is a way of being and is made up of countless small actions done consistently over time. You start by being accountable to yourself, in doing things like getting up on time, making sure you understand work tasks, improving your skills, and asking for help when you need to. Being accountable to others means doing what you say you will. Your accountability is indispensable for building trust with others, and being an effective leader is impossible without trust.

Learn from Failure

Sometimes you’ll get things wrong. Even the most world-renowned leaders have made mistakes – sometimes huge, glaring blunders. But what makes these leaders great is that they learn from failure and keep moving forward. Learning from failure may require you to develop a thicker skin, so you can take constructive criticism effectively. Nobody likes admitting failure or cleaning up the mess and getting back on track, but if you are to have a future as a leader, that’s what you have to do.

Any good executive coach will tell you that the leaders who show the most promise are those who have worked consistently and long term on their skills, their accountability, and their resiliency. My executive coaching career has had me work with some of the top leaders on the planet, and from them I have learned that leadership starts long before the big promotion or being named CEO. Wherever you are in your career, you have the opportunity to build the skills you need to help you become the leader you want to become.

Is That Person Ready to Be a Leader? How to Tell

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Having great leadership in place is, of course, indispensable to operating a successful organization. But equally as important is being able to recognize emerging talent and envision a possible leadership role for these leadership-oriented people in the organization.

Leadership Positions

There are a few key characteristics you can see in people who are ready to assume leadership positions.

Raw talent is necessary for successful leadership, but it isn’t enough. There’s such a thing as readiness to lead, and current leaders and decisionmakers need to know how to recognize it. Promoting someone prematurely (even if they show immense promise) is like picking non-ripe fruit and expecting it to improve dinner. It may be beautiful and promise good things, but its time has not yet come.

Leaders in the making can benefit from executive coaching, but time alone will dictate when an emerging leader is really ready to lead. Here are some ways you can tell if someone who shows promise is ready to be a leader.

Do They Demonstrate Integrity?

If there is a single most important quality that demonstrates someone is ready for leadership, it is integrity. People with integrity are “whole” in the sense that they understand themselves, know their strengths, know their weaknesses, and aren’t ashamed to admit they’re far from perfect. Integrity is largely about self-honesty, and if someone can’t be honest with themselves, how can anyone expect them to be honest with everyone else?

Integrity does not mean that a person has reached the pinnacle of accomplishment, only that they know who they are and what they’re about, and they don’t mentally view themselves with a distorted mirror. Without integrity, the other characteristics of great leaders can’t deliver.

Do They Encourage and Embrace Learning and Curiosity?

Not only should leaders encourage their team members and direct reports to continue to learn and grow mentally, spiritually, and intellectually, they should strive to do the same for themselves. Constancy of underlying principles is important, but so is the realization that change is inevitable, and there is always something to learn or improve at. If a purported leader thinks they have reached the summit and no longer need to reach beyond their grasp, they’re not good for long-term organizational success.

Leaders Embrace Learning

Leaders embrace learning and encourage it in others. 

Do They Already Function as a Manager for All Intents and Purposes?

Have you ever had a department grow rapidly and then watch someone emerge from the ranks and take it upon themselves to lead even without a promotion or change in job title? These people can make outstanding leaders because they understand that while “leadership” as a concept is important, it is the verb from of the word (“to lead”) that is where results happen or don’t happen. A person who functions as a well-liked manager when they see that management and leadership are necessary is a person who is likelier to be ready for the job title to match.

Do They Volunteer for Tough Jobs, or Jobs Nobody Wants?

Of course everyone is going to volunteer for the project that involves traveling to Hawaii or working with a well-known person. But what about the person who is willing to take on the jobs that are necessary, but not glamorous? The people who are at the top of their competency can work magic in a wide range of circumstances. A gifted pianist can make wonderful music with a neglected, dusty piano stored in a back room, just like a top soccer player can set up a great game on a vacant lot with a couple of traffic cones marking the goals.

Look for the people who are willing to get in there and take the jobs no one else will take because they’re complicated, potentially boring, or promise no glory. These are the people who know how to make the most of a situation, and it’s good to have them as leaders.

A CEO coach can only do so much with someone who got the job before they were ready. And while an executive coach can work with just about anyone and get results, true leadership must be ready to come into its own before the real leadership magic can happen.

How to Recognize Poor Leadership Early and Avoid the Fallout

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Other than full-scale mutiny, few things are worse for an organization than bad leadership. A wrong-headed or tone-deaf CEO can cause problems that cascade throughout a business, causing lasting or permanent damage.

Bad Leadership Blame

Bad leadership blames, shirks responsibility, and ruins the morale of an organization or team.

As with most organizational sicknesses, with poor leadership, prevention is better than a cure. The best way to prevent a megalomaniac or otherwise ineffective leader from wreaking havoc is to keep that person out of top leadership positions in the first place. Unfortunately, there are times when a leader doesn’t show their true colors until they’re in the corner office, and the problem is harder to solve when that happens. Here is what decision-makers should know in regard to recognizing signs of poor leadership and addressing them before they can cause problems.

Consequences of Unchecked Poor Leadership

Bad leadership leads to bad team performance. This may not be evident at first, because great teams can – for a while at least – make up for terrible leadership. Eventually, however, even the best team grows weary of doing their best under bad leadership and performance suffers.

Employee development also suffers under bad leadership. Bad leadership at the top has the effect of putting a lot of lower-level leadership potential on ice. It’s hard to gain the motivation for self-improvement when morale is squashed, and the work environment is negative. Toxic corporate culture can spread more rapidly than many people think.

Finally, there is the hard dollar cost associated with removing a toxic leader. Turnover is expensive wherever it occurs in the organization chart, but changes of top leadership are especially expensive. Not only are such changes expensive in terms of dollars, they’re expensive in terms of stalled potential and organizational recovery time under a new (and presumably more effective) leader.

What’s Behind Most Cases of Bad Leadership

Bad leadership is hardly ever the result of installing someone who is downright evil in a position of power where they can exercise their nefarious tendencies without limit. For the most part, poor leadership is about immaturity. Effective leaders must be selfless, hard-working, and clear-headed, and immaturity undermines all these character traits.

Bad Leadership by Immaturity

Immaturity is almost always behind bad leadership.

Business challenges can be difficult for mature and effective leaders too. But the mature leader knows which risks are worth taking, when long hours are necessary, and when they have to make difficult decisions. Immaturity is almost always behind leadership that won’t take risks (or that takes unreasonable risks), leadership that is unwilling to put in the hard work necessary to overcome challenges, and leadership that avoids making difficult decisions.

How Executive Coaching Can Prevent Leadership Problems

When an organization names a new C-level executive, there are no guarantees that the new leader will be effective. There is always some level of risk in the appointment of a new top-level leader. However, risks – and in particular, risks related to immaturity – can be mitigated through the use of executive and leadership coaching with people newly appointed to top leadership positions.

This is one reason so many organizations invest in executive and leadership coaching when they hire a new CEO or promote a manager into top leadership. This isn’t beginner’s coaching but coaching that meets a leader where they are and makes an actionable plan for measurable leadership development.

Effective executive coaching begins with extensive assessment of the client’s character strengths, areas of weaknesses, and how the client is perceived by others in the organization. Only then can the coach and client together create a custom-tailored plan for leadership development. The coach-client relationship creates effective fortification against letting immaturity take over, because it gets results both short- and long-term, motivating the client toward continual improvement.

My years of experience as an executive leadership coach have taught me that today’s leaders have no choice but to be diligent and passionate about self-development and generating loyalty among the people they have been chosen to lead. It requires attention to inner-core character and outer-core behaviors, as well as attention to goals and the steps that lead to accomplishment of them. Executive coaching can prevent many of the problems of poor leadership and is a worthwhile investment that pays off.

Can Business Speakers Make a Real, Lasting Impact on a Business?

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Business speakers are capable of leaving an audience changed in some fundamental way from how they were before the presentation. That said, they’re not mages, and they’re not miracle workers.

Best Business Speaker Magic

You can’t expect even the best speaker to miraculously fix an organization that has major problems.

Even the most accomplished business speakers can’t singlehandedly turn around a faltering organization. If the people are burned out, tired of being led on by incompetent management, or are experiencing the throes of economic problems or other disasters, you can’t expect to bring in a keynote speaker and have everything be better afterward.

But if your expectations make sense, and you use business speakers along with smart planning and strategy executed under strong leadership, those business speakers can make an impact that lasts, helping catalyze real change and helping team members find the spark of motivation that will help them persevere.

Sometimes a Different Point of View Makes All the Difference

Sometimes businesses develop such an insular point of view that it’s impossible for the rank and file to see any other way of doing things. This can become problematic when the way they do things leads to diminishing results or competitors moving ahead. Business speakers with a radically different, yet applicable point of view can often be the thing that shakes people out of their complacency.

Seeing someone they wouldn’t normally see bring their own experiences and point of view to the stage can help pry people out of mental ruts they have dug themselves into – ruts that don’t allow for much in the way of inspiration or motivation. Employees who are jaded with the status quo and skeptical about a keynote speaker may find themselves unexpectedly turning the other cheek – and looking in a new direction.

Inspiration without Making Audience Members Feel Like Failures

Choosing business speakers should also be tempered by realism. Yes, it could be inspiring for your workforce to learn from the source what it’s like to be an astronaut, scale Everest, or execute a miraculous mission behind enemy lines. But there are situations where such a monumentally inspiring person unwittingly makes the audience feel like a bunch of unmotivated slackers who will never amount to anything.

If you’re struggling with an unmotivated workforce, or are in a troubled industry, you’re better off choosing a keynote speaker or business speaker who is inspirational, yet relatable. Someone who has had their share of disappointments and failures, yet who has persisted and overcome similar obstacles to the ones the audience members face.

Effective Speaker

An effective speaker is one who reaches people where they are and offers a new point of view.

Other Things Businesses Must Do for Positive Transformation

Business speakers can make the greatest lasting impact when the audience doesn’t just leave the venue and go right back to the way things were. Fundamental organizational transformation is also necessary. Be assured: organizational change will happen whether you want it to or not, and for it to be positive, leaders must be willing to work to make change positive.

Primarily, this means they must commit themselves to clear, regular, constructive communication throughout the organization. They must encourage the frontline team members, learn how to delegate well and trust their best team members. They should not squash social interaction among team members, but realize that social interaction is an emollient that helps all the moving parts of the operation keep from getting gummed up.

Finally, leaders must ensure that employees have access to the training and development opportunities they need to excel and advance. No one wants to feel like they’re stuck in a dead-end job with no opportunities for something better or more challenging.

Business speakers can and do make a lasting impact on businesses and other organizations. Most people who have been in a career for any length of time can remember at least one or two business speakers who made a lasting impact on them. They will have the most lasting and positive effect if they are chosen wisely, and if they are only part of an overall organizational commitment to positive culture transformation. In these cases, the results can be astounding.

In my career as a keynote speaker, executive coach, and cultural transformation consultant, I have seen business transformation from multiple angles. I’ve learned that no person can magically initiate transformation without commitment from others as well as outstanding leadership. If your organization is on the threshold of transformation and you’re determined that it will be a positive transformation, I encourage you to check out my speaking and training services. 

Executive Coaching and Transformation of Corporate Culture

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Corporate culture isn’t something you can easily pin down in words or pictures, but it most certainly exists. Furthermore, it’s always changing regardless of what’s happening at the executive level, because the world is always changing.

Cultural Change

You can no more stop cultural change than you can stop the earth from rotating.

Some industries and some companies evolve more rapidly than others, but unless a company has access to an army of clones, they simply cannot avoid cultural change. The question is, can the company make a difference in how cultural change occurs, and what the results of it are? The answer is a definitive yes!

In some cases, however, orchestrating positive cultural change requires development of certain leadership skills among top executives, and executive coaching can be the key to empowering leaders to help bring about the type of positive cultural change they envision.

“Top-Down” and “Bottom-Up” Changes Always Affect Each Other

Cultural change from the top down will cause changes among the frontline workers, and ultimately, changes among frontline workers cause changes in leaders – whether that ends up being leaders who change how they lead, or whether that ends up being leaders who are replaced with new leaders.

When top leadership tries to “force” cultural change, they’ll definitely get it. But if they go about it wrong, they won’t get the changes they want. Top-down cultural change that is forced may result in temporary adaptation by the rank and file employee base, but temporary improvements may be short-lived. Tone deaf leadership eventually creates frontline employees who either “phone it in,” doing no more than what they have to do to keep their paycheck, or they seek better corporate culture elsewhere.

Transparency Encourages Growth while Opacity Stunts Growth

If you construct a greenhouse for starting plants for a garden, it needs to be transparent, so sunlight can reach the plants and they can grow. An opaque “greenhouse” will only produce struggling seedlings without the precise type of artificial light.

Likewise, when executive leadership demonstrates transparency about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, they’re far more likely to be received positively than if leadership decisions go on behind closed doors, cut off from the people they are supposed to be leading.

Executive coaches often find themselves working with clients who need to demonstrate more transparency and trust in order to lead better. It doesn’t mean giving in wholesale to every demand from team members, but it does mean keeping people informed of decisions and of the reasoning behind those decisions.

Communication Skills

Leadership must demonstrate their humanity and their communication skills with their teams. 

How Executive Coaching Can Promote Positive Corporate Culture Change

Executive coaching is designed to shape better, more effective leaders. What that means specifically varies from organization to organization and from one leader to another within an organization. And after all, isn’t the ultimate goal of better leadership better organizational performance? The executive coach who does what they were hired to do always takes the time to gain a 360-degree view of the client, and to learn what the client’s major concerns are before mapping out an executive coaching strategy.

Executives who have difficulty really listening to others can work with an executive coach to learn to be more open to the input of others. And executives who are so attached to the input of others that it renders them indecisive can also benefit from executive coaching.

When there is a major disconnect between top leadership and the people who operate the company on a day-to-day basis, problems follow. Sometimes those problems can be catastrophic. Executive leadership coaching is designed to help leaders be more effective, and that includes learning to face what is happening on a cultural level as it is, rather than as they imagine it. In other words, part of the executive coaching process involves facing the truth – even if that truth is unpleasant.

Corporate culture is real, and it is alive and dynamic, regardless of top management’s view of it. Leaders who are willing to listen, learn, and shape corporate culture in positive ways enjoy the benefits of better productivity and more loyal employees, while leaders who are steadfast in refusing to acknowledge or embrace change will eventually see bottom line numbers deteriorate and have a harder time finding and retaining the best talent.

In my long experience as an executive coach, I have learned first-hand how closely intertwined leadership and corporate culture are. If you are experiencing cultural change in your organization and are interested in my corporate culture services or my leadership coaching, I hope you will get in touch today. You have more power than you may realize for transforming your organization for the better.

The Definitive Guide to Leadership Speakers

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Many types of corporate events may benefit from including a leadership speaker, and the beneficiaries don’t necessarily have to be limited to company leadership. Often the greatest impact leadership speakers have is with the “boots-on-the-ground” workforce – the ones who keep the business operational day after day.

Leadership Speaker

The ultimate result of engaging a leadership speaker should be better day-to-day operations.

Industry conferences and customer-facing events also benefit from an outstanding leadership speaker. Success depends on several factors, including selecting and booking the right leadership speaker for the occasion and the audience, paying attention to all the details involved in organizing an event, and practicing excellent organizational skills so everything goes off without a hitch.

Step one to creating a memorable event anchored by a great leadership speaker is defining the purpose your event will serve. Is this an annual event for reviewing progress and planning for the future? Is it related to deployment of a new program or training initiative? Is it an awards ceremony for recognizing excellence among employees? Is it designed to build brand awareness with customers or partners? Knowing the purpose of an event at which a leadership speaker will participate is essential to making the business case for searching out and hiring the right speaker for the audience and the event.

Bear in mind that in order to extract the most value from your event, you must follow up afterwards. It’s not over once the audience leaves the auditorium and goes back to their regular activities. When you take the step of following up with surveys, special content, thank-yous, and creating a “wrap-up” document about the event and lessons learned, you help everyone remember and relive the event, making it likelier that they will use what they learned.

Differences between Leadership Speakers and Keynote Speakers

Leadership speakers may function as keynote speakers in that they kick off (or cap off) an event. However, not all keynote speakers are leadership speakers, so it’s crucial that you know what you want the speech to accomplish and choose accordingly.

There are occasions when you simply want a speech to captivate and enthrall an audience with something they won’t experience elsewhere, and in these cases, you might choose a keynote speaker who has gone and done something that few or no others have. For example, ocean explorer Robert Ballard, who found the sunken Titanic in 1985, gives a keynote speech that your audience won’t forget, and that they probably won’t encounter again. Will such a speech help your accountants do their job better? Not directly, but there’s no denying that it may well inspire them in general to strive for excellence.

Leadership Speaker Diagram

Leadership speakers and keynote speakers sometimes fulfill different functions, but other times those functions overlap. 

Leadership speakers are often chosen with specific end goals in mind. They may have backgrounds that are more similar to those of the audience. Sure, they all have something that sets them apart and makes them inspirational and motivational, but they may, for instance, have had an engineering career similar to that of the room full of engineers you hope to motivate toward excellence with a new project kicking off.

With leadership speakers, you tend to have a more tangible, measurable goal than that of providing the unique experience you hope for with some keynote speakers. Leadership speakers often talk about things like perseverance, overcoming big obstacles, making mistakes, and succeeding in the end. These are things the audience can relate to, and they can be tremendously powerful in an event where you want to recognize outstanding employees or get everyone fired up over a major contract the company just landed.

What Outstanding Leadership Speakers Have in Common

Outstanding leadership speakers may or may not have accomplished something amazing, like competing in the Olympics. But whatever their experience – their baseline situation, their challenges, their mistakes, and their triumphs – they have shaped it into a narrative that has meaning for themselves and for others. The best leadership speakers also have enough experience in public speaking that they know how to engage audiences, how to speak so they’re easy to understand, how to use their voice and body language to communicate, and how to tailor their presentation to the venue and the audience.

Leadership speakers who make a difference have their own unique way of connecting with the audience, whether that’s through their vocal expertise, dynamic style, audio-visual content, or unusual life story.

They’re also realistic, in that they know the purpose of their being there is not to fuel their own ego, but to transmit something of value to their audience. Many of the best leadership speakers know when to laugh at themselves and how to be self-deprecating without it turning into an ego-feeding “humble brag.”

Finally, exceptional leadership speakers know how to tailor their presentation to clearly answer the unspoken question on every audience member’s mind: “What’s in this for me?” A speaker who is clearly only interested in trumpeting their own accomplishments offers little or nothing to the audience (other than perhaps a lesson in what not to do). By the end of the presentation of a great leadership speaker, the audience knows what was in it for them and they believe they spent their time and attention wisely.

Why Different Leadership Speakers Are Not Interchangeable

At the same time, if you’re presented with 20 leadership speakers, all of whom have terrific reputations and glowing recommendations, you can’t really just randomly pick one and assume that one is good as the next. For your specific event, your specific audience, and your specific goals, there will undoubtedly be one speaker who will make the greatest impact, and it’s worth your time to learn about the various speakers so you can determine who that is.

It’s not always occupation-specific or even industry-specific either. While you may find a speaker who had a long career as a mechanical engineer to speak to your group of engineers who are about to start on a major, multi-year contract, you might just as well find a physicist or mathematician who for whatever reason represents a better fit with your audience and their needs.

And don’t give in to the temptation to “match” the speaker to the audience based on ordinary demographic qualifiers like age and sex. Your auditorium full of middle-aged professionals could indeed benefit from hearing the story of a young start-up entrepreneur, and your audience of tech start-up professionals could learn a lot from someone who retired from traditional industry and knows your company’s target audience inside and out.

In other words, don’t assume that leadership speakers are like background actors in a crowd scene. They’re not interchangeable, and the time you spend getting to know several different speakers is time that is rewarded when your event exceeds expectations.

How to Choose a Leadership Speaker

Before you select a speaker for your event, you should have a basic understanding of the size of your audience and the major characteristics and features of your chosen venue. You should also understand the nature of the event, what other activities, if any, will surround the speech, and how much time you want to allow for your speaker or speakers.

The Right Speaker

Understanding the overall event in detail is one key to selecting the right speaker for it.

Here are some tips for finding a speaker who will meet or exceed expectations:

  • Ask for recommendations from people who have organized similar events
  • When you have names of potential speakers, look at several of their videos online to learn if they’re a good fit for your audience
  • While the speaker you choose may or may not have worked in your particular industry, they should at least have an understanding of it, and preferably experience in speaking to similar audiences
  • Learn if a potential speaker has and uses social media to promote their upcoming talk
  • Find out what different speakers charge for events like yours. Professional and sought-after speakers and those with the most far-reaching reputation will charge higher fees.
  • Determine what equipment each speaker will require and whether your venue supports the equipment they bring, or whether the venue supplies equipment that will work for them
  • When budgeting for a speaker, consider the total costs, including fees, travel, lodging, meals, and transportation

What You Should Expect from Your Leadership Speaker

For your event to succeed, you will have to invest significant time, effort, and resources into it, working particularly hard to evaluate potential speakers and then select the one who best meets your needs for the occasion. Other than a dynamic, rousing, engaging speech, what should you expect from the leadership speaker you book for your corporate event? Here are some things to expect.

  • They should care about their client (you) and the audience, and they should show that they know that it is your event and is not all about them.
  • They should be professional and courteous, however casual or unusual their speaking style. Clients should feel comfortable reaching out to them with questions.
  • They should be willing to learn about your organization, possibly doing things like having dinner with organizers the night before the event so as to gather intelligence and get a better idea of how to tailor their presentation for the greatest impact.
  • They should be willing to dress appropriately for the audience and the occasion. That doesn’t mean they have to look like a clone of your workforce, but that they should demonstrate that they understand and appreciate the audience by adhering to general propriety.
  • In advance of the event, they should help promote it with printed collateral, social media activity, and other efforts. Even a two-minute YouTube video stating that they’re looking forward to the event and are excited about being there can make a difference.
  • They should encourage you to ask questions and answer them to the best of their ability, candidly and transparently.
  • They should not deliver the exact same “canned” speech at every event. Even if the major plot points are the same, they should make each occasion’s presentation unique and customized to the audience.
  • Finally, they should be passionate about your event and about their role in it. The last thing you need after all your hard work is a speaker who “phones in” their presentation or does the bare minimum. Passion is one of the key characteristics that ensures that a speaker will continue to be in demand.

Powerful Leadership Speech

Passion is an attribute that is hard to fake and that is indispensable to a powerful leadership speech.

What You Can Do to Maximize the Audience Experience

Whether or not you take the stage at any point in your event, you can make a measurable difference in how successful the event is. It’s tempting to think you might just relax and let everything happen once the big day arrives, but your work isn’t done if you want to get the most from the event. Ideally, you want to keep the attendees engaged from the time they set foot in the venue until after the event wraps.

Keep the concept of “audience engagement” in the forefront of your mind as you consider things like seating assignments. Would it be possible to assign seats that break people out of their normal work groups to foster networking and new ways of thinking?

Depending on the tone of the event, you can do several things to engage attendees in the lead-up to the main speaker. Some organizations do things like setting up a photo booth to help people relax and have fun. Setting up an interactive “social media wall” is another way to build enthusiasm and encourage sharing about the event.

You may or may not want to include a social hour after the event wraps, but even if you don’t you should plan on some type of follow-up. For example, you may deliver follow-up content to attendees, such as photos from the event or important slides from the speaker’s presentation to help people remember it and be more likely to put their key takeaways to use.

Event Actions Diagram

The actions you take before, during, and after the event all help determine its success.

Expected Audience Takeaways after a Leadership Speaker

In the time immediately following a presentation by a leadership speaker, you want your audience members to think, “Wow, I am so glad I attended.” They should come away from the event feeling as if it was a good use of their time and feeling inspired to want to give their best as they go back to business as usual.

If attendees are still talking and sharing about the event well after the speaker has gone home and life has gone back to the normal routine, you can consider the event a success. It’s not unreasonable to expect enthusiasm and inspiration from the event to carry over into an increase in innovative ideas, and more passion for people’s jobs and roles.

Finally, if a year has gone by and it’s time to plan the next event, if everyone still has glowing memories of last year’s event, you can be confident that you chose a great speaker and did your utmost to ensure that they had the opportunity to really shine, and to engage with your audience. It may seem hard to top a successful event, but you have more experience now, and your organization has likely changed and grown to where a different type of presentation may be desirable.

Hiring a leadership speaker can be an outstanding way to spark renewed passion and innovative thinking in your organization. The most successful leadership speakers are the ones who understand that they are there to engage the audience and take them on a journey that will be well worth their time. Keynote speakers and leadership speakers aren’t necessarily the same, because with leadership speakers, you’re looking to inform, engage, and prompt people to action, with the goal of making the organization as a whole better and more effective.

Successful Leadership Speech

Leftover inspiration from a successful leadership speech can affect your team long after the event is over.

It can take time to choose the best leadership speaker for your event. You will need to consider schedule, budget, venue, and what you hope to accomplish with the event. You should learn about multiple leadership speakers who look like they might be a good fit for your occasion and ideally you should talk to them individually, watch their online videos, and learn about their backgrounds. Leading up to and during the event itself, there are many steps you can take to ensure success, and when it’s over, you can do follow-up to keep the positive influence of your speaker going.

My experience as a keynote and leadership speaker has been a tremendous opportunity to share my passion for leadership and positive organizational culture.

Glossary of Terms

Audience engagement – the process where a speaker or presenter understands their audience and adapts the presentation to their interests, understanding, and attitudes. Audience engagement fulfills audience expectations and demonstrates keen understanding of the topic being presented.

Follow-up – the process of reviewing how well an event of leadership speech was received and reiterating or re-sharing key content related to the event or speech

Keynote speaker – a speaker who is booked specifically to kick off or cap off an event. The subject matter of the keynote speech may be broadly interesting to a wide audience, or it may be limited to a topic that is especially suited to a specific audience.

Leadership speaker – a speaker who is booked to inspire an audience in specific ways and motivate them toward certain goals, such as maximizing success on a major project, increasing company revenues, or expanding the customer base

Social media board – a large whiteboard or other surface that can be drawn or written upon by participants in an event. It is typically located in a photo-friendly location so that attendees feel encouraged to use the board, take photos of the board, and share photos on social media.

Social media sharing – providing content on various social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram, with the goal of raising awareness and enthusiasm for an event, and generating “buzz” in the lead-up time to the event

Speakers bureau – a core group of speakers who are available for business, community, or private events. They can help organizations locate an appropriate speaker for an occasion and make the necessary arrangements.

6 Personal Attributes CEO Coaches Help Their Clients With

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Even the most competent CEO coach cannot (and doesn’t want to) change who their client is deep down. An executive coach won’t turn the boisterous, demonstrative executive into a more demure, deferential person, and won’t do the opposite either.

What the CEO coach does is to help the executive understand strengths, address skills gaps, and learn how to take their vision to the entire team effectively. To do these things, executives need several key personal attributes, many of which the executive coach may help with. Here are 6 personal attributes CEO coaches often help their clients with.

1. Approach to Risk

Some people are naturally more comfortable with risk than others are, and this is good. There are some organizations where embracing risk is more of an asset than in others. What the CEO coach typically works on with their client, with respect to risk, is their ability to step back and see where taking a risk is the right thing to do, and where risks should not be taken. Different levels of risk are appropriate in different situations, and executive coaches help their clients match the risk to the context more effectively.

2. Organizational Competence

To operate as a high-level executive, a person has to be able to tend to many details while retaining a comprehensive view of where things are headed. Lack of plain organizational skill can be seriously detrimental. The CEO coach can help by offering assessments of an executive’s organizational skills, identifying specific shortcomings, and developing a plan (and acquiring the tools) to address them. No C-level executive can afford to waste time because of inability to organize projects, activities, or tasks.

3. Effective Communication

Just as everyone has their own personality style, everyone has their own communication style. The CEO coach can help the executive develop what’s good about their communication style, while building up other communication skills that add to their overall competence and effectiveness. For example, a reticent public speaker who is accomplished in written communication may spend time working on public speaking skills to complement their strong written skills.

Communication Style

A great coach helps their client make the most of their particular communication style.

4. Passion and Drive

It’s not so much about “making” an executive have passion and drive as it is about helping them channel and direct it. Half a dozen horses running loose in a paddock have tremendous aggregate power, but it doesn’t do a lot of good unless it is harnessed and directed at a goal (like pulling a wagon). Passion without direction generally adds up to a lot of enthusiasm that ultimately evaporates. But passion coupled with direction can accomplish amazing things.

5. Emotional Intelligence

Not every executive is a “warm and fuzzy” person, nor are they expected to be. However, complete inability to read a situation, a room, or a group of people can be a serious problem. Emotional intelligence is what lets the executive know that now would be a good time for a light-hearted joke, or that the team’s emotions are heightened, and they should be attuned to that so as not to come across as heartless or tone deaf. Executives with strong emotional intelligence bring far more to the table than those without it.

6. Integrity

The most effective leader is multi-dimensional, but that doesn’t mean they’re disjointed or enigmatic. All the dimensions of an effective leader work together toward an integral and unique personality – one that makes sense yet adapts appropriately to the demands of a given situation. It’s OK to be surprised by an unexpected skill of a leader (“Who knew he could speak Italian?”), but it’s not OK to discover that an appearance of honesty is not backed up by the practice of honesty. Executive coaching helps the leader understand the importance of integrity and how to build it and practice it.

My work as an executive coach has demanded many different skills, because every one of my clients has been unique. It’s not my job, nor the job of any executive coach, to try to fundamentally change who a leader is. Presumably they gained their status as a leader because of their merit, and I respect that. My job, rather, is to help them develop the tools and techniques that will empower them to rise to the many challenges they will face, to behave with integrity, and to leave a lasting, positive legacy.

How Executive Coaching Helps You Define Your Leadership Legacy

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Leadership isn’t only about what’s going on now, but about what an organization hopes to accomplish in the future. The most outstanding leaders aren’t necessarily the ones who make headlines today, but the ones who lead competently today while planning for what happens after they’re gone.

Leadership Legacy

If only envisioning the future were this easy!

Every leader should be concerned with their legacy, not only for their own reputation, but for the well-being of the overall organization. Leadership legacy is just one of many aspects of leadership that executive coaching is designed to address. After all, the leader that gets all the attention now, but leaves a “scorched earth” with no plan for the future won’t be appreciated for long.

Planned Leadership Changes Typically the Least Disruptive

We can’t always plan for smooth transition of leadership, because disasters and unexpected circumstances happen. When there’s an unexpected event that necessitates a leadership change, the results can be an organization that falters or fails, or an organization that comes back stronger than ever. Much depends on what the previous leader did in the way of succession planning.

The strongest leaders, and the leaders that history is kindest to, are leaders who take time during their tenure to plan for what should happen after they’re gone. With luck, the transition of leadership will be a happy occasion that is planned and executed flawlessly. But if the leadership transition should happen in an unexpected way, that succession planning will still pay off. In fact, it will be especially valuable in such situations.

Focus on Here and Now with Mature and Ethical Conduct

The CEO coach primarily focuses on what’s going on now. What are the client’s strengths, and where is there opportunity for improvement? What skills gaps does the client need to address to lead effectively? The work that the CEO coach does in improving a leader’s performance not only makes the organization better today, but paves the way for smart succession planning, and long-term improvement of the organization.

Succession planning should accompany smart leadership action that takes place in the present. Succession planning by a leader who behaves unethically or with immaturity might be better than nothing, but it’s harder to respect the choices of a leader who doesn’t perform with the maturity and strength that is expected of someone in an executive leadership position.

Recognize and Encourage Future Leaders

Executive coaching

Executive coaching can help leaders recognize potential in others.

Executive coaching also helps present leaders identify potential future leaders, and the leader of good character welcomes this opportunity rather than seeing as a threat. During their time with a CEO coach, an executive may or may not identify the person they see as their successor. What’s important is that the executive realizes the importance of planning for their leadership legacy. Will they be remembered as a leader who was dedicated to improvement of the organization by doing what’s possible to ensure continued great leadership? Or will they be remembered as someone who only cared about gaining recognition and applause and leaving the future to take care of itself?

One process executive coaching can assist with is learning to identify potential future leaders and helping them develop their potential. The coach can help the client learn to recognize outstanding potential and consider ways to help future leaders fulfill that potential.

Executive coaching is about helping a high-level leader excel right now. Most organizations simply can’t wait around for a new leader to gain their bearings and climb a leadership learning curve. The CEO coach can help ensure that a new CEO hits the ground running and leads the organization to a higher level of functioning.

At the same time, executive coaching emphasizes the importance of legacy and of succession planning. A leader’s tenure as CEO or other high-level leader may be long or short, but eventually things will change, and being ready for those changes not only benefits the organization in terms of a smoother transition of leadership, but also results in a lasting legacy for the leader who understood the importance of planning for the future.

I was fortunate to work with the late Steve Jobs near the end of his life, and during that time, I could envision his legacy of continuous improvement and breaking out of the comfort zone. Everyone knew that Steve Jobs couldn’t possibly be replaced, and he knew it too. But he also knew that his legacy could be carried on because of the way he infused the entire organization with passion for creativity and innovation.

Does Executive Coaching Make Sense for Aspiring CEOs?

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There is nothing wrong with aspiring to become a CEO or other top executive, because it indicates a desire to transform yourself and become something greater and more accomplished.

Aspiring CEOs

Aspiration is a positive quality, and you should cultivate it within yourself.

In fact, the word “aspire” reaches back to Old French and Latin words for “breathe,” indicating that by aspiring to become a leader, you don’t just want the name plate on the corner office, you want to live and breathe leadership.

Successful CEOs don’t spring fully formed from a training program, but are shaped over years by experience and wisdom. While executive coaching cannot impart experience and wisdom, it can help anyone learn to make the most of their experiences and put what they have learned to work. Here are some things the aspiring CEO should consider if they want to work with an executive coach.

Can You Make It to the Top Faster?

Executive coaching does not bestow a fast track to the executive suite. That’s something you have to do yourself, through experience, hard work, and continual learning. Did Augustus suddenly appear on the scene of the Roman Empire, ready to fix everything and usher in an era of relative peace? Of course not. First, he had to pick up the pieces when his triad with Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus fell apart. And after that it took years to build the framework for a republican state.

In other words, you don’t become “great” by having things easy. The road to the top may be short, but treacherous, or it may be longer and more meandering, but if you want to accomplish great things, you must have a base of experience first, and not all of that experience will be pleasant or predictable.

What executive coaching can do, however, is train the aspiring CEO in self-awareness, help them identify their strengths and improve on weaknesses, and identify skills gaps as well as create plans to address them.

You Can Improve Readiness for Leadership Opportunities

If you elect to work with a CEO coach before you actually become CEO, you may not rise to the top faster, but you will improve your readiness when leadership opportunities arise. This can have the effect of making an organization’s leadership transitions smoother and less jarring, because you will have taken specific steps to improve leadership skills beforehand.

New CEO

The new CEO who has already gone through executive coaching can make a smoother transition. 

It will still be up to you to meet goals, direct teams effectively, and demonstrate leadership in your current capacity. Moreover, you will still have to be a constant student of your industry, understand where it has been and in which direction it is moving. No CEO coach can do that for you.

Choose Wisely Before Investing in a CEO Coach

Executive coaching is an investment and it should pay off in measurable ways. While there is no single credential that identifies a highly trained CEO coach the way there is for, say, a surgeon or attorney, there are organizations that provide accreditation for coach training programs, and you’re smart to look for coaches who have been trained in these accredited programs. Perhaps the best known of these is the International Coach Federation (ICF) which has demanding qualifications for executive coach training programs that want to gain accreditation. Such accreditation indicates that the coach whose services you invest in has undergone rigorous training, and didn’t just decide to be a CEO coach one day and hang out a shingle.

Preparing for the Role of a Lifetime

If you aspire to be at the top of the organizational chart, then that is a worthy goal. In fact, many who aspire to make it to the top consider the CEO role as the capstone of a great career. Executive coaching can’t teach you how to run a pharmaceutical firm, for example, but it can help you identify your own strengths and weaknesses, develop the strengths, and address the weaknesses, while discovering more about your inner nature and your natural leadership style.

My work as an executive coach has taken me around the world and into organizations of every type imaginable. What the successful leaders of these organizations have in common is a commitment to excellence in leadership. Whether you’re already at the top of your career or are headed there, investing in yourself can pay off throughout the life of your career.

6 Tips from Keynote Speakers Any Professional Can Learn

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Being a successful keynote speaker requires having a collection of skills that anyone can develop, and that can be put to use in many situations that have nothing to do with public speaking. This is one reason why so many professionals are advised to take public speaking courses, even if they will rarely function as business speakers.

Keynote Speaker

If you’re offered the opportunity, you should strongly consider taking a public speaking class.

Here are six tips that are regularly used by keynote speakers that can benefit any professional, whether they’re training a new team, presenting a contract to a client, or simply trying to do their very best in a given work situation. Give them a try!

1. Regularly Remind Yourself of Your Purpose

Holding the attention of someone else (or an auditorium full of people) requires that you understand your purpose for being there. Every day – or several times throughout the day if necessary – remind yourself of why you do what you do.

2. Regarding Your Audience: Respect and Connect

You may be “the expert” on running the press mold, pulling data from a database, or getting the cake frosting to the perfect consistency. However, the people with whom you interact are there for a reason too. Understand what they need to take away from the interaction, so you can establish a connection with them. If you don’t connect with your “audience,” you waste everyone’s time.

3. Don’t Try to Be What You Fundamentally Are Not

The phrase “fake it till you make it” works in some situations, but by no means in all of them. You can “fake” self-confidence to an extent, and it can end up boosting your real self-confidence, but you can’t fake being a boisterous extrovert when you’re fundamentally and emphatically not one. As Oscar Wilde may or may not have said, “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”

4. Know Your Subject Matter

This is another key area where “fake it till you make it” doesn’t apply. Know your subject matter thoroughly, so that you’re prepared for questions and so you don’t have to waste mental energy working through scenarios in your head. You’re not expected to know everything, but it’s fair for your “audience” to expect that you know what you’re talking about. Don’t let them down.

5. Be Prepared to Go Off Script if Necessary

Speaking Training

If all your slides or supplemental documents disappeared, could you continue with your speaking / training / negotiations?

Things happen. Equipment breaks, people get stuck in traffic, roofs spring leaks, or a stray cat somehow gets into the office. Sticking to your script no matter what is like Nero fiddling while Rome burned (which probably didn’t actually happen, since viol instruments hadn’t been invented yet). The point is, effective leadership never ignores reality.

6. Focus on Contributing, Not on Winning Approval

When you are put in the position of training someone new, talking with a prospective client, or presenting a technical paper, you are being asked to contribute to something bigger than yourself. That’s what you should focus on, rather than on winning approval. Nobody denies that having the approval of others is a wonderful thing, but the way you earn it is by adding something to the situation. Focus on your contribution and the accolades will follow.

Business speakers must develop an entire suite of skills they can use to ensure their communication is effective and engaging. And as it happens, many of these same tools benefit professionals in any number of situations they may encounter when they’re not on a stage behind a podium. If you don’t know your subject matter, you’ll probably be fired eventually, and if you always try to come across as someone you’re not, your inauthenticity will hurt your ability to contribute to your team.

Everyone you interact with in a professional capacity deserves your civility, and most people you interact with are more than worthy of your respect. Remember this, and remember why you have been put in the position you’re in and you will connect with others in ways that bring out the best in them and in you.

I have many years of experience as a keynote speaker, and while there are some skills that are particular to actually getting up on stage and engaging with an audience, there are many skills business speakers use that translate to other professional situations. Because ultimately, it’s about making connections and sharing expertise in service of making the workplace better.

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