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Post from Transformation Tom™- Leave the Audience with the Upside—Chapter “From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide”he difference between

February 22, 2021 / tomdowd / News
0

Upside

 

 

 

 

 

Many inspirational messages start with hitting rock bottom or
some type of roadblock. We want the audience to experience the
downs and ups of the message with us. Even as we relate to the audience
with a phrase such as, “We have all experienced hard times or the
heartache of…,” we need to ensure we carry the audience back out of
the valley to the uplifting high point. It may seem obvious, but sometimes
the despair is deeper than we think. We must be conscientious
about holding the hand of the audience and pulling them along with
us to the final inspirational message.

 

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

  • Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
  • Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
  • Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
  • The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
  • From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
  • The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only) purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

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Post from Transformation Tom- Live in the Present: Chapter from “The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas”

February 15, 2021 / tomdowd / News
2

Live in the Present

I was always worried about what people thought of me, especially if I had made a mistake in the past. This may have held me back because I was worried about old perceptions people may have had of me. My concerns about whether someone liked me or not, respected me or not, or trusted me or not, impacted my confidence level and my ability to enjoy the job I was doing in the present. For the most part, I was impacting my own ability to do the work I loved to do.

I have had some bad days, like everyone else. I also had a few undesirable jobs that I needed to grind through. Unfortunately, these negative feelings and bad days had a tendency to linger with me, because I was worried about repeating a mistake or trying to over-impress someone with whom I wanted to make an impact. I am hard-pressed to come up with immediate memories of truly enjoying what I had going on around me until the latter part of my career. The potential of repeating past mistakes worried me while my obsessive concern over potential roadblocks or traps kept me from enjoying what was happening then and there.

I think I was constantly trying to stay a couple of steps ahead of my next action, in an attempt to avoid past mistakes. I was living too far into the future at times based on my feelings from the past. I was too preoccupied to stop and live in the present. People around me were promoted and I congratulated them on their success. I would dig in, internally frustrated, and immediately went on to the next thing that needed to be checked off my list. I had presentations that went well but I never appreciated those successes because I was already thinking about the next big project that was due.

In the spring of 2010, I advanced through the first three levels of competition to reach my first Toastmasters District Finals. The winner of this Toastmaster’s contest would represent District 45 (New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and all of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine) as the Toastmasters International Speech Champion, and would then move on to the World Semi-finals. Only eighty-one people in the world would advance. On the morning before the biggest speech of my life, I ran into Joey Grondin. I recognized him from the 2009 fall conference, in which he’d given a presentation on “Developing Your Signature.” His message was clear: be yourself and enjoy what you are doing right now. I told him how memorable that presentation was and how I’d incorporated some of it in my speeches, including the one I planned to do in the competition that night.

Joe was gracious and relaxed. He was conversational and engaged in our conversation. He saw my excitement and nervousness as a competitor, yet he did not even mention that he was also participating in the contest. He simply wished me luck and tried to provide me encouragement. Since he was a trainer in the previous fall conference, it never dawned on me that he would be competing.

He chose to avoid ruining my excitement until I actually asked him the question. He was allowing me to enjoy the moment and he was along for the ride. The smile on his face never wavered. Later in the day, I was nervously trying to calm myself down when I asked him what he did to calm his nerves. He said, “Enjoy the moment and live in the present.” He also mentioned this in his book, Living in Harmony with Our Children. That day, he said to me (paraphrased), “You have done everything you can to prepare for this. Watch the audience and feed off their laughter and reactions. You will never be at that moment on stage to give this speech again, so enjoy it because it will be gone.” Joe went on to win that competition, and subsequently the semi-finals, which put him in the top nine in the world. I found out later that he had been at the district level many times before and had never won. I was proud to watch his winning performance.

I was happy with my speech, after a small hiccup. I stumbled when I almost repeated a line, but that moment isn’t what I remember most about my performance. I don’t recall being nervous when I was actually doing the speech, but I do remember how excited and animated I felt up on stage. I also clearly remember the looks on the faces of much of the audience. It was the best time I ever had giving a speech.

The key is to learn from your mistakes of the past, but don’t dwell on them or let them weigh you down. The past is over, so move on. You can also spend too much time worrying about what lies ahead as you try to predict the future. Will I fail? What will happen next? You only have so much control over any of it, and besides, there is a good chance it will change or not be exactly as you predicted anyway. Move your present forward by learning from the past, but see the joy in what you have at the moment.

Unfortunately, I also want to add that it can be over in a flash. While I was writing this passage today, I was on vacation but thought I would check my work email. I found out that there was a horrific auto accident near one of our East Coast offices. Two managers were returning from lunch when they were involved in a crash that killed one of them and put the other on life support. In cases like this, we can only love our family more than ever and give our thoughts and prayers to their families. The timing of the news was purely coincidental, but it is a stark reminder to hold on to the precious present moments while we can.

 

 

 

 

 

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

  • Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
  • Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
  • Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
  • The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
  • From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
  • The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only) purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

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Post from Transformation Tom™- Manage Q&A Basics—Chapter “From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide”

February 8, 2021 / tomdowd / News
0

QandA

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many presentations end with question-and-answer sessions. Here
are some of the basics to remember:
• Notice I said the end; outside of direct attempts to solicit audience
responses and intentional open-ended parts of the presentation, I recommend
saving questions for the end, to avoid jeopardizing the flow
and taking away from later material.
• Save your final key take-away points and/or message for after the
Q&A so you can dictate the final messaging.
• Repeat questions back to the audience to ensure they are understood
and for people who may not have heard them (this also buys you
some time to formulate answers).
• Avoid rambling; answers should be clear and concise. Yes, this
seems obvious, but it is a critical skill to master.
• Don’t guess. Offer to get back to the overall audience or to the
person who asked the question, or even look for a subject expert
in the audience who may be better suited to answer. It is better to
have the right answer than guess incorrectly. The credibility that
you earned throughout the presentation is still at risk during Q&A
time.
• Be an attentive listener. You should make every effort to not cut off
the question because you anticipate the rest of it. Give the person asking
as much courtesy as he or she has given you.

 

 

 

 

Thomas B. Dowd III’s business books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

  • Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
  • Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work received Honorable Mention in the General Non-Fiction Category at the 2014 Paris Book Festival and Honorable Mention in the Business category at the 2014 New York Book Festival
  • The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World received Honorable Mention in the Business Category at the 2012 New England Book Festival
  • From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference, Honorable Mention at the 2013 New York Book Festival, and Honorable Mention at the 2013 Paris Book Festival.

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

Do you know about Avanoo?  Two-to-three minute eLearning programs that can change your life.  Here are my latest projects:

When Your Job is to Find a Job—and Yourself

Manage Your Time–Don’t Let It Manage You

MP3 Downloads of “From Fear to Success:  A Practical Public-speaking Guide” are available at Apple iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Emusic, Nokia, Xbox Music, Spotify, Omnifone, Google Music Store, Rdio, Muve Music, Bloom.fm, Slacker Radio, MediaNet, 7digital, 24-7, Rumblefish, and Shazam “From Fear to Success” MP3 on CD Baby

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Post from Transformation Tom™- Avoid Cold Transitions—Chapter “From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide”

February 1, 2021 / tomdowd / News
0

avoid cold transitions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you are moving from the introduction to the main body of
the speech and then to the conclusion, make sure you use warm transitions.
You can’t jolt the audience with an eye-opening introduction
about aliens landing on earth and then go into the body of your speech
as if alien landings are completely normal by sharing examples of how
the aliens are getting along just fine on this planet. I was working on a
speech about my shy daughter’s triumphant solo chorus performance.
The message was about how her bravery of stepping out on that stage
alone led me to alter my perspective of a special needs co-worker
based on how he bravely participated in the Special Olympics. Early
versions of the speech received consistent feedback from friends and
family that the transition from my daughter to the Special Olympics
athlete was too cold. I needed more character description to paint the
picture of him as an individual first, before jumping in with both feet.

You need to add some semblance of a transition that enables the
listener to go back in time and put all the pieces of the story together.
We can effectively go from the attention-grabbing introduction into a
smooth changeover into the body of the presentation. Back to the alien
example: if you add small bites for the audience to chew on, such as,
“After an exhaustive struggle, the aliens found common ground with
the earthlings by…,” the audience can find the connection. I sometimes
hear this referenced as getting the string and pulling it all the
way through. I actually found two effective transition versions that
worked on the Special Olympics speech. First, I used a pondering
open-ended question for the audience about potential catalysts for
change in their lives. Second, I added a simple phrase that said, “A
few days after my daughter’s triumph adjusted my lens on beauty….”
Both changes received positive feedback relating to a smoother transition.
With a warmer jump between topics, stories, and key points, the
audience will be able to follow the flow more easily. Smooth transitions
allow easier understanding of the organization and content of
the speech.

 

 

 

 

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

  • Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
  • Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
  • Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
  • The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
  • From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
  • The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only) purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

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