Analysis of Qantas CEO update

Against the benchmark of a credible, believable, self-assured CEO of a major enterprise delivering a presentation to the public regarding a significant loss of trust in the leadership of the enterprise – conveyed through their affect, body language, speech and language – I scored Qantas Group CEO, Vanessa Hudson in her 1:34 minute, 21 September update speech, as 8/10.

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How to avoid ‘verbal diarrhoea’

When you’re having an interaction, or are a participant in a meeting, or are pitching to the leadership team et al – do you suffer from verbal diarrhoea?…

Do you talk because you are uncomfortable with silence?…or talk because you’ve don’t know how to stop talking . . . or talk because you’re in love with the sound of your voice?

I believe I first heard the following technique a number of years ago from a Salesforce client of mine, who was a participant in a workshop I was conducting.

The technique is WAIT? that stands for: ‘Why Am I Talking?

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Even surgeons require coaching

A few weeks back I gave and received 1-1 master class coaching. Today, I am using that coaching I received to quicken the results my clients achieve in how they present themselves and communicate their ideas. In this terrific 16 minute TED talk – that I have my clients watch before I work one on one with them – luminary doctor, writer and researcher Atul Gawande shares how a coaching helped him become a better surgeon, and also how coaching improved health care in Utter Pradesh, the largest state in India. Here is a vignette about the value Gawande received by having another doctor watch him in surgery, and give him feedback, afterward. It was a whole other level of awareness. And I had to think, you know, there was something fundamentally profound about this. He was describing what great coaches do, and what they do is

they (coaches) are your external eyes and ears, providing a more accurate picture of your reality.

They’re recognizing the fundamentals. They’re breaking your actions down and then helping you build them back up again. After two months of coaching, I felt myself getting better again. And after a year, I saw my complications drop down even further.  It was painful. I didn’t like being observed, and at times I didn’t want to have to work on things. I also felt there were periods where I would get worse before I got better. But it made me realize that the coaches were onto something profoundly important. …important to instill positive habits of thinking, and to break our actions down and then help us build them back up again. “It’s not how good you are now; it’s how good you’re going to be that really matters,”  Here is the LINK for the CLIP

Own the Conversation

Implementation idea:
  • In the next seven days just identify a person you believe whom could help you improve in your field of endeavour.
  • In the next 30 days make a commitment to contact the person to arrange a discussion about 1:1 coaching/observation.