Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive

coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you

want to be perceived.

I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach,

and today we're talking about

prepping like a TED Talker. Dorothy was two years into her role as CEO of a global business services company.

She wanted this year's global management meeting to be engaging and lively.

She told her division heads they all needed to talk about their divisions as if they were giving

TED Talks.

Each person's 18 minutes needed to be riveting, she told them.

The eight division heads cried out for help, and as a solution they were given me.

Before I ever talked to any of them I learned they'd all received a copy of

TED Talks a terrific book about how to give a TED Talk by Chris Anderson who's the

president of Ted. I quickly created a three-page reduction of

Anderson's book and I send it to each of them. It's available to you too if you want

it. I'll tell you how to get it at the end of the podcast.

Over the next eight weeks, I would work individually with each of these TED Talkers.

My conversation with Kurt in Chicago was the topic of an executive coaching tip in May 2017 called

talking like a TED Talker. But before the individual work began,

we had a 90 minute group call as a kickoff. I had a million questions for them. I began

with this one. I said, if we imagine this as a project, how will each of you

approach it?

...