Posts in Article
Elevate Your Executive Presence With Intentional Storytelling
Elevate Your Executive Presence With Intentional Storytelling

In her book Executive Presence, Sylvia Ann Hewlett describes executive presence as resting on three pillars: gravitas, communication and appearance. As a storytelling and presentation skills coach, I work with clients on all three of these pillars. Here’s my tip: If you’re aiming to develop your executive presence, consider developing your storytelling skills as one way to do so. Here are a few reasons why becoming an intentional storyteller can help build your executive presence.

Stephanie Judd authored this article as a Forbes Council contribution.

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Media Mentions, ArticleStephanie JuddForbes, StorytellingComment
Clarifying Success for Your Working Group Meeting (with Downloadable Tool)
Clarifying Success for Your Working Group Meeting (with Downloadable Tool)

TOOL

Because working groups are often established to work through aspirational and shifting goals, and because participants are usually loosely organized, it’s critical that participants understand why they’re meeting, what they are expected to contribute, and what they can expect in return. Although you may already have a cursory idea of agenda topics for meetings, getting clear on your “why” will take your meeting from the typical boring event to a powerful gathering with better outcomes.

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ArticleKara Davidsonagenda template, agenda, meeting design, meeting design and facilitation, presentation, planningComment
Designing a Meeting for a Working Group
Designing a Meeting for a Working Group

Working groups are a particularly challenging group to organize and facilitate. Members typically participate in a working group as volunteers, or as an “add on” to their day-to-day jobs. They’re usually made up of members who are more experienced and senior than the person charged with spearheading the group, and the lack of power structure makes accountability to the group a bit thin.

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ArticleStephanie JuddMeetings, meeting design, working group, leadershipComment
How to Develop a Storytelling Culture at Your Organization
How to Develop a Storytelling Culture at Your Organization

Like many event-based learning, there’s always a risk that the skills, knowledge, energy and momentum developed in our workshops may get lost in the mess of daily worklife. We have pre- and post-event activities built into the Influential Storytelling program to help people integrate storytelling directly into their workflow, but there’s always more you can do to make storytelling part of your organizational culture.

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ArticleKara Davidsonstorytelling, storytelling culture, leadership, influential storytelling, executive storytelling, storytelling for businessComment
Navigating Impostor Syndrome: Your Biggest Leadership Hurdle
Navigating Impostor Syndrome: Your Biggest Leadership Hurdle

A key hurdle for leaders stepping into their own leadership is their personal belief that they’re not ready. This article explores Impostor Syndrome, who it affects, and how to combat it effectively: check in with yourself, reframe your thinking, seek outside perspectives, and take a small step.

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ArticleStephanie Juddagenda, Meetings, meeting design, meeting agenda, facilitation, ask me anything, downloadable, meeting design and facilitationComment
It’s Time to Update Your Meeting Agenda
It’s Time to Update Your Meeting Agenda

Every month we host an Ask Me Anything forum where people bring their burning questions about meeting design or facilitation. More often than not, the questions we get can be summed up as, “Why is the meeting so boring? I feel like I’m pulling teeth trying to get people to engage. It just feels like a waste of time.” If you’re in a position where it feels like everything is bad about one of your critical business meetings, start by tackling the agenda.

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ArticleKara Davidsonagenda, Meetings, meeting design, meeting agenda, facilitation, ask me anything, downloadable, meeting design and facilitationComment
Storytelling Tip: Use Scenes to Make Your Story Cinematic
Storytelling Tip: Use Scenes to Make Your Story Cinematic

One of the most powerful things you can do throughout your story—but especially at the beginning—is to use language that allows your listener to visualize what’s happening. When your listener is able to visualize the story, it becomes more experiential to them, it’s easier to follow, it feels more tangible and authentic in its specificity and it’s easier to remember.

When we’re coaching someone to do this, we encourage them to find the scenes, to avoid generalizations, to go beyond the plot and uncover the cinematic potential within their story. Think SHOW, not TELL.

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ArticleStephanie Juddstorytelling, scenes, cinematic, visualizeComment
Three Product Manager Storytelling Myths
Three Product Manager Storytelling Myths

The product management field can be a cutthroat one, and Product Managers know that becoming a more compelling communicator is a great way to differentiate themselves from the pack. But many of these PMs have misconceptions about storytelling. Here are three common storytelling myths held by PMs and why you shouldn’t believe them.

Stephanie Judd authored this article as a Forbes Council contribution.

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Dress for the Power Inside You
Dress for the Power Inside You

We’ve all heard the expressions “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” or “look good, feel good” but Stephanie didn’t really believe them. She was conflicted about wanting to look good and feeling guilty about wasting time focusing on “vain” things like clothes and makeup. But, it turns out that research indicates that what we wear affects our brain. It impacts our behavior, mood, personality, confidence, and how we interact with others. Getting dressed is less about what it signals to other people, and more about how it affects yourself.

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ArticleStephanie JuddleadershipComment
Turning a Fail into a Win: Navigating Conflict with a Client
Turning a Fail into a Win: Navigating Conflict with a Client

One of our recent Story Hours focused on the topic of Navigating Conflict: Working through an interpersonal challenge. The imminence of the event inspired Kara to brainstorm story ideas that could fit that subject. Navigating conflict is a guaranteed component of leadership. It comes up all the time in our coaching conversations as our clients navigate conflict with their managers, colleagues and/or direct reports. There’s almost no limit to where it can show up at work and, when it does, it creates a spiraling ball of distraction that saps mental energy, inhibits communication and causes negative feelings all around.

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ArticleKara Davidsonleadership, conflict, conflict resolution, navigating conflictComment
The Storytelling Mistake to Rule them All: Generalizing
The Storytelling Mistake to Rule them All: Generalizing

When brevity is the most important thing, stories may not be the best tool of choice. But when coming across as a compelling and memorable communicator, consider stories—especially ones that lean on specificity—to carry your message.

In our work as storytelling coaches, one of the most common challenges our clients face is bringing their stories down to specifics. Recently, Stephanie had a client, let’s call her Jane, come to her for support in preparing for an interview. Jane knew that she was going to be asked about her origin story. In her case, the question was going to be something along the lines of, “What inspired you to get into the field of Mathematics?” Here’s a rough approximation of the story she started with, and the final version that she landed on. Read on to compare the two to eachother.

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ArticleStephanie JuddstorytellingComment
How to Help Your Sales Team Personalize The Pitch Deck With Stories
How to Help Your Sales Team Personalize The Pitch Deck With Stories

One of the most common challenges of sales leaders is enabling their teams to take the demo deck and make it their own—uniquely, authentically and personally theirs. Read this article for some ways you can empower your salespeople to adapt the deck for a more relatable and engaging presentation.

Stephanie Judd authored this article as a Forbes Council contribution.

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Three Common Mistakes when Designing for Engagement
Three Common Mistakes when Designing for Engagement

“Employee engagement” has been a hot-button issue for more than a decade, and remains central to organizational strategy. But engagement is even more important now as companies experiment with hybrid work, or a permanent virtual workforce, and the Great Resignation exists as an ever-present backdrop. And yet, “engagement” remains a big-picture, intangible, and somewhat esoteric idea that has lots of impact on the people within an organization without anyone really understanding what to do about it.

The truth of the matter is that truly engaging your team happens long before the actual moment of reckoning. It’s thinking through details, and finding ways to activate interest and ownership with your employees in every interaction. Here are three common myths about employee engagement and what you can do instead.

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ArticleStephanie Juddleadership, Meetings, facilitation, engagementComment
Leveraging Coaching Skills as a Leader: Making a Request
Leveraging Coaching Skills as a Leader: Making a Request

A request is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as ‘the act or an instance of asking for something’. From a coaching perspective, this definition falls short. A request, in our opinion, is made when we see untapped potential or an opportunity not being fully leveraged within a person. At its core, a request is a gift of possibility available to the person who chooses to receive, unwrap and appreciate the request you have made.

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ArticleKara Davidsoncoaching, leadershipComment
Top Watch-Outs When Building a Hybrid Conference
Top Watch-Outs When Building a Hybrid Conference

If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it was that we can engage with each other even if we’re all in different places. As the world re-opens and in-person conferences are restarting, there is an expectation that they will remain accessible to folks who are unable to participate on site. And yet, early attempts to build meaningful hybrid conference experiences have shown us that we’re playing in a whole new league now. Hybrid experiences aren’t in-person or virtual experiences. They’re something altogether different. We still have a lot to learn, and it’s easy to execute hybrid conferences poorly.

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ArticleKara Davidsonconference, Meetings, hybrid, hybrid conferenceComment
The Sales Demo Slide Deck: How to Make it Your Own
The Sales Demo Slide Deck: How to Make it Your Own

It’s not all that uncommon for salespeople to be armed with a presentation or demo slide deck that was put together by the marketing department. The purpose of a “single source of truth” like the corporate-approved slide deck is to ensure that all salespeople have the same talking points and are communicating a consistent narrative in the marketplace. This is a noble goal, but one of the unintended consequences of a company-wide narrative in the form of a slide deck is that it can become stale and devoid of any kind of personal, authentic touch.

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ArticleKara Davidsonsales, slide deck, make it your own, presentations, storytelling, stories, authenticityComment