Gravitas: The Span of Delivery
Do you limit your capacity?
Following our theme of Gravitas, it is noted that one of the primary responsibilities of the Emperor was:
TO BE SEEN
So, I often hear from clients that they have boundaries around the types of events they are prepared to deliver as a leader.
“I’m OK one-on-one” or “It’s only when there are over 30 people that I lose it” are common statements I hear.
There are great reasons for this. Mainly it is left out of our education, but the thing is that, as a leader, you need to be prepared to delivery absolutely everywhere and BE SEEN.
Don’t go out thinking it will be OK, because one day you will find yourself on the news, delivering information to disgruntled staff, taking a radio interview on the side and convincing a board to take action.
To help leaders expand their capacity to deliver with gravitas, I created a diagram with different scenarios and I have an action for you. At the risk of sounding childish, to give it impact, maybe try colouring in the areas for which you feel prepared and comfortable.
Let me describe the circles.
At the centre is the 1:1 followed by 1:3, which might be a small group or may even be an interview.
Then we move to 1:15, which may be more like an executive team or board. The panel is another level where you are in front of a large number of people, but your responsibility is limited through a facilitator and other panel members.
Next, there is the common size of a corporate get-together of 1:30 and moving to a bigger event at 1:150.
Skip to 1:1000. That is now a totally different energy and then video, radio and TV, where you sometimes can’t see the audience, but you know there are a lot of them and you need to get the energy across.
For the leaders to whom I was speaking it was a sparsely coloured diagram.
This means they were great at 1:1 and half prepared for an interview. We need to improve this team!
Of course, we all have a preferred audience. Six hundred people at cabaret tales is very different to four thousand theatre style, and a group of thirty varies from a group of sixty. You need to know the difference and you have your favourites, but it is important to be able to conquer them all.
Accept it if you need help and go get it.
There is no time like the present to start expanding your capacity for gravitas.
