As to you why you are there. There is only one answer to why you are there: They must know that you are there to help them solve problems of their needs.

Without communicating strong belief on both counts, who you are and why you are there, you cannot give a Leadership Talk to motivate them to be your cause leader.

(3) Action. It's not so much what you say that's important when giving a Leadership Talk, it's what audience does after you have had your say. The function of The Leadership Talk is to have people take action that gets results -- and more results than simply average results, more results faster, and "more faster" on a continual basis.

Once you begin to see your leadership interactions in terms of physical action, you'll see your leadership, and way you get results, in fresh ways. Challenge your cause leaders to take physical action by asking them, ‘What three or four leadership actions, PHYSICAL ACTIONS, will you take to achieve results we need?'

Having people move from simply saying they will do things to actually taking physical action to do them will dramatically increase effectiveness of your Talk.

I've been teaching Leadership Talk to thousands of leaders worldwide during past 21 years. Many of them have found that difference between Leadership Talk and presentations/speeches is difference between typewriters and wordprocessors. I remember using a typewriter. I was happy using it. I had no idea that I needed a wordprocessor. But when I bought a wordprocessor and went through trouble of learning how to use it, I saw how badly I had needed it all along. I saw that it was a quantum leap in terms of speed, efficiency, and productivity over a typewriter. So it is with Leadership Talk and presentations/speeches. Once you go through trouble of learning how to use Leadership Talks then applying them consistently on a daily basis, you will find they can transform your leadership effectiveness and boost your career in ways presentations and speeches could never do.

Such transformations won't happen immediately. It will take you awhile to learn processes and be comfortable using them. Since you're not in one of my seminars, where participants learn tested processes to create and deliver Leadership Talks in a relatively short period of time, you'll have to rely on putting them together piecemeal.

But in these initial stages of developing and delivering Leadership Talks, putting them together piecemeal is an effective way of beating learning curve. After all, leadership is long and careers are short. You are not learning to give Leadership Talks as a short term endeavor. It should be a career-endeavor. Step by step, be constantly aware of three triggers, Need, Belief, Action. Speak from and to those triggers. You may discover that giving Leadership Talks consistently is best thing that ever happened to your career.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

And heart of any organization is purpose and people: combination of its central purpose and actions of people who manifest that purpose. Those people must be enlisted as cause leaders. Cause leaders do more than accomplish their jobs; they actually take leadership of those jobs and by doing so bring a special motivation, vision, and initiative to jobs.

Leadership is not position, it's performance. If you are a floor sweeper, say, you best accomplish your work not simply by doing floor sweeping but taking leadership of it: in other words, approaching job with distinctive initiative, care, and commitment that leadership entails.

These two essential premises beg question, how do leaders get more results, faster results on a continual basis?

The answer is simple: through Leadership Talk.

The Leadership Talk is a powerful results-generator, maybe most powerful results-generator you'll ever use. It works through your interacting with people so that they become motivated to be your cause leader(s) in achieving more results faster, continually.

Leadership Talks can be formal ways of communicating but mostly they are informal. Unlike a speech, they are usually interactive. They can be delivered anywhere: at a conference table, over lunch, at a water cooler, across a desk. (One of best Leadership Talks I have witnessed was given by a plant supervisor to one of his team members at a company picnic while they sat on back of a truck, sipping beers.) And in many cases, an effective Leadership Talk can be given when roles are reversed, when audience speaks to speaker.

Finally, though methodologies I've developed for The Leadership Talk are new, its roots go back into mists of history. Throughout history, when people needed to accomplish great endeavors, one thing had to happen, a leader had to gather them together and speak from heart. That leader had to give a Leadership Talk.

In next two parts, I'll describe essential elements of Leadership Talk, so you can start developing and delivering them right away.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

The author of 23 books, Brent Filson's recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. – and for more than 20 years has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: "49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results," at http://www.actionleadership.com. For more on Leadership Talk: http://www.theleadershiptalk.com