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Why you need to speak to your team.

I’ve run our other business, Missing Link, a presentation consultancy based out of South Africa since I was 22 (I’m 43 now). We have had amazing people, a great work ethic, a phenomenal culture, and even award-winning offices:

You’d think we’d have shiny happy people show up every day, right? Wrong.

Are they just ungrateful millennials that feel they deserve the world? No, we’re just a management team that falls under the curse of knowledge. We meet, we discuss, we change, we shake-up, we star, we stop, we hustle.

And we forget to explain why.

Every six months when an employee culture survey comes out, there are always complaints, and those complaints are pretty much always because we forgot to explain why we did something. We forgot to give our people a reason to care about the changes.

That’s why we started speaking to our teams on a regular basis – and that’s why we started TalkDrawer.

The unintended consequence is the great ideas they give us.

They feel involved, like part of the inner circle, and they act accordingly. That’s the gift we’re giving you!

The gift of engagement.

The gift of ideas.

The gift of a highly motivated team.

You’re welcome 🙂

So, engage with your people, lift the curse of knowledge, make it their journey – not just yours.

Lead.

Speak…!

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You write a great speech before you deliver one

One of the most common misconceptions about delivering a great talk is that you need to be a great speaker. That helps, but first, you need to be a great writer.

Here’s our founder, international speaker, and TED coach, Richard Mulholland talking about that point.

This is the #1 stumbling block that we witness.

Them: “Nah, I don’t need help, I’m a confident speaker and I make people laugh.”

Us: “Great, how are you at writing? Got any best sellers or published articles?”

Them: “!?”

Us: “We’re not here to make you great at talking, we’re here to make sure you can write a great talk.”

Structure and format trump delivery almost all the time.

Let’s look at fellow South African startup founder (hey, we’ll take any link we can get) Elon Musk.

Watch the guy, just a few minutes is fine.

Is he a good speaker? No, not at all. Do you want the battery though? Yes.

Is it then a good or bad talk?

See where we’re going here? He made us care early, he created a curiosity bubble that we wanted to pop.

Write the talk first, write it well.

Then worry about delivering it…!

 

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Welcome to Atomic Talks

Mandela, Churchill, Roosevelt, King, and even Hitler. Good or terribly bad, all were leaders that brought about significant change in the world.

They were vocal leaders that could move masses with mere words – and that’s exactly what they did.

Branson, Musk, Jobs, and Bezos are no different – when they speak the world listens.

Leaders speak.

The difference between a leader and a manager is their ability to communicate.

That’s where Atomic Talks comes in.

Atomic Talks is designed to help leaders grow – and to grow their communities and businesses with them. We do this by removing the biggest constraints to public speaking; time, content, and often a lack of confidence.

By offering a series of pre-created slide decks, each complete with training videos, supporting content and interactive discussion points, packaged using our 21 years of leadership in the presentation field we empower you, the leader to do just that. Lead!

The decks have been created to cover a range of important topics such as service, leadership, innovation, and marketing. We draw on some of the greatest classic and contemporary minds to create slide decks that you can present to your teams on a weekly basis with the confidence of a pro.

Want to hear when we launch? Sign up here to be the first to know.

Lead. Speak…!