Women Seen and Heard: Speaking With a Strategic Vision

in its elimination. She sees it as a puzzle worth solving, predictably satisfying grateful customers and creating more profit for her company.

To make sure that you are seen as a big-picture thinker, your presentation must begin with a statement of your vision and then an action plan with specific steps for the implementation phase. Approach the big picture with big questions. Ask yourself:

• What is the ideal future scenario I see for this particular challenge or problem?

• Why is my vision and action plan a win-win solution? What are the benefits and who benefits?

• What are the broad general strategies that will allow us to realize this vision together?

• What must I do to ensure that we achieve this vision?

Now get specific and build your action plan:

1. Outline your speech point-by-point and remember to explicitly list your main points in advance of your explanations and provide examples for each.

2. Move forward in a logical manner, one step at a time. Build on each successive idea.

3. For each point, use transition words such as “First,” “Second,” and “Third” so it is easy to follow you.

4. Prevent taking impulsive tangents when you speak. You’re driving the train so stay on track. Look ahead and carry your listeners along with you.

7. Present Your Scenarios In Terms Of Human Consequences

In this post-Enron world, people appreciate knowing that while all decisions have risks, you have thought through possible consequences. Can you walk the audience through the implications for groups, teams, departments, and individuals? This is where your conversational skills will be useful. Each customer has a story. Give those statistics a human face. Present the best and worst case scenario. People can be surprisingly flexible if leaders are straight with them about bad news. Budget cuts, moving the facility, merging, acquiring, or even downsizing are better discussed from the podium than the water-cooler. Motivational presentations can align our listeners around a compelling vision of the future such that they are willing to accept short-term pain for long term gain.

Whether providing solutions to problems or finding a cure for spam, women may not have been encouraged to speak up in the past but this is a brave new world, one that requires participation in the debates and discussions that matter most. Women managers have years of experience and insights to share. Ask yourself: Do you want to play a role in shaping the future of technology? If you do, you’ll need to develop your public voice.

Consider this: your good ideas could build a business as well as improve the local economy and, ultimately, change the world. All great ideas had to overcome profound skepticism but at least they had greater likelihood of a public hearing if they came from a man’s mind, pen, hand, or mouth. Women’s great ideas were more typically shared in diaries, letters, or private conversation, but today, women speakers have a range of opportunities to be a force for change. E-mail may be tempting but leaders require face-time whenever a choice point occurs. As the speaker with a strategic vision, you will be seen, heard and remembered.

1. Johnson, Steven. “Winning the War on Spam: Digital environmentalists devise a clever strategy for bankrupting junk mail purveyors.” Discover, June 2004.

Reprint courtesy of Lois Phillips Consulting

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