Lee Jackson - Online and Offline Motivational Speaker and Presentation Coach in organisations, businesses and education.

Lee Jackson is an Award-Winning Motivational Speaker and Presentation Coach working in organisations businesses and education to help people Get Good® - his style is engaging, authentic and jargon free.

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You are here: Home / Archives for business

5 ways to really enjoy Christmas this year…

December 11, 2015 By Lee

Christmas – 5 ways to really enjoy Christmas this year…

christmas banner

Things I love about Christmas:
Turkey and cranberry sauce, slightly mad Christmas lights, food, seeing my family, food, time off work, great TV specials, food and a drop of Port with good friends, oh, and, err food!

Things I hate about Christmas:
People buying stuff they don’t need or can’t afford, presents that go straight to landfill, the over-hype of “the day”, hearing of people I know being on their own at Christmas, people who say it’s just for kids, Christmas pudding!

What do you love and hate about this time of year?

Sure, there are things that I love and hate about Christmas time like most people do – but I certainly wouldn’t ban it, like some have said that they would on Martin Lewis’s new online poll.

He says: “…20,367 voted on whether they’d cancel Christmas if given the choice. Perhaps unsurprisingly, parents of school-age kids were most festive, with 64% of those mums and dads happy to celebrate. Of the rest of voters, 55% would choose to press the cancel Christmas button if they could. Bah humbug!” See the full results of the poll here: http://is.gd/jgjQ78

People who want to ban it may well be in the majority, but why is that?
Maybe they are reacting to the over-hyped season of shopping?
Maybe they have a different religion, like my old neighbour who was a Jehovah’s Witness?
Maybe they have bad memories of certain events at Christmas time?
Maybe it’s an expense that they just can’t afford?
Or maybe they are just a bit grumpy?!

But for most semi-Scrooge’s, maybe they don’t realise the power of a celebration. Christmas is good for us, in fact any good holiday or celebration is good for us. But we in our British culture often just don’t celebrate very much. And some make not celebrating an artform! It always makes me laugh that anti-Christmas type people still go to Christmas parties but they sit there with a “Bah humbug” hat on while there! Or as I saw the other day at a hotel where a works party was taking place – everyone was wearing a Christmas jumper. i never saw the party as it was behind closed doors but one by one people were popping to the loo looking very sheepish wearing a really embarrassing jumper at a 5 star hotel! Their faces were a picture as they mumbled under their breath “please don’t see me please don’t see me” in their rush for the loo! I think they’d had an email from the boss to wear a light-up Christmas jumper, none of them were doing it by choice.

But amazingly it can be good for you…

5 reasons Christmas is good for you
(taken from The Mirror’s article)

1. You sing more at Christmas.
Singing is good for us, it lifts our spirits and makes us feel part of a community. Why not get to a carol service or start a sing-song at home? A study for the annual Sing for your Heart campaign by Heart Research UK found singing is a “great aerobic exercise, giving your heart and lungs a fantastic workout”.

2. You give and receive.
Studies show that when we give and receive gifts, the brain releases the ­feel-good chemical dopamine. Giving also releases the “cuddle” hormone oxytocin.

3. We spend more time together.
The average family manages just 36 minutes of quality time together a day, according to recent research, yet a separate poll reveals 95% of parents believe the key to happiness lies in spending quality family time together.

4. We make family traditions that will last.
“Whether it’s buying a new tree bauble every year, leaving a mince pie out for Santa or watching It’s A Wonderful Life, family traditions unite all generations”. We always watch National Lampoons Christmas vacation as our start to Christmas!

5. Err and lastly,
“The Christmas holidays are the most popular time to conceive, according to one US study, probably due to a combination of socialising more and the long, cold days of the Yuletide period when, for many, there isn’t the distraction of work! Condom sales also double in December, showing that sexual activity in general rises. And extra sex is good news for your health. As well as giving your heart a boost and relieving stress, its great for your ­self-esteem and wellbeing – and even makes you look younger!”


Here’s my 5 ways to really make the most of Christmas this year:

1. Take time to stop and think, reflect on the last year, write down the positives, learn from the negatives, then throw them away.

2. Don’t buy tit-for-tat presents for the sake of it, buy presents for those you want to, maybe even make a present or two yourself, a tin of homemade mince pies is much more meaningful than a bottle of talc! Or just send a text, have a Skype chat or send a card to someone you’ve lost touch with.

3. Write down a gratitude list. What are you thankful for this Christmas? It’s proven to make us feel better. Maybe also write down a task list for work too, so you can forget it and relax.

4. If you are not in the emergency services, then switch off your phone for a while (it’s so rare to do that these days) and put an autoresponder on your email too for a while, use it as your winter break.

5. And lastly, when you are at a party or get-together – be in the moment, enjoy the random conversation, games or cheesy TV, you’ll enjoy things so much more. Just go with it. Work can and should wait every now and then.

Have a great Christmas holiday, however you chose to celebrate it.

merry christmas lee jackson

Filed Under: business, education, fun, leadership, motivation, random Tagged With: business, education, keep on going, leadership, lee jackson speaker, leejackson, motivation, motivational

Lookout for culture creep!

September 15, 2015 By Lee

It’s been an eventful few weeks for the Jackson’s, we kept our house in an endlessly minimalist / tidy state (with cupboards bursting full of stuff) as we tried to sell our house, and at the same time we are preparing to move house. Obviously these two things have to happen at the same time, but it would be easier if they didn’t! While trying to keep the house tidy for viewings, we got rid of 17 years worth of rubbish from our loft and cupboards. This strangely therapeutic tidying process turned up a few surprises and some great memories along the way, including old records, lost photos and my bronze ballet medal, that i sometimes talk about on stage – i was aged five and there were only three people in the competition!

But the biggest news of all, is the most trivial first world problem I’ve ever written about – our fridge-freezer stopped working! Now, this seemed like an easily solvable problem in my activist head “my fridge freezer is broken – I’ll go and buy a new one.” I thought. Oh how naïve I was! We went to Curry’s and it dawned on us very quickly that in the 12 years that we’d had the fridge freezer, the world has changed! Seriously changed. Not only have smartphones become the norm and cloud computing has revolutionised the way we do business but 12 years ago fridge freezers were white and had no nationality. Now they are black, silver and grey and are ‘American or French style’. My 45 year old brain was, as they say – flummoxed. There wasn’t a good fridge freezer that would fit into the fresh new gap that had opened up in our kitchen. So, we had a big gap in our cupboards and nowhere to keep our milk cold. Tricky.

Not only that but we are moving soon so we had to think ahead and get the right fridge freezer for our new house kitchen too. It was a conundrum worthy of Carol Vorderman. So we opted for the new house solution. We bought a Stateside-style fridge freezer ready for our new house, with one small drawback, it doesn’t fit into our current kitchen. So we’ve got a fancy new silver fridge freezer that’s stood in the middle of our kitchen. It has sadly made that strange throwback from the 80’s, our breakfast bar, unusable. It’s weird but it’s not a bar and never eaten breakfast there, anyway I digress. It’s a big old thing and its in our way, but we’ll put up with it for a few weeks until the big move happens and we move a mile up the road. But the new appliance, has had quite an impact.

Lee Jackson motivational speakers fridge! (Not actual fridge contents!)

We have noticed in the last few days that this fridge freezer is cold, really cold! Yeah I know – not a great shock to you I’m sure *|FNAME|* but to us it is. The freezer is very cold -18C to be precise and the fridge is about 5C or so it says, and because we have more space now I think we have realised that 1. Having more space in the fridge keeps things cooler and 2. Our old fridge freezer has been failing for months, and we didn’t even notice. The kids have said “Dad this is really cold” at least half a dozen times now, our new silver member of the family has changed things.

Look out for culture creep

One of the things that i love about my job is that I get to go to dozens of schools, colleges, businesses and organisations and see things from ‘fresh eyes’ all the time. I get a visitors perspective on an organiations attitudes, values and culture. A view that people who have worked there for years, often don’t see anymore. I can often learn a lot just from the reception staff and seating area, as I spend a lot of time there waiting to be ‘shown through’ to the hall or training room. I did some presentation skills a few months ago for a very big organisation and I asked as I arrived if me and the people on the course could get a coffee to start the day. I was told that the only coffee available was a dodgy machine, three floors up and through four sets of double doors. In the end I paid for a Costa instead. This organisation is being turned around slowly, but hospitality obviously wasn’t a value that they hold dear, just yet. In other places I’ve been to, I’ve been treated like a king, where my clients couldn’t do enough for me. I genuinely don’t expect the red carpet treatment, far from it, thats not my style, but its funny how companies in the same sector can have such different culture and values. I’ll work with almost anyone, as I like variety, but I do remember how people treat me, as I’m sure you do. It’s only human.

Look out for culture creep

The issue we need to be aware of at work though is ‘creep’. ‘Creep’ in our personal and professional life can be dangerous. Our old fridge slowly got less efficient and we didn’t even notice, until we got the new one that actually worked! Organisations are just the same, bad values and practice can creep up on us without us even noticing. I heard a story a few weeks ago where a 15 year old had done work experience in a company and did really well, so well in fact that a few weeks later the boss sacked a member of staff because they realised how slow and inefficient they’d been in comparison. Fresh eyes, made their business better.

So, here’s a few big questions for you this week:

If you are a leader – when was the last time you had a fresh set of eyes on your workplace and culture, to find the good, the bad and the ugly? If you choose the right person, it can only help make you better.

If you present up front – when was the last time you asked someone to give you feedback? Someone you permission to really tell you the truth? I do this a lot when I’m teaching and coaching presentation skills and I’ve seen people become engaging speakers, with just the right amount of encouragement and honest feedback.

And lastly, the big one – what about your personal life? We all love friends that we can have fun with and those who comfort us too, but do we have friends who tell us the truth when we need it? It’s a tricky one, we don’t like it, but can make a real difference. I knew a guy who had a ‘donkey’, this ‘donkey’ was one of his friends who he told his wife she could call anytime if he was being a ‘donkey’. “She never called him” he said, “but she did pick up the phone a few times”. I’ll always remember that.

Filed Under: business, leadership, leejackson, motivation, speaking, __EVERGREEN Tagged With: blog, business, keep on going, leadership, lee jackson speaker, motivation, motivational

Using stock photos on your slides that don’t suck!

April 9, 2015 By Lee

Stock photos are a tricky one.

They can be great, they can be woeful…

bad stock photos for slides!

I talk about them alot in my PowerPoint Surgery Q&A’s.

Here’s a nice article I found on Medium to help us all find some that don’t suck…

The list includes my current favourite Death to the Stock Photo

See below for a big list of free (but pls check!) images…

  • Little Visuals http://littlevisuals.co
  • Unsplash http://unsplash.com
  • Death to the Stock Photo http://join.deathtothestockphoto.com
  • New Old Stock http://nos.twnsnd.co
  • Superfamous (requires attribution) http://superfamous.com
  • Picjumbo http://picjumbo.com
  • The Pattern Library http://thepatternlibrary.com
  • Gratisography http://www.gratisography.com
  • Getrefe http://getrefe.tumblr.com
  • IM Free (requires attribution) http://imcreator.com/free
  • Jay Mantri http://jaymantri.com
  • Public Domain Archive http://publicdomainarchive.com
  • Magdeleine http://magdeleine.co
  • Foodiesfeed http://foodiesfeed.com
  • Picography http://picography.co
  • Raumrot http://www.raumrot.com/10
  • ISO Republic http://isorepublic.com

Plus 74 (!) more here c/o the nice people at http://Canva.com  

Filed Under: leadership, powerpoint, presentationskills, slides, __EVERGREEN Tagged With: business, powerpoint, presentationskills, slides, speaker, speaking, surgery

The key to a good team at work

March 24, 2015 By Lee

Here is a nugget that I sometimes share when speaking at leaders and managers events. I learnt this twenty years ago and it just stuck somehow. Sometimes it’s good to go over the stuff that we probably do know but can forget in the busyness of our working lives.

The key to a good team at work:

The key to a good team at work – motivational speaker lee jackson

The 3B’s…

…are the basics of working with any group of people.

 

The 3B’s are so important when we want people to connect, feel part of a team and ultimately become productive.

 

Think group, think workplace, think classroom – whatever your context I’ve found this to be so true, have you?
The first B is Belong…

…people won’t believe in their workplace until they feel they belong. So share things in your group to help people to belong. You are part of a community, no matter how small, so what is it you can do to help people to belong? Don’t be afraid to share some personal stuff in this, we are often so ‘professional’ at work that we give away very little about ourselves and that makes people distant and can create disconnection. Disconnection = high turnover of staff.

Once people feel they belong then they start to believe.

 

The second B is Believe…

…when you start belonging to a group you start to believe in the values and the norms of that group. If someone feels that they belong as part of your workplace or group then they start believing in the values, the ethos and some of the wonderful stuff that you have going on there. And when that’s happened people start to behave…

 

So you have got belonging —> believing —> behaving

 

The third B is Behaving…

..if we think about it, it always goes in that direction – so very rarely do people jump straight to behaving / being productive.

Those first few days of a new staff members induction are so important.

I was brought in to a really big public sector organisation because they realised that their induction days had basically become a list of health and safety do’s and don’ts on a bad PowerPoint slide and had become very ‘samey’, so I helped to train the trainers to make induction a more fun experience for all involved.

The first few meetings that people have where they meet people for the first time is so key, do some more icebreakers at those times, share more stories about your workplace, let people see behind the front desk and pot plants, its worth it in the long run.

That all helps to get people to belong and then they start to understand what they are there for (the rules and things that are important to the workplace or community). Then they start to believe and start to behave / be productive.

But so often we just want to jump straight to the last one.

It just doesn’t work like that.

 

So remember it’s always —-> Belonging —-> Believing —-> Behaving

 

How do you and your workplace help this process lee?

Don’t skip it, use this basic principle in your induction process.

It works.

I know.

Filed Under: business, leadership, leejackson, motivation Tagged With: business, lee jackson speaker, motivation, motivational, priorities, speaking

PowerPoint surgery Online Masterclass is now live – saving the world from Death by Powerpoint!

November 5, 2014 By Lee

Well, I’ve gone and done it!

After the success of my PowerPoint Surgery book and training sessions I have spent the last few months writing, developing, filming and pulling together the PowerPoint Surgery Online Masterclass, and I’m proud to say it’s now live:

Grab your free video now by visiting www.powerpointsurgery.com

Filed Under: leejackson, powerpoint, presentationskills, slides Tagged With: business, lee jackson, powerpoint, presentationskills, slides, video

Why we all need to learn from the Sign Language Interpreter at the Mandela Memorial…

December 17, 2013 By Lee

The Sign Language Interpreter at the Mandela Memorial… caused quite a stir. Apparently he’d been reported before many times, but they still booked him.

Many people including other speakers, say “fake it until you make it!” and “you can do anything!” and I understand why they say that, to a point (although I’ll never say that without qualification in one of my talks – I like to give evidence for my motivation).

But let’s be clear – you can’t be confident and then have no skill at all in the chosen task, it just doesn’t work. It’s not fair to anyone including yourself, and it’s a very short term view.

Will this guy ever get a gig again? I think not, certainly not in sign language interpretation.

This especially applies to presentations, don’t fool yourself into an ugly arrogance that you can do something when you can’t! Instead learn the skills and practise, practise, practise, chip away until the experience you gain kicks in. You’ll get there in the end, but it will probably take you longer than you think.

I do a lot of presentation skills training and after a day with me, people say they are more confident than before but at the end of the sessions I always say to them – volunteer for every speaking opportunity from now on, get out there and speak, the experience will build your long term confidence and with the right coaching will make you a great speaker.

Be confident, yes!

Push yourself, yes!

But, don’t be falsely confident or even so arrogant that you forget to learn the skills needed.

No one likes a fake, be your true confident self, it’s all we’ve got, and it’s enough.

Filed Under: business, education, leadership, motivation, presentationskills, speaking, __EVERGREEN Tagged With: business, leadership, motivation, powerpoint, presentationskills, speaking

What is Haiku Deck?

December 5, 2013 By Lee

The nice people at @HaikuDeck are featuring my slide deck of my book on their front page! http://www.haikudeck.com/gallery/featured 

But what is Haiku Deck? In my opinion it’s Powerpoint or Keynote with the fat trimmed off to make us better speakers, as it develops this could be a game changer.

Here’s Adam their CEO explaining all on Huff Post…

#powerpointsurgery

Filed Under: business, leadership, powerpoint, presentationskills, slides, speaking Tagged With: business, leadership, powerpoint, presentationskills, schools colleges, speaking

When a motivational speaker has a bad day at work.

June 7, 2013 By Lee

 Motivational speaker having a bad day

fast cash loan

Being a speaker is a strange job. One week you are really busy and the next week it's quieter. Thats life, that's business. I can handle that. This week has been a quieter week and to be honest it hasn't been the best week, the other day was simply not a good day. Amongst the admin and marketing there were a couple of lighter moments, but not many.

But, there were also three really annoying moments.

Another speaker caused me some hassle, a good client surprisingly let me down, and after rearranging a few things and driving to an appointment, a big coaching client just didn't show up.

I'd had it.

Three days of office work culminating in three big hassles just about finished me off. I was truly fed up.

Yes, you heard me right. I was fed up, ready for a break, and ready, at one point, for a new career!

Thankfully I'm not the kind of speaker who pretends they 'never have a bad day', my friend Paul McGee taught me that, in fact he reminded me just the other day. Handy.

You see having a not so good day is quite normal.  It's what we do with it that counts. 

So I went home grumpily, ate my tea grumpily, and then grumpily went into my man cave for an hour or so.

Then when I was ready, I  decided to do some thing about it. I was ready to change 'my state' as NLP people would say. I put on some good loud music while I emptied and stacked the dishwasher, and then I simply went up to my whiteboard, grabbed a pen and wrote down in columns – the three problems, the gig i have tomorrow, my main to-do item, and a list of things I was grateful for. I then thought about the problems and asked one of the most powerful questions – was it my fault? And, did I try my best? All three problems weren't my fault and there's nothing more I could do to sort them out, so I crossed them out and concentrated on tomorrow and also on the good stuff in my life. I'd tried my best, it wasn't my fault, so I'm not going to dwell on the issues. 

Not an easy task, but a simple one.

In all the years I've been researching real success in education and the workplace I've come to this conclusion. The difference between people who make it and those that don't, is this: it's what they do on their not so good days. It's what they put into practice when they don't feel like it – thats what really counts. When have you had a day like this? How did you move on as my mate Paul McGee would say?

The world is complex enough without us making it harder for ourselves.

Find the strategy that works for you, and put it into practice – often.

I do. 

LeeJackson.biz

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Filed Under: business, education, leadership, leejackson, motivation, speaking Tagged With: business, leadership, leejackson, motivation, speaking

Some free Sans serif fonts for use on slides: c/o dafont.com

May 29, 2013 By Lee

Good fonts can really make or break a slide, using sans serif fonts really helps with clarity.

Here are a few free options:

http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=501&page=2&text=A+sans+serif+font+for+slides…&fpp=50

Filed Under: business, powerpoint, presentationskills, slides Tagged With: business, leejackson, powerpoint, presentationskills, slides

Some of my best keynote powerpoint slides + why I use them video and audio

August 22, 2009 By Lee

Examples of Good Slide Design by Lee Jackson
JUST PRESS PLAY…
View more documents from Lee Jackson.

Filed Under: leadership, leejackson, powerpoint, presentationskills, slides Tagged With: business, leejackson, powerpoint, presentationskills, slides

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