Personal Impact
Training Exercises and Resources

Some people are naturally quiet. They don’t see much need to talk about themselves or share what they have accomplished with others. They are always in danger of getting overshadowed by extrovert types who are hell-bent to tell everyone how great they are. Between the two extremes, there is a middle ground that consists of saying enough to be noticed but not too much to become annoying. We live in a competitive world today and it is important to be able to tell others about what you have accomplished and what you are good at or you will be overlooked and forgotten.

This exercise is particularly useful for those quiet types who may need a push and a structured approach in practicing this skill. Learning this important skill will allow them to become better at talking about themselves and their ideas, values and achievements without appearing over bearing or self-centred.

You can run this exercise for an existing team or for a group of individuals from different backgrounds. Even those who are not naturally quiet would benefit from the structured approach used in this exercise to practice their story telling techniques.

The aim of this exercise is to get the delegates think about body language and gestures and observe how such signals can be instrumental while communicating. The training exercise illustrates the importance of communication without using words and how much a social context or background can help us understand what is going on in a given situation. The exercise also helps unleashing the writing creativity of delegates so it is also ideal as an exercise in storytelling and creative writing.

This is an exercise to help team members discover their common interests and skills as well recognising each person’s unique skills and experiences. The setup is quite simple and you can easily customise it to focus on a specific idea based on your training needs. It can be used for both young and mature teams.

The power of this exercise is that it indirectly shows that there can be a lot of similarities between people in a team which will help to bring them closer together as they will acknowledge these similarities. In contrast, they also get to recognise their differences and appreciate that these differences lead to unique contributions which would ultimately make the team more powerful and creative.

In 2014 Michael Bay was invited to CES2014, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Samsung was launching a new TV and had summoned the famous Hollywood director to endorse the product on stage. As usual, such marketing is intended to benefit both parties. A director endorses a new TV for a company and in exchange gets to show clips of his new movie on the TV to promote them. Everyone is a winner. Except that in this instance things didn’t quite go according to the plan.

The launch event was broadcasted live and Michael Bay was interviewed on stage. He was asked a few simple questions, all based on what was planned and presumably rehearsed before.

Perhaps it is best if you see the video of the event for yourself to see what happened on stage when Michael Bay started to answer the questions.

This exercise helps delegates realise what values they are impressed with the most, so that they can then relate these values back to themselves.

You are an expert in your field. The management is very impressed with your skills and wants you to share it with others. You have been asked to give a talk to your fellow colleagues or anyone else in the company who is interested in the subject.

The day of the presentation comes. Some of your colleagues have come from other branches of your organisation to attend your talk which is part of a series of presentations. You are excited to be a presenter as this is what you always wanted to do, but you are also feeling very nervous. You have the dreaded butterflies in stomach and cannot seem to be able to shake off the nerves.

The speaker before you has now finished and it is your turn to present. You just want to get on with it now. You go on stage and set yourself up. You start the presentation while paying attention to every detail. You want to make sure your voice comes out naturally, that you are facing the audience the right way, that you are saying the sentences correctly and that you are not forgetting anything crucial.

There is also a voice in your head that constantly says, “don’t screw this up, don’t mess this up, you have got only one chance…”

Two minutes into the presentation, you suddenly feel you cannot remember what you need to say next. It’s just gone. Your mind is blank. The audience is staring at you, expecting you to say something, but you cannot think of a single word to say. You feel out of breath, almost paralyzed.

You chocked…

Good diction is about the art of speaking clearly so that you are understood to the fullest. Good diction is more about the tone of voice, the distinctiveness of speech and the pronunciation as opposed to choice of words or sentences. 

Many problems can contribute to poor diction such as low level of voice, repeating words and phrases, using filler phrases such as “you know what I mean” and strong accents.

However, research shows that one of the most common causes of having poor diction is the use of filling words such as “um”, “uh”, “so” and similar. English speakers are particularly keen users of these filler words and the equivalents in other languages are also used regularly. 

This exercise helps delegates practice reducing the frequency of saying “um” and thereby helps them to improve their diction.

This exercise allows delegates to practice speaking in public or in front of a group without the pressure associated with public speaking. The pace of the exercise is very fast and hence delegates do not have enough time to get scared or nervous about speaking in public. Instead, the exercise encourages them to focus entirely on the task which is an impromptu presentation based on a random number of concepts.

This is a very effective yet simple icebreaker. Delegates get to choose a contemporary or historical figure and share their choice with the class. These choices will help everyone to get to know each other better. In addition, it also helps the trainer to know the delegates better and use this knowledge during the course to tailor the training.

This exercise can be used both as an icebreaker when you intend to get people to know each better or as a storytelling exercise. You can bias the exercise based on your chosen topics. This exercise is also ideal for team building.