It’s hard to improve your leadership skills when you are stuck in the trenches actually doing the leading! Since making time to learn can be a challenge, we pulled together some of our best recorded information from the experts who offer specific tips for building your skills.

UPDATE: The Ken Blanchard Group has just announced a new event on April 25th. Register here. After the event, watch here.

They are all available on demand so you can watch whenever you have a few minutes.

Yesterday, in part one we focused on goal setting, vision and leadership. Today, in part two we take a look at motivation and team dynamics. Each tip has an on-demand WebEx you can access at any time -- you don’t need to download any software to participate.

Step 4: Tune up your leadership effectiveness

Best-selling authors Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller offer four keys to increase influence, impact and leadership effectiveness. Based on their book, Read More »

Tags: business, how to, leadership, management, Recording, tips, webinar

Online meetings are a great day to deliver a product demo. They can save time and money, but doing a great job requires you adapt your skill set so you do a terrific job.

In addition to the marketing and public relations skills you already have, you’ll need to learn to embrace the tools you have for the online demo and then pump up the volume on your “wow” factor since having a nice lunch afterward isn’t on the agenda.

Lessons from the Front

Software product manager Gopal Shenoy writes about his recent experiences conducting three demos during online meetings. Two went well and the third “was an outright disaster”.

The bottom line: You can choose to avoid doing the homework to your own peril or spend the time during discovery to start building effective relationships with your prospects.

Nate Westheimer at Innonate offers some firsthand tips (and examples) for pulling together a great demo.

It pains me when people come to demo and, instead of putting on a magic show — showing off how humans (themselves) and software interact — they try to inspire the audience through their words and by speaking about their ideas; or, just as bad, they flip through a bunch of preloaded tabs in an effort to “show” the product, as if pre-loaded tabs are any better than PowerPoint slides.

Technology Do’s and Don’ts

1. Find out some basics before you set up the WebEx.

Will they be in an office, a conference room? Are there likely to be distractions? Do what you can to help them control their experience so you will be heard and you’ll have their attention. Dialing in on a phone line is probably optimum for them to hear every nuance (it also helps if you decide to record the meeting).

Read More »

Tags: demo, how to, Online Meeting, Recording, tips, video conference, WebEX

Based in the Glasgow Cisco Scotland office, Stephen is a distinguished blogger from the Data Center and Cloud team in Cisco Services.  Stephen joined Cisco in the year 2000 via the Atlantech Technologies acquisition and was Senior Manager within Product Management in Cisco’s Network Management R&D team, and he focused on IP/MPLS service provider network management. 

During this time, he brought to market the unique Cisco MPLS Diagnostics Expert product, taking it from (literally) a corridor conversation through definition to launch, and on to win multiple industry awards.   He has over 20 years of industry experience in IT, Data Center, and Service Provider Network Management which he shares with the world through his writing. By keeping customers’ new technology adoption challenges at the forefront of his mind and weaving novelty into his blogging best practices, Stephen has gained the popularity of many of his readers and established himself as a role model for many other Cisco bloggers.

Stephen’s Customer-Centric Vision

Blogging is no one-way conversation for Stephen. He has the customer in mind at all times and is always conscious of their careabouts. Prior to writing, he interviews customers and partners to better understand their viewpoints and present a more well-rounded perspective.

Read More »

Tags: best practices, blogger, blogging, Cisco Services, cloud, customer focus, data center, innovative practices, lessons learned, meet our SMEs, SME, social media, subject matter expert, tips

Laura Spencer writes an interesting blog today, 10 of the Most Surprising Things about Freelancing. I think at some point, everyone has the fantasy of breaking free of the corporate hamster wheel and going out on their own. Especially if you have a skill set that can be easily transferred to different situations.

Freelancing is 100% risk. You are responsible for selling your skills and building a client base. You almost never turn down work because you never know when the next assignment will come along. It’s risky and it’s true what Laura says, you really don’t get “personal days” unless you do some careful planning.

But what if you aren’t ready to jump into freelancing 100% of the time?

There are ways you can put your foot in the water and see if you have Read More »

Tags: business advice, Cisco WebEx, Freelance, learning, telecommute, tips, WebEX, webinar

If you hate meetings, you are not alone. In a recent study conducted by Cisco WebEx, we found 9 out of 10 workers would prefer to interact in any other way than attend a meeting, yet we spend more time in meetings than any other form of interaction (click Read More to see the infographic). Read More »

Tags: meetings, online meetings, tips, WebEX