Nell Derick Debevoise

The most powerful thing that transforms my clients’ clarity, courage, and conversion as influential speakers and leaders is getting so specific about the exact impact that they want to have. By making this so deeply personal and aligned to their skills, position, and passions, they get over insecurities, procrastination, and impostor syndrome. So! What is YOUR 1/8-billionth? In other words, the very specific portion of challenges in the world that you are going to contribute to fixing? (There are about 8 billion of us on the planet now. So if we all do our own 1/8-billionth, we’ll heal the world!)

The most powerful first steps in addressing burnout is recognizing the difference between your Circle of Influence, versus your Circle of Concern, as Steven Covey described decades ago. This wisdom enables us to recognize that not only 1) we don’t have control over everything that might cause stress; 2) trying to exert influence beyond these limits actually reduces our influence and impact (by diluting our time, skills, attention, and energy). So what are you wasting time and energy on that you don’t actually have - or need to take - control over? (Even though you might care a lot about them, as they lie in your Circle of Concern.) Now make a Stop Doing list and reinvest your reclaimed time and energy in rehabilitating yourself.

In my experience, one of the most important elements of effective positive framing is to address the negative elements of your topic honestly. It’s not credible to an audience if you position something as nothing but positive. There’s no tension to make a good story in that case. But if your topic is an interesting one, there’s bound to be some negative element. And by framing the whole thing positively, you lie to the audience and lose their trust. So by all means, start and end with a positive frame y that’s most effective for your message, but don’t try to glaze over or hide negative emotion or facts.

Ensure that you create some personal relationship early on with the client. Don't overshare, waste their time, or probe into their private lives. But it is well-proven by research and experience that understanding something about each other as people, whether your values, hobbies, family, or purpose, builds trust. And that trust provides an important foundation when things inevitably go differently than planned.

It's not enough to offer learning and development opportunities. It's essential that leaders at every level model continuous learning. By enrolling in programs within and beyond the office, and then talking about them with their team, you'll see learning and development become integrated as part of your culture.

Truly engaging people usually means slowing down a bit. It can feel frustrating or even scary to take any extra time with high-stakes changes, but the advice 'Slow down to go fast,' is real. If you don't take time to preview, explain, engage, and integrate employees into the change at hand, it'll backfire. I've seen leadership teams end up spending far more time, money, and energy to undo the damage of poorly communicated change than they would have had to spend up front.