First, the latest TTM Consulting Newsletter, Sports And Leadership Lessons, is published.

In a few weeks I'll be doing a teleseminar for his company on a diversity topic; when the publicity for it goes out I'll talk more about it here. Right now, I'm working on the outline for the presentation, and it's going along okay. Once the outline is completed, I'll then have to create a powerpoint presentation for it, then send it to the company, which will send it out on the day of the presentation so the listeners can follow along.

I tend to work with outlines because they help me stay focus and on track. When I wrote my book Embrace The Lead, I wrote a full outline for it up front, which turned out to be a good thing since it took me about six months to complete. Full outline doesn't mean I wrote everything underneath the outline; I just highlighted points that I felt were crucial, so that I could talk about them later on.

One of the things you hope to do as a professional presenter is to be able to give the presentation you were hired for. It's not always that easy because sometimes the people booking you haven't given you the proper information for the presentation. A couple of years ago I gave a presentation in Virginia that I was told was to be geared towards a specific audience, and once I got there I realized that the people who showed up were of a different skill set, and thus my presentation wasn't going to benefit them as much. To me, that made the presentation somewhat flat, and the reviews after the fact weren't all that great. Oh, they liked me and felt I was a good presenter, but they also felt I didn't give them what they'd come for, which was disappointing to me.

One always hopes to learn from previous mistakes, so this time around I've asked more questions as to the audience expected to listen in. Still, when all is said and done, a presenter pretty much has to create a presentation that they feel is the best they can give based on who they believe will be listening, and deliver is with as much quality as one can. In business, no matter what, quality counts most, even if the audience is totally familiar with what you're giving them. If you can always deliver quality, they'll forgive you for not giving them exactly what they wanted. After all, no one except one person is Kreskin; if you're not sure who he is, look it up.

Always deliver quality, no matter what it is you do; you'll always be able to look back upon yourself with pride if you do.