Richard Fouts

One of my favorite pieces of advice from Guy Kawasaki’s book, Reality Check, is about the value of entertainment. As business leaders, Guy tells us that our number one goal, when presenting, is to entertain. 

Sure it’s important to inform, and you have to be insightful, but if you bore people to tears, you won’t achieve anything.  Hence, entertain first, inform second. 

But let me qualify it a bit. Guy is referring to certain types of presentations, for example – the keynote speaker at a conference. Or you’re doing a webinar, or a seminar, or speaking at an association meeting. So you needn’t worry about your stand up routine at tomorrow’s staff meeting. Those are more instructional or status oriented; in fact, if you try to entertain at those things, people might think you’ve lost it, or that you don’t take them seriously.

But what if you’re not an entertaining type of person? What if you’re not funny?  Well, you can always get yourself to the Comedy Club; watch and learn. Or just learn to be lighter, more human. Think about how you behave at a social gathering. Pull out the personality you already have. Lighten up.