When booking a futurist keynote speaker, how do you decide if the person you are looking at has the right skills or might instead be a fake or fraud?
The Top 3 Capabilities Needed By An Expert Futurist
There are three main capabilities needed to be a great futurist and effective futurist keynote speaker:
A sharp, penetrating, and restless intellect that seeks to understand how complex systems, from healthcare to technology, change and evolve over time. Our aim is to unlock profound insights that can help others understand what is coming and what they might need to do about it. This needs effective reasoning, analysis, and synthesis skills.
The capacity to engage, influence, and persuade others to listen to our insights and ideas and then process, digest, and act on them. This requires highly effective storytelling, presentation, and persuasion skills.
The leadership skills to lead the leaders and so guide a group to fit and forge the future of their industry or country through better strategies, innovations, and business/digital transformation. This requires us to help people stay open, receptive, and responsive as they engage in challenging conversations about the future rather than close down or shut down when uncomfortable realities are faced and discussed. This needs effective transformational leadership and facilitation skills.
The Top 5 Essential Skills For A Futurist Keynote Speaker
There are also some really important skills that a futurist who wants to be a successful and effective keynote speaker needs to have developed:
Ability to communicate bold and complex ideas about the future in simple, accessible, and compelling ways, using metaphors and stories as much as facts and bullet points
The warmth and empathy to connect with an audience who may not be as "smart" as they are (or think they are!), meet them where they are, and then take then somewhere higher/better.
The self-awareness to take on critical feedback, disagreements, and questions elegantly —and reflect on them meaningfully live and on stage.
The skills and craft to take audiences on a journey of learning that brings everyone to a coherent destination so they can have useful conversations and even collaborations after.
Have the confidence enough to believe they have something worth sharing at an event and the humility and curiosity to listen as much as tell.
You may also want to read my other posts about professional futurism and futurist keynote speakers:
If you'd like to find out more about how I might help your audience grapple with the future and wrestle breakthroughs from the jaws of chaos, send my team a message through the inquire now form.
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