Most people see email as a strictly transactional tool, using it only when they need something or owe someone something. That’s exactly why you should use it to stand out.

People love to feel appreciated. Instead of worrying about all the things you need to do in the morning, take a moment to thank someone for what they do for you. “Thanks for all your support during that last big project” or “I’m so glad we get to work together. Thanks for being my sounding board” is all you need to say to make an impact.

An Email Saying "Thank You

The fastest way to get what you want is to get to know the people who <a href="https://forge.medium.com/the-power-of-doing-the-right-things-consistently-1e7430bc0efb">already have it </a>. Send a message to someone a step or two further ahead in their career and let them know how their work has impacted you. I like to <a href="https://forge.medium.com/how-to-get-on-the-radar-of-people-you-admire-5f6646a65c45">use the formula </a>: “Thanks to your work doing X, I’ve been able to accomplish Y.”

An Email To someone you admire

There’s something magical about someone you don’t know very well showing interest in you. Often, it’s even more validating than when a friend encourages you, because they really don’t have to do it. One sentence can impact someone for a lifetime. Neill taught me to always <a href="https://michael-thompson.medium.com/to-add-meaning-to-your-career-be-a-name-dropper-1d60514b2c85">lift as you climb </a>.

An Email Lifting sometime

Reach out to someone you recently met during a training session or through a mutual friend. See if they’re up for a chat. We all need more eyes looking out for us.

An Email to someone you just met

It’s harder to network with new people, so why not use your energy to check in on the people you used to work with? It’s a good way to learn about what’s going on in your industry.

An Email to an Old Co-Worker

Save your boss from having to make rounds before the weekend. Tell them what you’ve got going on: “Here’s where we stand regarding W, X, Y so far this week. I’m focusing on Z tomorrow. But if there’s something that needs to be pushed, let me know.” It will help you understand your priorities and show that you’re organized.

A Thursday afternoon email to your blood

When I talked to <a href="https://medium.com/u/1ceb119b8919?source=post_page-----2358f8451ef9-----------------------------------">Melody Wilding, LMSW </a>, the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Yourself-Overthinking-Channel-Emotions/dp/1797201964">Trust Yourself </a>, she suggested I send myself a Friday afternoon message with a run-down of the week. Try it: Write down your wins, a few things you learned, and any idea that made your week a successful one. It’s a simple exercise, but it really helps you <a href="https://forge.medium.com/you-still-need-an-after-work-routine-when-working-from-home-9850c1e3ccc7">transition out of work mode </a>and realize that what you’ve done is enough.

A Friday Afternoon email to yourself

Networking is something we often struggle with. Here's a few ideas I read that helped me a lot in reaching out. 

Most people see email as a strictly transactional tool, using it only when they need something or owe someone something. That’s exactly why you should use it to stand out. Taking a moment to send…

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

communication

Communication

timemanagement

Time Management

The 7 Emails You Should Send Every Week to Get Ahead in Your Career

Being a leader is something which many people can do, but being a great leader, one who can lead the team to success while training all the members to become future great leaders is not a skill that everyone has.To be a great leader, it is necessary to have a natural leadership instinct along with the traits that one can achieve only by experiences and learning from those experiences as well as other people, preferably other ‘great leaders’.

A great leader is one who is passionate about the project/work, someone who’s energy can really inspire and pump up the passion in the other teammates. A leader should be driven by the passion and make it their purpose as well as have people with the similar passion in their team.When leaders have set goals and are able to communicate it to the rest of the team effectively, they can bring the entire team together to reach the goal while growing as a team as well.

Passion

A leader that has empathy towards their teammates is one who can understand the teammates to a deeper level and can connect with them emotionally. Teammates also feel better working with a leader who understands and bonds with them. Empathy also allows to get rid of any workplace tension and get straight to the root cause of the problem.

Empathy

A great leader is one who is secure with themselves and are self confident. You will rarely see them in self doubt. Teammates can rely more on confident leaders who are trustworthy and also grow their self confidence. However, keep in mind that confidence and arrogance are completely different things. A leader who is confident can help you build your self confidence, on the other hand, an arrogant leader will only focus on their own growth and doesn’t take the growth of their teammates seriously.

Confidence

A great team leader is also a great speaker, one who can use their words to inspire and push their team towards success/the end goal. Great leaders are clear with the message they convey to the team and in times of trouble they are able to solve the problems with their words.Leaders are comfortable addressing big groups as well as having one on one conversations with their teammates.Along with being great speakers, leaders are also great listners, which leads to amazing, innovative, insightful conversations.

Conversationalist

People that can easily adapt to situations and have an optimistic, open minded attitude towards even the most difficult situations excel as leaders. They also inspire those around them to adapt to changes surrounding them, the good and the bad. Great leaders understand that people are the biggest assests and welcome all criticism and feedback from others as well as teammates and appreciate exchanging ideas and opinions with their teammates.

Open minded

Great leaders are the perfect role models for members of the team, in addition to that, they are great source of motivation for the team members, especially during difficult times – professionally and/or personally. They know the important role of motivated team members in the growth of the entire team.Great leaders can motivate and inspire their team members only if they are confident and optimistic and at the same time have a realistic look towards life. A motivational leader has a very big hand in the growth of each individual of the team.

Motivational

“The best leaders know their teammates inside out, and know how to get the BEST out of each individual, individually!”

A great leader is the leader who gets happiness from seeing others being rewarded for their hardwork. Their leadership is not based on titles or position or power, their influence on people is not because of their money or power or connections.They define their success on the basis of the positive influence they have on people and the impact their actions have on other people. They constantly show up in times of need and are reliable to the team, they always put their team first and take actions that help each member of the team grow. A great leader brings out the true potential in others

Selflessness

“It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership. "

Great leaders are always determined to accomplish what they set out to do. They don’t give up when things get tough. They see difficulties/problems as a challenge and see it as an opportunity to grow. Such people are not afraid to think outside the box or take decisions/steps that are ‘uncomfortable’ or ‘difficult’, they constantly try to step out of their comfort zone and persuade their team to do the same.

Determination

Being an effective leader doesn't mean simply leading a group of people towards a goal, it's about growing, as a group and as individuals and a leader is the make or break of every team

Being an effective leader doesn't mean simply leading a group of people towards a goal, it is about growing, as a group and as individuals and a leader is the make or break of every team.

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

teamwork

Teamwork

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

TOP TIPS TO BE A GREAT LEADER

Exceptional relationships can be developed. They have six hallmarks: <ul><li>You can be more fully yourself, and so can the other person. </li><li>Both of you are willing to be vulnerable. </li><li>You trust that self-disclosures will not be used against you. </li><li>You can be honest with each other. </li><li>You deal with conflict productively. </li><li>Both of you are committed to each other’s growth and development.</li></ul>In these relationships, you feel seen, known, and appreciated for who you really are, not an edited version of yourself.

Exceptional relationships

It has several characteristics. <ul><li>One is a willingness to let go of the idea that your way of doing things is always best. </li><li>Another is being game to try new things and take the risk of making mistakes. </li><li>A third is seeing mistakes as learning opportunities rather than something to be embarrassed about and hide. Curiosity is key. </li></ul>Having an open mind for continuous learning is a wonderful way to live. It means you’re open to your own development.

A learning mindset

Most of us have countless interactions each day with people who don’t really know us well. At times, you may yearn for deeper and more meaningful connections, but you don’t always know how to get there. Letting yourself be more fully known is crucial to developing exceptional relationships. Self-disclosure creates more opportunities to connect and increases trust. It is also enormously validating to be accepted for who you really are. That said, it’s not risk-free.

Letting yourself be more fully known

Consider three concentric rings that represent decreasing safety as you move out from the center. <ul><li>In the middle, is the Zone of Comfort: what you feel completely safe to say or do.</li><li>The outermost ring is the Zone of Danger: things you wouldn’t consider doing.</li><li>The Zone of Learning: The ring between “Comfort” and “Danger”, where you are unsure about how another will respond -  the zone in which people learn. Learning at the risk of unintentionally ending up in Danger, test the waters by stretching into the zone of learning by 15%. You can then consider venturing out another 15 % from there.</li></ul>

Try the 15 percent rule

Sharing facts starts to build a larger picture of who we are but only goes so far. What tends to have more impact is sharing feelings. <ul><li> Feelings can indicate the intensity of an experience. In reacting to another’s behavior, you could be slightly bothered, annoyed, upset, angry, or furious. These different degrees are crucial in human interaction; they illustrate a lot about who you are. </li><li>Feelings provide color, drawing others to us in a way that being utterly unemotional and rational does not. </li></ul>

Social scientists call the belief in our ability to act in the world “having agency.” But too often, people think they have no choice in how to respond to what has happened to them.

Having agency

In the absence of data, people will make stuff up. Everybody draws conclusions when interacting with others. The less we reveal, the more others will fill in the blanks in order to make sense of what they see. When we are too reserved with our feelings, we actually lose control over how we are seen.

The costs of silence

Empathy is the act of conveying not only that you understand the other’s feelings but also that you can identify with them. It is different from sympathy, even though they’re often used interchangeably. Sympathy involves acknowledging someone is in pain and providing comfort or support; it does not necessarily involve identifying with how they are feeling. Sympathy is also often linked with pity, which makes many people feel even smaller. Sympathy, unlike empathy, doesn’t encourage more disclosure from the other. In fact, sometimes it can have the opposite effect.

Empathy and sympathy 

This has several dimensions. <ol><li>Are you speaking to what they want as opposed to what you want? </li><li>Are you responding at the same emotional level? </li><li>Are you seeing the world as they see it? </li><li>Are you not responding to what the other really wants? </li></ol>﻿For the other person to hear anything you have to say, much less tell you more about themselves, they have to know that you seek to understand them and their position. Once that connection is made, then it is possible to bring up other issues and delve into more questions.

Meeting someone where they are

It is a lot more complicated than it seems. <ol><li>You truly don’t understand something at all. The best way to make sure your curiosity is authentic is to hold the mindset that, in spite of how perceptive you think you might be and how well you think you know another person, you don’t actually know what’s going on for them.  </li><li> You think you know all about it and are just asking questions to test your hypothesis. You’re not genuinely curious. You’ve largely made up your mind and are “leading the witness” to prove your case. That stance is unlikely to encourage the other to be more open and revealing. </li></ol>

Being curious

Asking the right kind can help encourage someone to share. <ul><li>Open-ended questions widen the scope of the conversation by generating options, new perspectives, or new ways of thinking about a situation. The most effective open-ended questions don’t begin with the word “why.” “Why” questions tend to drive people into their heads and out of their feelings. </li><li> Closed-ended questions, which usually can be answered with “yes” or “no,” narrow the conversation and are more likely to be felt as intrusive and judgmental. </li></ul>

Not all questions are created equal

Advice-giving makes it easy to misunderstand what the other really wants. People go to others for many reasons. Perhaps they want a chance to think out loud. Perhaps they simply want to vent and seek a sympathetic ear. Sometimes they just want support and empathy, rather than help figuring out a solution. The listener needs to be clear about what the other person wants.If you are going to provide someone with advice, you have to understand the situation fully, really know what the other wants, and take their style and approach into account. Also, most importantly, set aside what you would do.

Giving advice 

For a relationship to be sustainable, each person has to have enough of their needs met, and each must give things up. Over time, the benefits have to exceed the costs. As relationships develop and each person allows themselves to be more fully known, the two of them can learn how to increase the benefits and reduce the costs.

All relationships have trade-offs

Influence discrepancies exist in most relationships, though minor ones are rarely a barrier to talking honestly and coming to an effective solution. However, a significant difference in influence often results in a dysfunctional cycle.

Costs of large discrepancies

<ul><li>Assuming that your needs are secondary to the other’s</li><li> Not listening to your feeling</li><li>Letting yourself be interrupted </li><li>Backing down when someone disagrees with you</li><li> Avoiding conflict—not disagreeing with the other</li><li>Not giving feedback, assuming the problem is probably yours</li><li>Being concerned about being liked/approved of and seeing that as most important </li><li>Minimizing the importance of your comments</li><li>Not taking credit for your accomplishments</li><li>Not pointing out a problem unless you have a solution.</li></ul>The single most limiting one is the fear of conflict—believing that conflict is a sign of a flawed relationship.

How you give away influence

The information may say something about the giver, and it may say something about the receiver. But it is all data, and more data is better than less. Quite simply, you’re better off knowing than not. ﻿Accepting the validity of someone’s feedback also doesn’t mean you must act on it. Feedback is information for you to decide what to do with. It’s data with which to expand your choices.

All feedback is data

People use the “feedback sandwich,” thinking it will make difficult feedback easier to hear: starting with something positive (to soften up the other person), then saying something negative, and ending with something positive so they will feel good. Unfortunately, this approach rarely works. As soon as you start with the positive, the other’s defenses go up as they wait for the “but.” They brush aside the good news and don’t take it in. The feedback sandwich is often utilized because you’re concerned the recipient will feel totally rejected if you don’t throw in some positive reinforcement.

The feedback sandwich is flawed

A transformative guide to building more fulfilling relationships with colleagues, friends, partners, and family, based on the landmark Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy-Feely”) course at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business “Carole Robin and David Bradford are masters at helping people bring IQ and EQ together to satisfy both and be successful.”—Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater and author of Principles: Life and Work The ability to create strong relationships with others is crucial to living a full life and becoming more effective at work. Yet many of us find ourselves struggling to build solid personal and professional connections or unable to handle challenges that inevitably arise when we grow closer to others. When we find ourselves in an exceptional relationship—the kind of relationship in which we feel fully understood and supported for who we are—it can seem like magic. But the truth is that the process of building and sustaining these relationships can be described, learned, and applied. David Bradford and Carole Robin taught interpersonal skills to MBA candidates for a combined seventy-five years in their legendary Stanford Graduate School of Business course Interpersonal Dynamics (affectionately known to generations of students as “Touchy-Feely”) and have coached and consulted hundreds of executives for decades. In Connect, they show readers how to take their relationships from shallow to exceptional by cultivating authenticity, vulnerability, and honesty, while being willing to ask for and offer help, share a commitment to growth, and deal productively with conflict. Filled with relatable scenarios and research-backed insights, Connect is an important resource for anyone hoping to improve existing relationships and build new ones at any stage of life.

career

Career

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

books

Books

A transformative guide to building more fulfilling relationships with colleagues, friends, partners, and family, based on the landmark Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy-Feely”) course at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business ONE OF BLOOMBERG’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “Carole Robin and David Bradford are masters at helping people bring IQ and EQ together to satisfy both and be successful.”—Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater and author of Principles: Life and Work The ability to create strong relationships with others is crucial to living a full life and becoming more effective at work. Yet many of us find ourselves struggling to build solid personal and professional connections or unable to handle challenges that inevitably arise when we grow closer to others. When we find ourselves in an exceptional relationship—the kind of relationship in which we feel fully understood and supported for who we are—it can seem like magic. But the truth is that the process of building and sustaining these relationships can be described, learned, and applied. David Bradford and Carole Robin taught interpersonal skills to MBA candidates for a combined seventy-five years in their legendary Stanford Graduate School of Business course Interpersonal Dynamics (affectionately known to generations of students as “Touchy-Feely”) and have coached and consulted hundreds of executives for decades. In Connect, they show readers how to take their relationships from shallow to exceptional by cultivating authenticity, vulnerability, and honesty, while being willing to ask for and offer help, share a commitment to growth, and deal productively with conflict. Filled with relatable scenarios and research-backed insights, Connect is an important resource for anyone hoping to improve existing relationships and build new ones at any stage of life.

David Bradford, Ph.D.

Carole Robin, Ph.D.

Connect

We link mindfulness to alone time, meditation and recognizing and labeling one's own thoughts. How can we apply mindful practices to real-world social situations?

Mindfulness in Social Situations

Before a (say) meeting, create a list of three to five clearly stated issues or questions to discuss, and also distribute them for others to comment a few days beforehand.This gives everyone time to think about the topics deeply and give their most valuable input. Live situations tend to favor the loudest, whereas the text form promotes deeper thought.

Reflect Beforehand🤔

You don't need to rush to fill the empty moments in the conversation. Aim to not always be the person to break the silence. This promotes individual thinking in the participants.On the other hand, having no silent moments is interpreted as a competition, the discussion instantly becomes a debate, and at that point most people stop suggesting any ideas.

Appreciate the Empty Space💡

Create a short narrative (one or two chapters) of what was covered with a list of next steps. Don't be afraid to use emotional adjectives, such as challenging, difficult or complex, if they describe well how the conversation went. Word choices are important because they create a shared understanding of the discussion afterwards, which promotes more valuable action.Just stating the facts in the style of "topic x was discussed" without "how it felt" can create resentment, if people start guessing why problems are being hidden.

Reflect Afterwards↩️

Postpone your own interpretations, and assume that everyone wants to find the best solution with their set of skills. One exercise is to accept not the first, but the second interpretation that comes to your mind when you listen others speak. Also learn to recognize and label your own thoughts and separate them from what the other person says. Actively making notes on paper can help in this: arrows, smiley faces and adding quick labels such as risk or 👍 promotes your own understanding of the issue.

Labeling Thoughts in Conversation🌟

Being more mindful to others brings more value to interactions. It means actively listening to the other person as well as our own thought processes.

mindfulness

Mindfulness

Social Mindfulness

What often happens is that the acquired entity’s culture lies dormant in the first few weeks of integration due to the immediate and urgent operational necessity of other practical tasks. This is where communication is key.
Of course, culture is a complex network of behaviours that communications alone cannot control; however, the way in which we execute communications can have a strong bearing on how well all stakeholders (like leaders and employees) approach the subsequent cultural integration.

Culture Transfer During Mergers And Acquisitions

It just takes one side conversation that inadvertently deviates from the planned strategy to start the relationship off on the wrong foot. Make sure the leadership team is clearly aligned. 
One-on-one discussions take place as part of deal negotiation, and these conversations can have far-ranging consequences if they do not align with the long-term approach. Comms leaders should take ownership of clearly communicating the short- and long-term plans for the acquired brand and manage that workstream closely.

Five Practical Tips For Communications Leaders: Establish An Official Comms Workstream

When it comes to M&A, the reality is that business isn’t just business. People enable a business to operate, and people have feelings and emotions, particularly about changes that are out of their control.
Communications managers should become change agents, and it is important that their approach is gently assertive from the outset of the process. If you plan to retire a brand that a founder has spent 15 years building, the approach and tone for communicating that change are crucial to avoid friction, and in the worst cases, resistance.

Become A Change Agent

Just as you would when marketing to a potential prospect, you should take a needs-based approach and communicate based on what they want to know — not what you want to tell them. Prepare to handle objections; it’s inevitable.
Often, you can’t answer questions around contracts, benefits and org structure immediately, yet you need to acknowledge the question is there and that you intend to answer it as soon as you’re able to. This gives employees confidence that you aren’t oblivious to their concerns and are considering people as part of the process.

Anticipate Questions

The most impactful and effective comms are those that take the most time and effort to deliver. Two-way and visual comms are key; employees are no different from consumers or clients. They want to engage with humans and to feel that the business understands them as individuals. 
For example, a live discussion with the CEOs of both the acquirer and acquiree at the time of the announcement can settle nerves. Remember, the announcement comes out of the blue for the majority of employees — so it’s important to add faces to the communications to make them feel less clinical and unsettling.

Make It Personal

A tried-and-tested execution plan for both internal and external comms is important, yet it’s equally important not to be rigid with that strategy and to adjust your comms plan according to the way in which employees are responding in real time. 
People are the most unpredictable part of the M&A process, and their importance in the success of any deal simply cannot be underestimated. If you get it wrong at the start, you can end up with little pockets of cultural dissen

First Impressions Count

Marketing and comms are becoming increasingly important when it comes to successful M&As.

business

Business

Five Priorities For Communicating During Mergers And Acquisitions

If you’d like to be good at something, the first thing to go out the window is the notion of perfection.

Know that your response to a mistake defines the audience’s response. 
If you respond to spilling water on your pants as if it were the sinking of the Titanic, the audience will see it, and you, as a tragedy. But if you're cool, or better yet, find it funny, the audience will do the same.

Your Response

It’s often the case that the things speakers obsess about are the opposite of what the audience cares about. They want to be entertained. They want to learn. And most of all, they want you to do well.
Many mistakes you can make while performing do not prevent those things from happening. It’s the mistakes you make before you even say a word that matter more. These include the mistakes of not having an interesting opinion, of not thinking clearly about your points, and of not planning ways to make those points relevant to your audience.

What The Audience Want

If you pretend to have no fear of public speaking, you deny yourself the natural energy your body is giving you. Anxiety creates a kind of energy you can use, just as excitement does. 
Ian Tyson, a stand-up comedian and motivational speaker, offered this gem of advice: “The body’s reaction to fear and excitement is the same… so it becomes a mental decision: am I afraid or am I excited?

A Little Fear Is Good

I don’t practice to make perfect, and I don’t memorize. If I did either, I’d sound like a robot, or worse, like a person trying very hard to say things in an exact, specific, and entirely unnatural style, which people can spot a mile away. My intent is simply to know my material so well that I’m very comfortable with it. Confidence, not perfection, is the goal.

<ul>
<li>Getting to the venue early so you don’t have to rush</li>
<li>Doing tech and sound rehearsal well before your start time</li>
<li>Walking around the stage so your body feels safe in the room</li>
<li>Sitting in the audience so you have a physical sense of what they will see</li>
<li>Eating early enough so you won’t be hungry, but not right before your talk</li>
<li>Talking to some people in the audience before you start (if it suits you), so it’s no longer made up of strangers (friends are less likely to try to eat you).</li>
</ul>

Ways to Reduce Physical Stress and Nervousness

We can minimize most of these fears by realizing that we speak in public all the time. 
You’re already good at public speaking — the average person says 15,000 words a day.

Minimize Your Public Speaking Fears

People come because they:
<ul>
<li>Want to learn something</li>
<li>Wish to be inspired</li>
<li>Hope to be entertained</li>
<li>Have a need they hope you will satisfy</li>
<li>Desire to meet other people interested in the subject</li>
<li>Seek a positive experience they can share with others</li>
<li>Are forced to be there by their bosses, parents, professors, or spouses.</li>
</ul>

Why People Come To Hear Someone

You can say, “I have 30 minutes to talk to you, and five points to make. I will spend five minutes on each point and save the remaining time for any questions.”
That takes about ten seconds to say, but for that small price, you continue to own the attention of the room because they know the plan.

Tell The Audience Your Plan

Get the audience involved:
<ul>
<li>Ask for a show of hands.</li>
<li>Quiz them with trivia.</li>
<li>Give them a problem to solve.</li>
</ul>
When you enforce a popular rule, you re-engage everyone who supports that rule. You restore your power and earn the audience’s respect. So, don’t hesitate to cut off a blowhard, silence the guy on his cell phone, and interrupt the table having a private but distracting conversation. As long as you are polite and direct, you’ll be a hero.

Own The Audience

Scott Berkun’s Confessions of a Public Speaker is a practical and hilarious book that presents these powerful and evidence-based techniques that many people can borrow to share ideas with others and eventually become great communicators: continuous improvement, efficient preparation, practice, and getting timely feedback.

In this hilarious and highly practical book, author and professional speaker Scott Berkun reveals the techniques behind what great communicators do, and shows how anyone can learn to use them well. For managers and teachers -- and anyone else who talks and expects someone to listen -- Confessions of a Public Speaker provides an insider's perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. It's a unique, entertaining, and instructional romp through the embarrassments and triumphs Scott has experienced over 15 years of speaking to crowds of all sizes. With lively lessons and surprising confessions, you'll get new insights into the art of persuasion -- as well as teaching, learning, and performance -- directly from a master of the trade. Highlights include: Berkun's hard-won and simple philosophy, culled from years of lectures, teaching courses, and hours of appearances on NPR, MSNBC, and CNBC Practical advice, including how to work a tough room, the science of not boring people, how to survive the attack of the butterflies, and what to do when things go wrong The inside scoop on who earns $30,000 for a one-hour lecture and why The worst -- and funniest -- disaster stories you've ever heard (plus countermoves you can use) Filled with humorous and illuminating stories of thrilling performances and real-life disasters, Confessions of a Public Speaker is inspirational, devastatingly honest, and a blast to read.

In this hilarious and highly practical book, author and professional speaker Scott Berkun reveals the techniques behind what great communicators do, and shows how anyone can learn to use them well. For managers and teachers -- and anyone else who talks and expects someone to listen -- Confessions of a Public Speaker provides an insider's perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. It's a unique, entertaining, and instructional romp through the embarrassments and triumphs Scott has experienced over 15 years of speaking to crowds of all sizes.With lively lessons and surprising confessions, you'll get new insights into the art of persuasion -- as well as teaching, learning, and performance -- directly from a master of the trade.Highlights include:<ul><li>Berkun's hard-won and simple philosophy, culled from years of lectures, teaching courses, and hours of appearances on NPR, MSNBC, and CNBC</li><li>Practical advice, including how to work a tough room, the science of not boring people, how to survive the attack of the butterflies, and what to do when things go wrong</li><li>The inside scoop on who earns $30,000 for a one-hour lecture and why</li><li>The worst -- and funniest -- disaster stories you've ever heard (plus countermoves you can use)</li></ul>Filled with humorous and illuminating stories of thrilling performances and real-life disasters, Confessions of a Public Speaker is inspirational, devastatingly honest, and a blast to read.

Scott Berkun

Confessions of a Public Speaker

Every poet should ask themselves these two questions:<ol><li>Whose shoulders do you stand on?</li><li>What do you stand for?</li></ol> Public speaking can feel terrifying. One way to find the strength to speak up is to think of people whose shoulders you can stand on. From this height, we have the sight to see the power of poetry, of expressible language.

The value of speaking out

Poetry is a language of bridges, not barriers. And this power of connection makes it political. There are three ways in which the decision to create and have a voice is a political act:<ul><li>The stories we tell. When, where, and how we're telling our stories says a lot about the political beliefs we hold.</li><li>Who gets to have their stories told. The person who tells the stories says a lot about the political and educational systems in which these stories and storytellers exist.</li><li>Poetry is focused on people. In history, tyrants often go after the creatives and books first.</li></ul>

Poetry is political

Poets have the ability to connect the beliefs of private individuals with the cause of change of the people, the polity, the political movement."They buried us, but they didn't know we were seeds." That's poetry.Martin Luther King Jr, saying "We will be able to hew out of this mountain of despair a stone of hope."  That's poetry.

Poetry unite beliefs

Poetry is not about offering the correct answers; it's about asking the right questions. Doing right by your words and actions is to honour the people whose shoulders you stand on. They have started a process so that we can have the courage to build on it.

Poetry dares to ask daring questions a nation may face

Poetry is for everyone. At its core, it’s about connection and collaboration. Amanda Gorman explains why it is also political.

For anyone who believes poetry is stuffy or elitist, Amanda Gorman -- the youngest inaugural poet in US history -- has some characteristically well-chosen words. Poetry is for everyone, she says, and at its core it's all about connection and collaboration. In this fierce talk and performance, she explains why poetry is inherently political, pays homage to her honorary ancestors and stresses the value of speaking out despite your fears. "Poetry has never been the language of barriers," Gorman says. "It's always been the language of bridges."

politics

Politics

Using your voice is a political choice

The basic idea is to firewall processing as a discrete phase you go through no more than every hour or two at the most. For God’s sake, don’t live in your Inbox if there’s any way you can avoid it.

How I process my email Inbox

Processing determines as quickly as possible what, if anything, to do with each piece (in ascending order of urgency and importance):<ul><li>delete it</li><li>archive it</li><li>defer it for (a) later response</li><li>generate an action from it</li><li>respond to it immediately (if it—literally—will take less than 2 minutes or is so Earth-shattering that it just can’t wait)</li></ul>

Processing

Then as often as time allows, I return to the response and action folders and crank through as many replies and complete (or generate) as many todos as I can—usually in 5-email sprints.The critical point, as ever, is to focus on action and not on the administration and housekeeping. If the action is just a response, respond. If it requires more than a return email, either do it or get it in your “next actions” and keep moving.

Focus on action

“You have to remember you’re in the business of making sandwiches—not deciding the prettiest way to stack the customers’ orders.”

An email auto-check set for every minute means 60 potential distractions every hour, or almost 500 per day. Look back at a week of your emails and ask yourself: how many distractions was that really worth? How much crucial, instantly actionable email did I receive to make it worth shifting my attention over 2000 times?

Shifting attention

Follow-up to the email productivity post. Short overview of how I process my inbox. read&nbsp;more&nbsp;&raquo;

productivity

Productivity

Quick tips on processing your email inbox

In an experiment, respondents were given two scenarios: How much were they willing to pay for<ul><li> a 24-piece luxury dinner set in good condition</li><li>a 40-piece dinnerware set, where some items were broken.</li></ul>The respondents were willing to spend twice as much for the 24-piece set even though the 40-piece set still had more pieces. This effect is known as the dilution bias, where the broken items dilute the overall perceived value. This cognitive effect has important implications for our ability to be heard and listened to when we speak.

The dilution effect

Far too often, people speak up but fail to influence. Their message was sound, but their delivery was faulty.
Our minds use two types of information:
<ul>
<li>diagnostic (relevant information) and</li>
<li>nondiagnostic (irrelevant or inconsequential information).</li>
</ul>
When the two categories of information are mixed, dilution occurs.
When you introduce irrelevant or weak arguments, you will reduce the importance of your overall argument.

Quality trumps quantity

When you communicate for influence, increasing the number of arguments actively weakens your case. You cannot increase the quality of an argument by increasing the quantity of your argument.   Instead, focus only on your strong arguments.

Strengthen your argument

What's the best way to make a good point? Organizational psychologist Niro Sivanathan offers a fascinating lesson on the "dilution effect," a cognitive quirk that weakens our strongest cases -- and reveals why brevity is the true soul of persuasion.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

The counterintuitive way to be more persuasive

When confronted with information that challenges our worldview, we tend to close up. However, we can learn with the right tools and techniques, not looking for victory but moving the dialogue forward.

Constructive conversations move forward

At least one party in the conversation should be open to the idea that the discussion is a climbing wall, not a clash. The point of a curiosity conversation is to understand the other person's perspective. Next time someone says something you immediately disagree with, say, "I never thought of it that way before. What can you share that would help me see what you see?" When you do this, people tend to become curious about you.

Choose curiosity over clash

A constructive conversation is a series of presenting an idea, getting your idea attacked, you adapt and re-explain. The expectation is that your idea gets better when it is challenged and criticised. Successful negotiators from high-stakes international negotiations go into conversations expecting to learn from the challenges they'll receive and use objections to refine their proposals.

Develop ideas through discussion

In some situations, it can feel like the discussion is not worth it. That is often because the purpose of the discussion isn't clear. In that case, it helps to start with the big picture before moving to the details. Consider asking your counterpart to describe what kind of neighbourhood, country, world, community they want a year or a decade from now. This opens up the opportunity for a conversation with a purpose.

Find a common purpose

"We need to figure out how we go into conversations not looking for the victory, but the progress," says world debate champion Julia Dhar. In this practical talk, she shares three essential features of productive disagreements grounded in curiosity and purpose. The end result? Constructive conversations that sharpen your argument and strengthen your relationships.

How to have constructive conversations

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