<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">The Purpose Principle - Having a clear and compelling sense of purpose, including your passions, talents, and value you want to create. Provides direction and focus.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">The Promises Principle - Keeping commitments and doing what you say you will do builds trust and credibility. Avoid hollow promises.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">The Projects Principle - Relentlessly projecting your purpose and priorities outward through communications and modeling desired behaviors.</li></ul>

Transformational Leadership: The Seven Principles Part 1

<ul><li>The Persuasion Principle - Influencing others by first understanding their thoughts, feelings and beliefs in order to shape behaviors.</li><li>The Praising Principle - Using sincere, timely and specific praise builds confidence, reinforces behaviors and shows you are paying attention.</li><li>The Perseverance Principle - Grit and persistence are key determinants of success. Nurture determination and resilience.</li><li>The Preparation Principle - Personal transformation must come first before driving organizational change. Prepare meticulously.</li></ul>

Transformational Leadership: The Seven Principles: Part 2

<ul><li>Having a clear sense of purpose is foundational, including defining your passions, natural talents and the value you aim to create.</li><li>Articulate how your skills uniquely serve customers and stakeholders. Understand what intrinsically motivates you.</li><li>Continuously revisit and refine your leadership purpose to ensure alignment as circumstances evolve.</li></ul>Great leaders have tremendous clarity of purpose.

Clarify Your Leadership Purpose

<ul><li>Keeping promises and doing what you say you will do is ultimately how credibility and trust are built with colleagues and customers.</li><li>Avoid making hollow commitments just to placate or appease.</li><li>Have the courage to transparently say no to requests that don't align with priorities. Then doggedly follow through on voluntary promises.</li></ul>

Keep Promises to Build Trust

Be relentless about vocally and visibly projecting your leadership purpose and strategic priorities outward into every facet of communication, operations and culture.<ul><li>Consistently tie projects and policies back to central goals so the connections are clear.</li><li>Weave key messages into conversations, presentations and staff meetings.</li><li>Model behaviors that reflect core values.</li><li>Project your vision so it becomes woven into the organizational mindset at all levels</li></ul>

Project Your Purpose and Priorities 

When seeking to persuade and influence others, first take time to understand existing thoughts, feelings and beliefs before attempting to shape behaviors.Know what truly motivates people before asking for buy-in. Discover how your requests will be perceived.This empathy, plus shaping communications accordingly, is what leads people to say yes.

Understand What Drives People

Sincere, specific and timely praise builds confidence, reinforces positive behaviors and shows employees you are paying close attention to their efforts.Generic praise rings hollow. The most effective recognition is specific and highlights real contributions. It feels authentic when delivered naturally rather than scheduled.

Praise Sincerely, Specifically and Timely

<ul><li>While talent is crucial, perseverance is the ultimate determinant of success.</li><li>Nurture grit, resilience and determination in yourself and your team.</li><li>Help people maintain optimism during setbacks.</li><li>Rather than obsess over flaws, focus on building strengths. Allow space for reflection and renewal to avoid burnout. Embrace a growth mindset.</li><li>Demonstrate willingness to take calculated risks and then persist through uncertainty</li></ul>

Perseverance Trumps Talent

Personal mindset transformation must come first before driving organizational change.<ul><li>Take time for self-examination, build new skills and understand needed shifts.</li><li>Prepare meticulously for the future state you envision.</li><li>Assemble the necessary resources and team.</li><li>Anticipate challenges and build contingencies.</li><li>Don't force immediate radical change.</li><li>Bring people along through clear communication and celebrating incremental progress.</li></ul>

Prepare Thoroughly for Transformation

Enable employees to flourish through supportive leadership, development and empowerment. This inherently boosts their ability to create remarkable customer experiences.Satisfied, engaged employees treat customers better. Unleash human potential by eliminating needless policies and barriers that create frustration.Facilitate collaboration and purpose. Nurture creativity, mastery and autonomy.

Create Flourishing Experiences

7 Principles of Transformational Leadership" is a book written by Hugh Blane . It was published in June 2018. The book presents seven principles that can help transform individuals and organizations by creating a mindset of passion, innovation, and growth. Blane draws on his 30 years of experience as a business strategist to provide practical advice and examples for applying these principles.

In the world of work, the single greatest asset of successful individuals, teams, and organizations is their mindset—what happens in between their ears. It’s not the corporate strategy, the sales compensation plan, or the market segments they’re pursuing. It is what each leader, team member, and employee chooses to focus on, believe, and create for themselves and others.7 Principles of Transformational Leadership presents the fundamental concepts whose implementation will result in dramatic revenue, performance, and relationship growth. Specifically, leaders will learn to:Live their professional and personal lives with unbridled purpose and passion.Execute strategic priorities more effectively and with accelerated results.Retain the brightest and best talent.Have employees, key stakeholders, and managers enthusiastically follow them.Be exemplars of innovation, growth, and positive mindsets.Cascade excellence throughout their organizations.You may have employees with all the talent in the world, but you’ll never achieve remarkable results until you change your employees’ mindset. 7 Principles of Transformational Leadership will help you convert your human potential into accelerated business results.

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

business

Business

books

Books

product

Product & Design

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Hugh Blane

7 Principles of Transformational Leadership

Some companies are far more successful than others, even when they appear nearly identical on the surface.For example, Home Depot is significantly more profitable than its competitor Lowe's, despite both being home improvement retailers.The key difference lies in how exceptional companies create value for customers, employees, and partners - not just how much profit they can extract.The message is clear: focus on value first, profit second.

The Premise: Value First

If your product is great, it doesn’t need to be good.

Focus on increasing willingness to pay (WTP), not just sales. Go beyond quality and branding to leverage complements that raise WTP. Like Amazon selling Kindle e-readers and ebooks together.<ul><li> Identify and double down on the few key value drivers that influence customer purchase decisions. </li><li>Eliminate unnecessary features that don't move WTP. </li><li>Value for customers creates competitive advantage.</li></ul>

Value for Customers: Willingness To Pay

Reduce willingness to sell (WTS) of talent and suppliers. Compensation shifts value, better working conditions create value. Improve collaboration to reduce supplier costs. <ul><li>Fear of uneven benefit sharing limits potential. </li><li>Share gains to encourage win-wins. </li><li>Lowering WTS increases commitment and flexibility.</li></ul>

Value for Employees and Suppliers: Willingness To Sell

<ul><li>Boost productivity through scale, learning and management basics. </li><li>The best firms are far more productive than laggards. Management tools like goal setting and feedback are powerful but underused. </li><li>Scale and learning effects can also substantially lower costs. </li><li>First mover advantage only lasts if learning is at an optimal pace.</li></ul>

Productivity 



Cascade strategy with value maps that link value concepts to projects and KPIs. Illustrate how each activity raises WTP or lowers WTS. Connect strategic objectives to operational drivers. This alignment empowers the organization to create value.

Map Value to Performance 



Value must be the core, not profit. Business reputation suffers when value is neglected. Creativity applied to value benefits all. Make life better for customers, employees and partners. This purpose leads to exceptional performance.

Do the Right Thing

When value drives decisions, profits follow. Vexing problems can be solved with value creation imagination. Business can raise standards of living when value sits at its core. This is the path to broad prosperity.

Think Value, Profit Follows



Value or profit is a false choice. Exceptional financial performance reflects value.

The book "Better, Simpler Strategy: A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance" was written by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2021. The book offers a strategic framework for companies looking to achieve exceptional performance by doing less, and has been named one of the best strategy books of 2021.

Named one of the best strategy books of 2021 by strategy+businessGet to better, more effective strategy.In nearly every business segment and corner of the world economy, the most successful companies dramatically outperform their rivals. What is their secret? In Better, Simpler Strategy, Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee shows how these companies achieve more by doing less. At a time when rapid technological change and global competition conspire to upend traditional ways of doing business, these companies pursue radically simplified strategies. At a time when many managers struggle not to drown in vast seas of projects and initiatives, these businesses follow simple rules that help them select the few ideas that truly make a difference.Better, Simpler Strategy provides readers with a simple tool, the value stick, which every organization can use to make its strategy more effective and easier to execute. Based on proven financial mechanics, the value stick helps executives decide where to focus their attention and how to deepen the competitive advantage of their business.How does the value stick work? It provides a way of measuring the two fundamental forces that lead to value creation and increased financial success—the customer's willingness-to-pay and the employee's willingness-to-sell their services to the business. Companies that win, Oberholzer-Gee shows, create value for customers by raising their willingness-to-pay, and they provide value for talent by lowering their willingness-to-sell. The approach, proven in practice, is entirely data driven and uniquely suited to be cascaded throughout the organization.With many useful visuals and examples across industries and geographies, Better, Simpler Strategy explains how these two key measures enable firms to gauge and improve their strategies and operations. Based on the author's sought-after strategy course, this book is your must-have guide for making better strategic decisions.

Felix Oberholzer-Gee

Better, Simpler Strategy

The inner critic manifests in our minds through repetitive, harshly judgmental self-talk that points out perceived mistakes, inadequacies, faults and shortcomings.Recognizing the negative tone and repetitive nature of this inner voice is the first step in banishing your inner critic.Become aware of when your inner dialogue becomes critical rather than constructive.

Identifying Your Inner Critic's Voice

Failure and mistakes should be redefined as an essential, inevitable part of the learning process and personal growth rather than something to be avoided at all costs.<ul><li>Adopting a growth mindset allows you to move past perfectionism, excessive self-blame and fear of failure.</li><li>Reframe moments of failure as feedback and opportunity for improvement.</li></ul>

Reframing Failure as Growth 

The inner critic is the voice inside our heads that finds fault and shortcoming in just about everything we do.

Take time to deeply reflect on the situations or circumstances that tend to trigger the voice of your inner critic, whether it's taking on challenges, receiving evaluations, comparisons with others, etc.Uncover the roots of your inner critic, like childhood experiences, trauma, personality traits or cognitive distortions.

Examining Your Critic's Triggers

<ul><li>Proactively build a coping toolbox with techniques to help relieve excessive self-criticism when it arises, rather than reacting in the moment.</li><li>Potential tools include journaling, exercise, counseling, mindfulness practices, distraction, cognitive restructuring and more.</li></ul>Find what works best for you.

Building Your Coping Toolbox 

<ul><li>Make conscious choices each day to stick to utilizing your coping strategies.</li><li>Celebrate small wins and progress.</li><li>Enlist others to hold you accountable.</li><li>Be vigilant, as old critical patterns of thinking may resurface even after initial improvements.</li><li>Changing deeply ingrained self-talk requires ongoing effort.</li></ul>

Maintaining Positive Changes Long-Term

<ul><li>Intentionally counteract the harsh judgments of your inner critic with conscious self-compassion.</li><li>Actively treat yourself with the same empathy, care and kindness you would show a dear friend in challenging times.</li><li>Daily self-compassion practices like positive affirmations, self-care, and loving-kindness meditation can transform self-talk.</li></ul>

Practicing Self-Compassion

Self-compassion studies show that treating yourself with kindness and empathy not only helps abate harsh self-criticism, but also enhances motivation.

The book Banish Your Inner Critic by Denise Jacobs aims to help readers silence their inner critic and overcome self-doubt. It provides strategies to cultivate more positive self-talk and transform one's relationship with failure.

“Gives you the practical tools you need to own the room by owning yourself. Banish that inner devil’s advocate and become as powerful as you can be.” —Alan Cooper, software alchemist, cofounder of Cooper   As the Founder and Chief Creativity Evangelist of “The Creative Dose,” Denise Jacobs teaches techniques to make the creative process more fluid, methods for making work environments more conducive to personal productivity, and practices for sparking innovation. Now, in her book, Banish Your Inner Critic, Denise shows you how to defeat those barriers that are holding you back and achieve success through a positive mental attitude.   Banish Your Inner Critic shows you how to move beyond that mental block to your creative ideas, realize instant relief and lasting insight, and:   · Identify and quiet the voice of self-doubt in your head · Master 3 powerful practices that will transform how you relate to yourself and your creativity forever · Overcome the fear of not knowing enough or not being original enough · Free yourself from comparisons, overwhelm, high self-criticism and self-sabotage · Transform your self-talk into a tool for success · Generate more creative ideas than ever before · Embrace your expertise and share your brilliance with the world   Banish your Inner Critic to start doing your best work, achieving excellence, and contributing meaningfully to the world!   “If you’re interested in diving deep into your own creative genius, this book will give you an abundance of ways to do that.” —Michelle Villalobos, “The Superstar Activator” & founder of The Women’s Success Summit   “A book I believe will inspire a new generation to step out of the shadows and shine.” —Paul Boag, author of User Experience Revolution

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

creativity

Creativity

Denise Jacobs

Banish Your Inner Critic

Great leaders turn ideas into captivating causes that motivate others to act.

Human attention is increasingly overwhelmed by digital distraction. To earn attention, we must understand its psychology - our needs for novelty, emotion, and vision.Design captivating messages and experiences that speak to these needs.

Understanding Human Attention

<ul><li>Leverage classic storytelling techniques of conflict, tension, stakes, and resolution.</li><li>Build empathy through relatable characters.</li><li>Frame stories around transformation and meaning.</li><li>Make abstract ideas vivid through narrative.</li><li>Stories spark action.</li></ul>

Crafting Captivating Stories

Curiosity is key to engagement. Leave gaps for the imagination. Hint at something deeper. Ask provocative questions. Reveal secrets and insights over time.Surprise people and subvert expectations. Set up mysteries.

Cultivating Curiosity

Authenticity requires sharing genuine motives and personality. Be boldly vulnerable. Celebrate flaws. Abandon polished perfection; it distances people.Imperfection breeds connection when real.

Conveying Authenticity

Activation requires inspiration. Convey your purpose clearly. Show how you improve lives. Paint a vision people can participate in.Enable people to transcend self-interest and be part of something meaningful.

Inspiring with Purpose

<ul><li>Experiences, not just information, grab attention.</li><li>Craft immersive events that engage the senses on many levels.</li><li>Make people active participants, not just observers.</li><li>Leverage surprises and rituals.</li></ul>

Designing Mesmerizing Experiences

Ideas must spark conversations and sharing to spread. Determine your key messages and calls to action.Make content visual, unexpected, and emotional to increase sharing.

Spreading Contagious Messages

Avoid vanity metrics like views or followers. Assess how you change beliefs, inspire action, build loyalty, and help people.Measure authentic engagement and lives touched, not just reach.

Measuring Authentic Impact 

Captivology: The Science of Capturing People's Attention is a book by Ben Parr. In the book, Parr examines the psychological phenomenon that captivates our attention and how we can use this to our advantage.He looks at the science behind attention and explores the factors that make something captivating, including storytelling, emotion, engagement, and more.

The former editor of Mashable and cofounder of DominateFund examines the psychological phenomena that captivate our attention—and how we can leverage them to draw and retain attention for our ideas, work, companies, and more.Whether you’re an artist or a salesperson, a teacher or an engineer, a marketer or a parent—putting the spotlight on your ideas, insights, projects and products requires a deep understanding of the science of attention. In Captivology, award-winning journalist and entrepreneur Ben Parr explains how and why the mind pays attention to some events or people—and not others—and presents seven captivation triggers—techniques guaranteed to help you capture and retain the attention of friends, colleagues, customers, fans, and even strangers.Parr combines the latest research on attention with interviews with more than fifty scientists and visionaries—Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, film director Steven Soderbergh, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, magician Jon Armstrong, New York Times bestselling author Susan Cain, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, founder of Reddit Alexis Ohanian, and more—who have successfully brought their ideas, projects, companies, and products to the forefront of cultural consciousness. The result is an insightful and practical book that will change how you assign jobs to your kids or staff, craft a multi-million dollar ad campaign, deliver your next presentation, attract users to your product, or convince the world to support your cause.

Ben Parr

Captivology

<ul><li>Focus on relentlessly honing and mastering your core craft rather than chasing endless business growth and scale. </li><li>Grow your impact and income vertically by getting better at what you uniquely do, not expanding your offerings horizontally. </li><li>Stay small and focused intentionally in order to maintain control over your work and brand. </li><li>Growth for its own sake is often counterproductive beyond a certain point of diminishing returns.</li></ul>

Valuing the Mastery of Craft Over Growth

Scaling your business makes you beholden to it rather than having it work for you.

Connect with individual customers in an authentic way that builds loyalty and community rather than chasing mass markets and faceless scale. Marketing should be human-focused first and foremost before technical scale. Nurture real relationships that can outlast fads. Avoid diluting your brand through excessive bureaucracy and hierarchy. Keep quality high by staying small.

Creating Authentic Individual Connections 

Become world-class at one core niche skill rather than diluting your gifts across too many areas. Fame and rapid growth often erode quality, uniqueness and passion. Depth of expertise beats breadth. Identify the true essence of your craft and polish it repeatedly to perfection. Resist scope creep.

Pursuing Mastery Within a Niche

Design your business model and operations to maximize freedom, flexibility and independence rather than chasing VC funding or high valuations. <ul><li>Avoid exponential growth that sacrifices lifestyle, enjoyment or control. </li><li>Remain location independent. </li><li>You set the terms for how, when and where you work.</li></ul>

Structuring Your Business for Maximum Freedom

Reject the conventional wisdom that bigger is always better. An endless drive for more customers, data and staff often creates complexity rather than efficiency. Stay intentionally small and lean to enable agility. Imposing constraints breeds creativity. You likely don't need a huge empire to find success.

Ignoring Conventional Growth-Focused Wisdom

Improve your offering, processes and systems through small but constant iterations versus trying to rapidly scale up overnight. Listen carefully to customer feedback and let it drive incremental innovations. Radical growth often stifles innovation and jeopardizes quality. Evolve don't explode.

Iterating and Evolving Rather Than Rapidly Scaling

<ul><li>Automate tedious administrative or repetitive tasks but not core creative work where the human touch still matters most. </li><li>Excessive automation can damage quality, uniqueness and humanity. </li><li>Use technology thoughtfully - to liberate human efforts on what people do best.</li></ul>

Automating Smartly to Augment Human Effort

<ul><li>Stay small enough to maximize control over your use of time, your personal brand, culture and revenue streams. </li><li>Large hierarchical organizations inevitably face bureaucracy and dilution. </li><li>Fierce independence often fuels innovation and nimbleness. Less can be more.</li></ul>

Savoring the Control From Remaining Small

In Company of One, Paul Jarvis makes the case for staying small and rejecting growth for growth's sake. He provides strategies for solopreneurs to thrive through focus on perfecting their craft, not endless expansion.

What if the real key to a richer and more fulfilling career was not to create and scale a new start-up, but rather, to be able to work for yourself, determine your own hours, and become a (highly profitable) and sustainable company of one? Suppose the better--and smarter--solution is simply to remain small? This book explains how to do just that. Company of One is a refreshingly new approach centered on staying small and avoiding growth, for any size business. Not as a freelancer who only gets paid on a per piece basis, and not as an entrepreneurial start-up that wants to scale as soon as possible, but as a small business that is deliberately committed to staying that way. By staying small, one can have freedom to pursue more meaningful pleasures in life, and avoid the headaches that result from dealing with employees, long meetings, or worrying about expansion. Company of One introduces this unique business strategy and explains how to make it work for you, including how to generate cash flow on an ongoing basis. Paul Jarvis left the corporate world when he realized that working in a high-pressure, high profile world was not his idea of success. Instead, he now works for himself out of his home on a small, lush island off of Vancouver, and lives a much more rewarding and productive life. He no longer has to contend with an environment that constantly demands more productivity, more output, and more growth. In Company of One, Jarvis explains how you can find the right pathway to do the same, including planning how to set up your shop, determining your desired revenues, dealing with unexpected crises, keeping your key clients happy, and of course, doing all of this on your own.

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Paul Jarvis

Company of One

Great products are built on a process of discovery and refinement.

Design is about trying many ideas, culling the great from the good.

<ul><li>Quickly building prototypes to tangibly test concepts early allows concrete evaluation before over-investing. </li><li>Refine through continual iteration against benchmarks, like improving page load speeds iteratively using automated testing. </li><li>This avoids analysis paralysis and contributes to creating products that feel "alive" as described in the provided text.</li></ul>

Prototyping Early to Test Concepts Iteratively

Collaborate across specialties like design, engineering, and marketing to enrich ideas through collective wisdom. Overlap of skills and knowledge in dedicated team members creates shared vision and cohesion across the holistic product experience and appearance.

Fostering Cross-Functional Collaboration for Cohesion

Page load speed was a major concern when developing Safari. Steve demanded that the browser be fast, so the team was tasked with developing a set of automated tests that would launch the browser and have it load a series of web pages in succession before reporting the speed.  They soon had their "Page Load Test" (PLT) benchmark in place, ensuring that the product became "faster by never getting slower.

The Safari Story

<ul><li>Innovate within practical project constraints like technology limitations and deadlines.</li><li>Understand necessary compromises between features and resources.</li><li>Pare down to the essentials through decisive prioritization for coherence and avoiding aimlessness as highlighted. </li></ul>

Working Within Constraints by Prioritizing Decisively

<ul><li>Explore a wide breadth of options with divergent thinking before deciding direction. </li><li>This opens possibilities rather than jumping to solutions. </li><li>Avoid confirmation bias by first diverging then converging.</li></ul>

Exploring Wide Options Before Choosing to Avoid Bias

<ul><li>As highlighted in "taste", maintain coherent user experience integrity throughout the design process. </li><li>Details like visual language should align to and advance the overall product vision and usage. </li><li>This contributes to a "gratifying and integrated whole."</li></ul>

Ensuring User Experience Integrity for Cohesion

Debate opinions vigorously with evidence, but support final decision once made as described in "decisiveness". Avoid analysis paralysis. Execute the vision decisively with full team energy and dedication. Do not second-guess. Unified commitment once chosen is key.

Deciding Decisively to Execute Unitedly with Dedication

Inside Apple's Design Methodology During the Steve Jobs Era. Software engineer Ken Kocienda, the author, worked on the first iPhone, among other projects.The author discusses Apple's software development process and why, in his opinion, it was a key factor in the company's ability to produce products of the highest caliber.

* WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * An insider's account of Apple's creative process during the golden years of Steve Jobs. Hundreds of millions of people use Apple products every day; several thousand work on Apple's campus in Cupertino, California; but only a handful sit at the drawing board. Creative Selection recounts the life of one of the few who worked behind the scenes, a highly-respected software engineer who worked in the final years of the Steve Jobs era—the Golden Age of Apple. Ken Kocienda offers an inside look at Apple’s creative process. For fifteen years, he was on the ground floor of the company as a specialist, directly responsible for experimenting with novel user interface concepts and writing powerful, easy-to-use software for products including the iPhone, the iPad, and the Safari web browser. His stories explain the symbiotic relationship between software and product development for those who have never dreamed of programming a computer, and reveal what it was like to work on the cutting edge of technology at one of the world's most admired companies. Kocienda shares moments of struggle and success, crisis and collaboration, illuminating each with lessons learned over his Apple career. He introduces the essential elements of innovation—inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy—and uses these as a lens through which to understand productive work culture. An insider's tale of creativity and innovation at Apple, Creative Selection shows readers how a small group of people developed an evolutionary design model, and how they used this methodology to make groundbreaking and intuitive software which countless millions use every day.

Ken Kocienda

Creative Selection

Public speaking is dangerous and powerful. When done right, lives change.

Learn to reframe anxiety as excitement to positively fuel your stage presence. Recognize nervousness simply means you genuinely care about your presentation. Harness that energy, don’t resist it. A perfect smooth deliver can feel robotic. Embrace imperfections and stay true to your passion, as that authenticity builds rapport with audiences.

Reframing Nerves as Excitement and Passion

<ul><li>Hook audiences’ attention quickly and make them care about your topic. </li><li>Organize your content in a logical flow that progressively builds understanding from basic concepts to more complex ideas.</li><li> Signpost transitions clearly. Word choice greatly impacts audience comprehension. Remove unnecessary complexities.</li></ul>

Structuring Content in a Clear, Logical Flow  

Great public speaking is more about connection than perfection.

Thoroughly prepare your talk structure, key points and stories, but leave room to improvise and be responsive in the moment. Rigidly scripted, word-for-word deliveries often feel stale. React to audience reactions. No plan survives first contact; be adaptable.

Balancing Thorough Preparation with In-the-Moment Flexibility

Humanize abstract concepts through vivid, memorable stories and examples. Stories captivate audiences, drive meaning, and aid retention much more than mere facts or data ever could. Build talks around relatable narratives.

Incorporating Impactful Stories and Examples

<ul><li>Pay close attention to audience reactions moment-to-moment, and seamlessly adapt your pace, tone, volume, energy level and choice of examples to re-engage them. </li><li>Base adjustments on real-time feedback from the room. </li><li>Every audience has a different energy.</li></ul>

Reading the Room and Adjusting Accordingly

<ul><li>Don’t feel pressured to pretend to have all the answers. </li><li>It can be enormously powerful to admit doubts, embrace vulnerability, and share personal stories of imperfection. </li><li>This builds trust and human connection. Avoid polished facades.</li></ul>

Embracing Vulnerability and Imperfection Authentically

<ul><li>Improve skills by repetitively practicing presentations in low-stakes environments. </li><li>Record yourself and provide self-critiques. But also invite honest observer feedback. </li><li>Critique to identify improvement areas. Turn performances into learning opportunities.</li></ul>

Intentional, Iterative Practice and Critique

Explain directly why your talk matters to audience’s lives and interests. Paint a vision of the key post-talk insights and actions you want them to take away. Inspire people by illuminating shared meaning, purpose and human truths.

Connecting Content Purposefully to Why It Matters

 In Confessions of a Public Speaker, Scott Berkun provides an entertaining insider's look at the world of public speaking, sharing practical advice for improving presentations, managing nerves, engaging audiences, and learning from mistakes.

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.

communication

Communication

Scott Berkun

Confessions of a Public Speaker

Conversations are the pathway to understanding and engagement that lead to good relationships.

<ul><li>Bring your full presence, focus, and mindfulness to conversations by shedding distractions and mental clutter. </li><li>Tune into emotions, energy shifts, and nonverbal cues flowing underneath the surface. </li><li>Be aware of all dimensions of the interaction unfolding in the present moment. Presence enhances connection.</li></ul>

Being Fully Present and Mindful

Approach conversations with genuine curiosity about the other's perspective, empathy for their experiences, and an openness to wherever the interaction leads organically. Avoid preconceived notions or forcing a predetermined agenda. Let go of limiting assumptions. See each conversation as a discovery process.

Cultivating Curiosity, Empathy and Openness

Ask thoughtful, engaging questions that organically reveal motivations, elicit illuminating stories, draw out creative insights, and stimulate both parties' thinking. Avoid assumptions. Let answers determine the direction to guide discussion and inspiration.

Asking Thoughtful, Insightful Questions

<ul><li>Listen deeply not just with your ears but all your senses, to fully understand context, emotion, and meaning below the surface. </li><li>Reflect back your understanding of insights shared to show you truly hear the person. Receive generously.</li></ul>

Deeply Listening with an Open Mind and Senses

Express your own ideas concisely, vividly, and with compelling analogies and examples that crystallize understanding rather than overwhelming with pure data and verbosity. Craft your words and messages to resonate at a core human level.

Expressing Ideas Clearly and Concisely

Establish shared understanding by synthesizing key facts, diverse ideas, and emotional sentiments expressed from both sides into collective meaning. Leave space for co-creating unified understanding through two-way dialogue.

Establishing Shared Understanding and Meaning

Give space for people to think out loud, elaborate, and arrive at their own insights and breakthroughs through your receptive, non-judgmental presence. Guide discovery through questions rather than forcing pre-determined conclusions.

Leaving Room for People's Self Discovery

<ul><li>Take time to clarify shared purpose and mutually beneficial desired outcomes upfront to provide overall direction. </li><li>But also stay open to new value and possibilities that may emerge through the organic flow of your interactions and exchanges.</li></ul>

Aligning on Shared Purpose and Mutual Outcomes

In Conversational Intelligence, Judith E. Glaser provides frameworks for elevating the quality of connections through mindfulness, empathy, and purposeful questioning. She offers communication tools to build trust.

The key to success in life and business is to become a master at Conversational Intelligence. It's not about how smart you are, but how open you are to learn new and effective powerful conversational rituals that prime the brain for trust, partnership, and mutual success. Conversational Intelligence translates the wealth of new insights coming out of neuroscience from across the globe, and brings the science down to earth so people can understand and apply it in their everyday lives. Author Judith Glaser presents a framework for knowing what kind of conversations trigger the lower, more primitive brain; and what activates higher-level intelligences such as trust, integrity, empathy, and good judgment. Conversational Intelligence makes complex scientific material simple to understand and apply through a wealth of easy to use tools, examples, conversational rituals, and practices for all levels of an organization.

Judith E. Glaser

Conversational Intelligence

The craziest ideas—the ones that are most likely to change the world—are often the hardest ones to sell. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying. We build the skills and invest the energy to make ourselves backable. And we realize, as all backable people eventually do, that when you get dismissed, there is always another room.

If you don't truly believe in your ideas, no presentation can save you. Let authentic enthusiasm shine through. Feel a genuine emotional connection to your vision.As challenges arise, check if they energize or deplete you. Your passion sets the tone.

Convince Yourself First

Stories of how ideas help real people are more compelling than abstractions. Imagine speaking to one person when pitching.Highlight how a central character uniquely benefits. Build empathy by showing real impact.

Cast A Central Character  

Go beyond surface research to uncover non-Google-able insights.Demonstrate the journey that led you to your idea. Share what you uniquely learned through deep field research.Make audiences feel like insiders.

Find An Earned Secret

Leverage FOMO - the fear of missing out. Make inaction seem riskier than action.Show unique benefits of moving now. Make your idea feel like an unstoppable rising tide sweeping people along.

Make Action Feel Inevitable

<ul><li>Truly grasp supporters' motivations and goals.</li><li>Identify exactly how your idea fulfills their needs.</li><li>Customize thoughtfully without losing integrity.</li><li>Forced matches lead to downstream issues.</li><li>Avoid assumptions.</li></ul>

Understand Their Needs

In his book Backable, Suneel Gupta argues that the key to success in business isn’t talent, connections, or ideas – it’s the ability to persuade people to take a chance on your ideas. Drawing lessons from hundreds of the world’s biggest thinkers, he shows readers how to craft a story that will make your ideas irresistible, and teaches techniques that will help you overcome objections, close deals, and bring your ideas to life. 

A groundbreaking book that boldly claims the key to success is not talent, connections, or ideas, but the ability to persuade people to take a chance on your potential.   "The most exceptional people aren't just brilliant...they're backable." —Daniel Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive  and To Sell is Human   No one makes it alone. But there’s a reason some people can get investors or bosses to believe in them while others cannot. And that reason has little to do with experience, pedigree, or a polished business plan. Backable people seem to have a hidden quality that inspires others to take action. We often chalk this up to natural talent or charisma...either you have “it” or you don’t. After getting rejected by every investor he pitched, Suneel Gupta had a burning question: Could “it” be learned? Drawing lessons from hundreds of the world’s biggest thinkers, Gupta discovered how to pitch new ideas in a way that has raised millions of dollars, influenced large-scale change inside massive corporations, and even convinced his eight-year-old daughter to clean her room. Inside Backable are long-held secrets from producers of Oscar-winning films, members of Congress, military leaders, culinary stars, venture capitalists, founders of unicorn-status startups, and executives at iconic companies like Lego, Method, and Pixar. Backable reveals how the key to success is not charisma, connections, or even your résumé, but rather your ability to persuade others to take a chance on you. This original book will show you how.

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