I recently attended a conference where two of the speakers raced through their talk without pausing. It was so exhausting. And their ideas seemed less important with the speaker racing through them. We all crave a START and/or an END: The human mind responds instinctively to the start or the end of anything so when…
I’m a fan of Janine Allis. A recent article in The Age outlines her story and secret to success with Boost Juice (250 stores, $130 million turnover). In a nutshell: ”What I’m good at is solving problems and keeping things simple.” One of the great things about Janine’s story is that her formal qualifications from Knox Tech (which she…
Media training should start with an understanding of what every journalist wants: a good story. Let’s take a look at an example from Apple – who are masters at providing a catchy ‘story’ and having the media promote it exactly as Apple intended. It’s about the new MacBook Laptop released last October. The basic story…
Nicholas Carr has written a book called ‘The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains‘ where he argues that our dependence on the internet may have a dark side. I saw him speak recently and asked him a few questions. He tells the story of losing his own capacity for concentration and contemplation. Even when…
The view from this year’s Christmas present…
Have you been given any useless advice about public speaking and presentations skills? Check out this discussion between ‘Mr Rules’ and Jennifer as she prepares for a big Presentation in the boardroom… Feel free to comment.
When preparing for important communication, most people miss the crucial step – the speech outline. They start thinking about what their speech, document or PowerPoint slides should look like and try to sort their thoughts from there. But the most valuable thing you can do to prepare is create an outline. A speech outline… A…
In the last post, we defined the difference between a wicked message (which requires more mental effort on the part of the listener) and a tame message (which is clear and easy to follow). To get a response, you need a tame message. So here’s how to do it How do you make your…
A few years ago, a Systems Engineer at USC Berkeley wanted to understand how we could put a man on the moon, yet couldn’t do things that seemed straightforward – like designing buildings that functioned properly, agreeing on where to build freeways, etc. He identified that some problems were wicked, while other problems were tame. This concept…
I like to rollerblade and thought the skate park would be fun. Here’s what I learned… Firstly, the straight ramps are very different to the curved ramps. After 15 minutes of sensibly building my confidence on the straight ramps I jumped down a curved ramp. About a minute later I woke up face down on…