Assumptions. We all make them. We all stereotype certain people, and make assumptions about others every single day. We can’t help it. It truly is part of our DNA. Our brains are hard-wired to make assumptions about people in order to determine danger as quickly as possible and allow us time to protect ourselves. As…
This recent NPR story on the brevity of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln’s 272 Words, a Model of Brevity for Modern Times got me thinking a bit about training. I’ve often compared training to public speaking and the importance of having those skills, and this is definitely one of those skills. As Pascal said well back…
Goodbye Microsoft Security Essentials: Microsoft Now Recommends You Use a Third-Party Antivirus tags: Security MM On going over your time So true, whether for a speaking engagement, meeting or training session. They’ll remember you as the person who ran late, and forget anything you tried to tell them tags: training MM Excuse Me, PDF’s Instead of…
As someone who spends a fair amount of time speaking to groups, I’m always interested when I come upon posts with titles like 10 Ways to Avoid Bombing While Public Speaking. The on that jumped out at me, and made me smile to myself, was actually number 10: Finish on time – Stand up, speak…
OK, granted, I am a trainer by profession, and when I see something like Seth Godin’s piece about listening better, I want to scream “Amen!”. Let’s take a sample: The hardest step in better listening is the first one: do it on purpose. Make the effort to actually be good at it. Don’t worry so…
Seth Godin coined this term last week, describing situations where we crete a proxy measure for success, because the true goal is more difficult to measure. It struck a cord with me, because it seemed very, very similar to things I’ve said previously about working in tech support. Namely, that if you measure “success” as…