Some 2300 years ago in Ancient Greece, Aristotle wrote his three pillars for public speaking. Surprisingly, they’re just as relevant today as they were then. So relevant in fact, that in Gravitas, Caroline Goyder uses them to define that mystical quality of influence and how to get it. Gravitas, says… Read More »Martin Luther King and the secret of gravitas
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” Albert Einstein Communicating effectively is surprisingly difficult. In our attention-starved, multi-tasking society, we rarely have people’s undivided attention when we’re communicating. The onus is on you to make your audience sit up and take notice. And the simpler you… Read More »Five simple ways to make your message memorable
Movies are awash with tales of the underdog. But Friday Night Lights deals with a very different theme: the pressure of expectation. Set in the tiny Texas town of Odessa, that pressure is heaped upon the Permian Panthers High School football team. Here, football is a religion, and the boys are celebrities:… Read More »Setting expectations in Friday Night Lights
In our last post, we looked at the the first four key influence tactics described in the Mind Gym: Wake Up Your Mind: Reason, Inspire, Ask and Feel Good. Here we’ll look at the last five tactics and where you can find examples of them in movies. Deal Deal is a simple… Read More »Under the influence: nine tactics for persuasion (2)
Whatever your role – leader, manager, parent – it’s a fair bet that influencing is one of the skills you’ll be using most today. Whether it’s getting your manager to back your idea or encouraging your teenager to knuckle down to their studies, influencing is a core skill. And it’s become… Read More »Under the influence: nine tactics for persuasion (1)
If you had to choose one quality for a manager, what would it be? Ask a room of seven different people and you’d probably get seven different answers. Recent research from The Mind Gym identifies seven talents that distinguish exceptional managers. But of those seven, one is most important: Relate, the… Read More »Making a connection: lessons from Mr Holland’s Opus
Standing out amidst the crowd of communication chatter is getting ever harder in today’s world. How can you make your message memorable? In Resonate, Nancy Duarte suggests giving your audience a STAR moment – ‘Something They’ll Always Remember’. Often involving some kind of physical prop, it’s part of your presentation… Read More »Create your own STAR moment
‘Presence’ is an almost intangible quality. Some people have it, some people don’t. But those who do have presence have more impact, and get remembered. It’s easy to think that presence is a natural quality, something effortless. But presence is a quality you can most definitely develop. The authors of… Read More »Three ways to make a bigger impact