Mountain Lakes International

Archive for the ‘Tuesday Tip’ Category

You can learn more about a person in hour of play than in a year of conversation. —Plato

Why good bosses tune in to their people.

Laughing juries don’t convict. —F. Lee Bailey

“Almost nothing works the first time it’s attempted. Just because what you’re doing does not seem to be working, doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means that it might not work the way you’re doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn’t have an opportunity.” —Bob Parsons

Thanks to Bill Hoogterp via Newark Mayor Cory Booker

Granville Toogood suggests that presentations should be delivered less like performances or speeches and much more like conversations. “Stop thinking that every time you stand up to say something you are making a speech—because you’re not,” says Toogood in The Articulate Executive.“What you are really doing is having an enlarged conversation.”

Garr Reynolds, in his terrific blog Presentation Zen, says that “one of the keys to a natural, conversational approach includes removing all barriers to natural communication with the audience, barriers such as reading off notes, standing behind a lectern, using jargon, failing to make good eye contact, and speaking too softly or in a language that is formal, stiff, or fails to appeal to the audience’s emotion and natural curiosity.”

• To improve empathy, communication, and motivation focus on listening.
• Zeke Zeliff says, “Listen, not to react, but to understand.”
• What will happen today if we shift from react to understand?

Zeke Zeliff

Rudyard Kipling 1914

“I keep six honest serving-men, They taught me all I knew; Their names are What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who.”

—Rudyard Kipling, from Just So Stories, 1902.

Born in Bombay in 1865, Rudyard Kipling won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.  He is best known for The Jungle Book, Kim, The Man Who Would Be King, Mandalay, Gunga Din, and If—.

Three questions Scott Anthony asks an entrepreneur:

• “How many days do you have to live?”
• “Why are you doing this?”
• “What are the two critical things you are working on at any given time?”

What would your answer be?

Scott Anthony’s Blog appears in Harvard Business Review

When the Tide Turns Against You—Bill Clinton’s advice to embattled incumbents: “Never give up.”

• Don’t listen to consultants who steer you away from talking about your record. “Tell your story.” “Get out there and tell people what you are doing and what you’ve done.”
• With voters angry, Clinton’s advice to Harry Reid, Senate majority leader in danger of losing his seat: “He needs not to be ground down by this,” Clinton said. “A lot of politicians are taking this personally. You have to take it seriously, but not personally.”
• Regarding Reid, the president said: “He needs to never forget that he loves the people who are mad at him, and he needs to never forget he spent a lifetime helping them.”   ”He can’t stop believing that he’ll get their votes back,” Clinton said. “Never stop believing.”

(NPR/Associated Press June 11, 2010)

Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper. Everything can have drama if it’s done right. Even a pancake. —Julia Child