A dispassionate leader isn't inspiring anyone. When we think about effective leaders, many of us picture someone who is calm, cool, and collected under stressful conditions. We envision someone who is reliably even-keeled in the best of times and the worst of times, who can assuage anxiety with a placid demeanor during change and transition and is unruffled when
Your mindset matters more than you think. When it comes to evaluating success for salespeople, it's often focused on one thing: the win. Asking for the customer's business and getting a quick and enthusiastic "yes!" seems, at times, to be the only thing that counts. This mindset, and the aggressive behavior that it drives, comes at a cost. According
Your silence is a gift to yourself and your audience. Successful presentations motivate, educate, and inspire listeners to take action. From the attention-getting opening to the powerful close--and the concrete, key messages in the middle--memorable presenters know to how to deliver their content in an engaging way. How? Read the rest of the article
Top business schools ranging from Columbia to Wharton teach storytelling as a way to prepare leaders to deliver compelling, persuasive messages that appeal to both heads and hearts. Firms ranging from KMPG to Deloitte now couple candidate recruitment with storytelling, and companies like Nike and Disney include “storytelling skills” among other qualifications for open jobs.
Manage your emotions at work so they don't manage you. Work is hard — which is why it’s called “work.” Every day, we face challenges that range from solving difficult technical problems and making hard choices between competing priorities, to deciding what to delegate and generating new solutions to old problems. And we’re expected to do all of that while staying
Using "um", "uh", "like" and "you know" is a bad habit that can be fixed It doesn't matter how elegantly your PowerPoint presentation flows, how artfully you can field difficult questions, or how perfectly balanced your mix of statistics and stories is. If you're filling your delivery with filler words like "um", "uh", "like", "right", "so" or "you know", you're
10 strategies that go way beyond "big ideas." When you hear the word "innovation", you probably picture thought leaders like Elon Musk (Tesla), Steve Jobs (Apple), or Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook/The "Lean In" movement.) You also likely think about the ability to generate big, bold, brilliant ideas--not just once, but as a regular practice. You may also
If you're losing momentum, you need these three strategies to get back on track. Steve Jobs once commented, "People who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint." Whether that's a slight exaggeration or a big one, it is true that most of our sales pitches and presentations rely heavily on visual aids and collateral.
What you say to yourself matters as much as what you say to someone else. We all have worked with a difficult person, and for some of us, we're working with a whole bunch of them. For you, it could be the fierce individualist who doesn't seem to want to be a team player, or the boss
Most of us are talking too much and not adding value. Whether you think of yourself as Chatty Charlie, Reserved Rebecca or someone in between, chances are you have experienced the power of saying more with less. If you've ever worked in an office where someone stage-whispered "layoffs are coming" across the cubicle farm, you've
