Monday’s lesson is short and sweet

Business behaviour

Today’s post is much shorter than usual. When engaging in business, in communication, or in anything else, please remember the following: Shortcuts rarely are.   Terrible grammar aside, the above is very, very true.  Shortcuts rarely save you time.  They rarely save you money.  They rarely spare you any work. In fact, saving any of…

The nerves keep on jangling

Performance

I took a couple of weeks away from blogging, speaking, computers, and just about everything else communication.  This was a refreshing, if unplanned break.  As my wee boy was in a major growth spurt, I needed time to make up for a lot of broken, unsettled sleep and dial down my daily activities a little.…

Hard work

Famous speakers

I’m currently watching yesterday’s episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  His guest was Bill Clinton, who recently delivered an extraordinary speech at the Democratic National Convention.  Clinton is one of the most highly regarded contemporary public speakers and delivers hundreds of speeches every year. When Jon Steward asked Clinton if he could tell that…

Winging it

Getting the message across, Performance

“Hey, we need you to fill a space in our program.  This speaker just backed out, see, and it’s too late to find someone outside the organization to fill their space.  The presentation needs to be related to Topic XYZ.  Don’t worry, you’ll do fine – you’re so good at winging it.” I shuddered every…

Muscle madness

Funny Stuff

Old Spice: the bodywash that makes my husband stink like a dog in a swamp but that has one of the best advertising departments ever. Here’s one of their latest interactive internet ads.  I’m not even going to try to cleverly tie this to a communication quip.  All I can say is that it made me…

Smile, damn you, smile!

Performance

I have and will always maintain that a weapon every speaker should carry around in their arsenal is the ability to fire up a genuine beaming smile on demand. Actually, scratch that statement.  Everyone, speaker or no, should learn how to smile on cue.  And by smile, I mean the sort of eye-crinkling, cheek raising…

Daily Acts

Performance

Acting is part of life. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we spent a significant portion of our day in one performance or another. Life demands all of us to be a bit of an actor, and most people are remarkably adept at this. We perform in front of our spouses and friends. We act…