For my friends, colleagues and acquaintances at MMC and ‘The Vine’. Here’s a ‘taster’ of some of the things we might cover at our lunch meeting this week. Personal Impact- At it’s simplest, personal impact is about being good at getting people to like you. It’s about being flexible in your approach to meeting strangers,…
The full quotation is: “They who honour me, I will honour. They who despise me I will disdain.” It was used, memorably, in the film ‘Chariots of Fire’ to illustrate the conviction and motivation of the hero; and his good grace in the fiercest of competition. It’s a snippet from the Bible, obviously, and though I’m not a…
Mario Balatelli is the 20-year old soccer player who won ‘man of the match’ in the UK’s FA Cup Final in 2011. He plays for the resurgent Manchester City and he’s an Italian hot-shot, hot-head who brings pace, athleticism and danger to every team that he plays for. He brings the same to their Public…
Here’s another funny piece to make you think, from Ed Reid, a brilliant independent consultant based in the UK . How Microsoft killed the art of public speaking « EdReidYork’s Blog. I’m not soooo likely to blame Microsoft. I’d rather have Bill Gates’s rampant commercialism that Steve Jobs’ hippy schtick any day. And we punish the guy that…
In my 20 years of speechwriting, coaching and conference presenting, I’ve noticed that, ironically, it’ s most often native English speakers who are most difficult for international audiences to understand. The reasons are simple. They tend to speak in their vernacular. They use slang and jargon not taught in ‘school’. They use over complex language,…
One of the key skills in developing ‘Flair‘ as a speechwriter and presenter, is learning to use the ‘tricks of the trades’ from all branches of the performing arts. Poetry, drama, creative writing, music and songwriting all offer useful lessons, for even the most experienced of us. Adding flair requires that you do 3 things…
President Barack Obama is used so often as an example of a great speaker by ‘experts’ that he’s almost become a cliche. There’s no doubt that he can be a great speaker, on occasions, as many of us can be, to friendly crowds, with a well crafted speech, when everyone is listening and no one…
Here’s a great article on FT.com about the use of management speak in the London held inquests into the deaths of the innocent and guilty in the London Bombings of 2007. Lady Justice Hallet, the coroner, objected to the use of ‘management speak’, by the senior representatives of the emergency services interviewed as a part…
Here’s some sound advice from a friend of mine, Mark Richards at Simple Words. In short- Bluntly, Google don’t want their search engine rankings clogged up with badly written articles that are all too often simply copied from other badly written articles. He’s a writer, a good one too, and you wouldn’t be surprised to…