“Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”
Category: Training (Page 1 of 40)
One of the common mistakes in public speaking is that we often underestimate the importance of the form in the message we try to convey.
Unlike written pages, oral communications are a bloom of conscious and unconscious signals coming out from our body, like voice tone and modulation, gesticulating, glances with the public, dialogue speed and so on.
Each of these signals carries a different value that can alter the substance of the message, even in an unsuccessful way.
As diplomacy is essentially communication, a good deal can be reached only after smart negotiations and persuasive talks.
Hence, creating the right empathy with our listeners could add further value on the outcome of our agreements.
In an article published on the popular magazine Mental Floss, the American journalist Cindy Fisher Crawford has tried to summarize 5 effective steps to becoming a better public speaker from “Toastmasters International” and other public speaking experts:
1. MAKE YOUR SPEECH CONVERSATIONAL
As tempting as it may be to type up a speech and read it word for word, refrain from doing so.
Audiences listen better when the speaker talks to them instead of reads to them.
2. PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
A great way to ensure your speech goes smoothly is to rehearse what you’re going to say.
3. CONNECT WITH YOUR AUDIENCE
If they’re yawning, you need to infuse a spark in the conversation.
4. DELIVER YOUR SPEECH WITH PASSION
The best way to get your audience to care about what you’re saying is to show how much you care about the topic.
5. TAKE YOUR TIME
Your presentation is not a race. Take your time as you interact with the audience and slow down if you make a mistake.
Image source: FLICKR – JohnDiew0107 –
(CC BY-NC 2.0)
Discouragement can be real, that’s why positive thinking needs to dig deeper in order to overcome dark feelings.
Leadership Freak has devised a 15-point strategy to address negative thinking.
First of all, sharing with others could be a powerful medicine. Discouragement can be a common feeling and reaching out to others is key.
Rest and sleep. At the same time do not stay still. Take long walks, finish a task that you’ve been putting off and celebrate progress.
Catch the occasion. Let go anger, forgive and evaluate yourself.
Read more here.
Image Source: Chris – originally posted to Flickr as DSC_0051, CC BY 2.0
In today’s communication, pictures and photographs are more and more crucial for an effective result, both on the web and on paper.
Whether you are a beginner or more experienced with photography, here are some tips that will help you improve your photography:
- Use the Rule of Thirds
- Avoid Camera Shake
- Learn to use the Exposure Triangle
- Use a Polarizing Filter
- Create a Sense of Depth
- Use Simple Backgrounds
- Don’t Use Flash Indoors
- Choose the Right ISO
- Pan to Create Motion
- Experiment with Shutter Speed
And, finally, remember that is always better to invest more in learning and less on gear. You can take stunning photos that you’ll be proud of, even with a modest digital camera fitted with its standard zoom lens. But you can’t take such great photos without understanding the basics.
Take your digital photography to the next level with the full article.
Image: Photography – Evan (CC BY-ND 2.0)
People who are habitually late (or are late even once, when it counts) project incompetence, self-centeredness, and even a lack of integrity.
This article provides 10 useful tips to be on time every time:
- Have a central place where your time commitments are recorded, whether that’s an online calendar, Outlook, a smartphone, a dayplanner, or just an index card with your schedule on it.
- Don’t schedule events that aren’t that important to you. A lot of the time we let ourselves show up late because the event we’re showing up to isn’t all that important to us.
- Don’t check your email or voicemail right before you leave. That “last quick check” will almost always take more time than you think. If you thought there’d be nothing important in your email, you wouldn’t bother checking.
- Plan for trouble. Always add 25% to your time estimate to get anywhere or do any task.
- Set up the night before. If you are someone who has a hard time getting going in the morning, make sure you set up the night before.
- Set your clocks ahead a few minutes each — by different amounts.
- Learn to better estimate how much time things take. Use a time tracker app to learn how long typical tasks take you to complete. Record these times, and refer to your record when estimating the time needed for similar tasks.
- Schedule events 10 minutes early. Always have 10 minutes of work with you to fill the slack time.
- Set reminders. Use your calendar program’s built-in reminder function to send you text reminders at set intervals before each appointment.
- Schedule events for “off-peak” times. Learn the times that traffic or other factors might make you late, and avoid scheduling during those times. For instance, give yourself at least an hour to get settled in every morning before your first meeting, don’t schedule meetings immediately after lunch, avoid before-working-hours events, etc.
10% of life is what happens to you, and 90% is how you deal with it. Dealing with disappointment at work is a prime example of how overcoming the obstacle can be more important than the obstacle itself.
Maybe you got passed over for the promotion you really wanted. Perhaps the project you’ve been working on for months suddenly got cancelled for flimsy reasons.
Some people handle tough emotions better than others. Professional disappointments are disappointments nonetheless, and coping with them appropriately is important for future professional success.
This article presents 5 useful tips to deal with professional disappointment and to avoid it to have any further negative consequence:
1. Be Honest: People will know you are disappointed, so be honest about it. Don’t divulge details you’re not comfortable sharing, but respond to appropriate questions with candor and grace.
2. Be Respectful: Bad news can come suddenly, and it is easy to lash out at the person delivering the message or at the person responsible for the bad news. Resist that temptation.
3. Get Over It in a Reasonable Amount of Time: Try to get over the disappointment quickly. Accept what you cannot change about the situation, cope with it, and move on with your life. Show you are resilient.
4. Don’t Make Rash Decisions: Do not let your compulsions dictate your behavior. In the moment, it may seem satisfying to undermine whatever or whoever is causing your disappointment or to throw your hands up and quit, but doing so would be incredibly short-sighted.
5. Decide What to Do Next: If you’re dealing with a game-changing disappointment, you need to decide what you’re going to do in the wake of it. Again, don’t make rash decisions.
Image Source: Pixabay
To perform better at work, learn new skills, be more productive, make decisions, study smarter, and make progress in basically anything that involves your brain, it’s advisable to work on how to focus better.
Your attention is your biggest asset, so it’s important to keep it where it’s supposed to be — on the task at hand that is getting you one step closer to achieving your goals and dreams.
However, it can become a struggle to stay concentrated on the one activity, task, or even person, in front of us.
This article, presents 4 proven techniques on how to focus better:
- Identify any distraction in your surroundings, then remove it
- Train your willpower muscle
- Give meditation a try
- Do one thing at a time
Image Source: Pixabay
Dananjaya Hettiarachchi, the winner of the World Championship of Public Speaking 2014 organized by Toastmaster International, interviewed by Richard Feloni for The Business Insider Australia, suggests 5 tips for novice public speakers.
Tip 1
Always start with a message. A common mistake is to start with a topic, instead a speech should begin with a message, as concise as possible. This message is whatever you want your audience to be thinking about when your presentations concludes.
Tip 2
Be confident enough to yourself. You need to sell yourself before to sell your message, the way to do that is to be genuine. A speech should be conversational, not theatrical. The only way to go in front of an audience and to present in a way that isn’t simply miming is to practice again and again, pretending that you’re talking to your closest friends.
Tip 3
See yourself through your audience’s eyes. Speakers tend to become wrapped up in themselves, maybe because they’re afraid to acknowledge a room full of listeners. But if you’re going to speak, you need to realize that you’re doing it for the benefit of others, not yourself.
Tip 4
Have a forum to practice. 80% of the path to becoming a great speaker is trial and error and the only way to learn is by speaking in front of an audience that will give honest feedback.
Tip 5
Find the right coach or mentor. You should find someone willing to help you grow as a public speaker. This does not need to be someone who can teach you advanced speaking techniques; they just need to be someone who gives you permission to explore possibilities, who gives you permission to fail.
Read here the full article
Image: flickr – Brian Talbot – (CC BY – NC 2.0)
Going back to work after holidays can be very difficult. Most people get what is known as the post-holiday blues, while others suffer from anxiety at the thought of having to return to their work. It’s been scientifically proven that getting back into our routine can lead to sluggishness and demotivation.
To help you out, this article offers a list of 10 tips that can help you deal with the post-holiday blues:
1. Embrace the Blues: The first step to dealing with this rather grey mood is to embrace it. Understand that it’s okay to feel sad and accept that the first couple of days back in your daily routine will be difficult.
Image source: Pixabay
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