Happy New Year! We are all starting off 2016 with different resolutions, be that improved productivity, reduced stress, healthier body, or more enjoyment. The research is now overwhelming that core to our wellbeing, and the basis for achieving our resolutions, is mindfulness. Mindfulness is the ability to be present moment-to-moment and simply notice new things. […]
November is the month in which we celebrate thanks. Thanks for our family, friends, and colleagues. While we each count our blessings for different things, much of what we are grateful for is the people in our lives. How do we express that gratitude? The obvious answer is by telling people, the less obvious answer […]
The interesting thing about the Halloween is that it takes a light view of the human fear of death with people dressing up as ghosts and goblins. The origination of the Day of the Dead also takes a lighter view on the subject with the concept that death is actually a part of life and […]
It is human nature to assume that our current perceptions are real and right. But ‘real and right’ is a matter of being situated in a particular time period in a particular part of the world. Two recent occurrences brought the idea of ‘time period matters’ to the top of my mind. The first was […]
Once upon a time, a young teenager received an orange in her stocking at Christmas and was elated beyond belief. That teenager who showed gratitude for a sweet ripe piece of fruit on a cherished day of the year was my grandmother, a first generation immigrant who had lost both her parents and was barely […]
How do you take the intention to be mindful and integrate it into work in the technology industry? What does it mean to be mindful in business? Leaders of organizations in the S.F. Bay Area met at the 5th annual Wisdom 2.0 conference to share, well, their wisdom. I have intentionally practiced mindfulness since 1999 […]
The theme for the Western States Communication Association (WSCA) Conference 2015 was Accentuate the Positive. I shared my use of the Positive Observation Forum in the Communication Classroom in tandem with Dr. Jensen Chung on a panel with other communication scholars. Although our use of the Positive Observation Forum (POF) is specifically designed for the […]
Adam Bryant’s Corner Office interviews with leaders often reveal how communication is such a critical component of excellent leadership. In Q&A with Alastair Mitchell, CEO of Huddle, Adam asks: What were some early management lessons for you? Alastair includes lessons around communication. He mentions learning about “being too vague or not strong enough or clear […]
My Sunday morning ritual includes reading the New York Times and the article, Introvert on the Podium caught my attention. The wisdom in this article is that connecting with the audience leads to greater ease in speaking, even for an introvert. Laura Vanderkam, author of “168 Hours” explains how she has gone from paranoid to […]
My Sunday morning ritual includes reading the New York Times and the article, Introvert on the Podium caught my attention. The wisdom in this article is that connecting with the audience leads to greater ease in speaking, even for an introvert. Laura Vanderkam, author of “168 Hours” explains how she has gone from paranoid to […]
We sit in meetings all the time and complain most of the time. According to research, an average team meeting includes 69 counteractive statements and only 17 proactive statements. That is a 4:1 ratio of bad to good in meetings! We know we can make it better, but we are not exactly sure how. Newly […]
Coaching CEOs on giving compelling presentations, I am reminded of the Power of the Pause. Using the pause when speaking is incredibly powerful. Think of it as the same as white space in graphic design; what you leave blank is as important as what you fill in on a page. In public speaking pauses are […]
Periodically seeking advice from other experts on the web constantly expands my perspective on creating excellent presentations. Here is a sampling of worthwhile advice. Take Tips from Comedians John Greathouse, Rincon Ventures Got for the strong start Get physical Manage the hecklers Develop a repartee Rehearse spontaneity Stop for a breath Don’t fear humor Bring […]
Using Humor Watching video of the recent Obama White House Correspondents’ Dinner, I was reminded how humor can be used in communication. The president uses self-deprecating humor to remind us that he is human and jokes to lighten the perspective of heavy political issues. His joke, “I’m not the strapping young Muslim Socialist that I […]
Watching and reading about the current negotiations on the fiscal cliff is reinforcing my belief that everything in life, including politics, centers on communication. The Washington Post ran an article this week, “Moral values and the fiscal cliff” in which the authors delineated how “Sharing moral commitments helps teams to function cohesively, but it also […]
PowerPoint alone doesn’t cut it anymore. We are too social and interconnected now. Sure, we still see projected presentations at conferences and in lecture halls, but audiences are demanding more interactivity, and Twitter feeds aren’t cutting it. Webinar tools were a start to interactive presentations. WebEx, GoToMeeting, and such, allow people to see presentations anywhere […]
Building rapport is important for communication. Starting a conversation with small talk surfaces commonalities that exist. Finding commonalities gives people a better ground upon which to communicate. But, as of late the trend has gone to the extreme. There is an epidemic of oversharing. Bloomberg BusinessWeek article “Enough with the Enemas: Why People Overshare at […]
I hear from many leaders that a key to good leadership is asking questions. I find this advice worthwhile in and of itself, since many want-to-be-leaders tend to talk more than listen. I also desire more. I want advice that is more to be actionable. So I have set about gathering advice on just what […]
This summer’s special supplement to the Atlantic reads, “The Dialogue Economy, Social Media and the Marketplace” and contains multiple stories on how the power has shifted to the consumer and how companies are learning to engage with customers in dialogue. The magazine has many examples of how the Internet has changed the relationship between those […]
I confess to texting someone in the same room. It can be more efficient and feel less intrusive than interrupting the activity in the room. But, according to Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and professor at MIT and author, these bits of technology use to replace conversation are adding up to trouble. In the New York […]
Seems to be a trend that companies are realizing people need space – both mental and physical – in order to put forth the creative work required for the 21st century American innovation economy. The business section of the New York Times explored this concept in two articles on Sunday. The first “When Technology Overwhelms, […]
Gopi Kallayil, Product Marketing Manager at Google, called the smart phone the 79th organ of the body. At the Wisdom 2.0 Conference he depicted the smart phone as humanesque, with ears, eyes, voice, and brain, and claimed it is being used as a tool for collective consciousness. Gopi gave examples of people all over the […]
SlideRocket recently sent me this e-book on The Secrets of Compelling Presentation Design. It was worth the read and a good reminder of some of my favorite tips. Keep it Simple – your background, fonts, content should all be straightforward so your audience can easily assimilate information Use Images – a picture is really worth […]
Thanks to EF and NetApp for the invitation to the Silicon Valley Philanthropy Day awards luncheon. It was inspirational to hear from so many organizations and people who are making significant changes in our community through their philanthropic efforts. Leah Toeniskoetter was awarded Outstanding Volunteer Fundraiser for her work with Valley Medical Center Foundation. An […]
I watched the Vator Splash SF presentations through two lenses. The first was that of a technology enthusiast, always wanting to learn what bright people are inventing. The second was that of a communication expert, curious about how entrepreneurs are presenting. Through the first lens, I saw some interesting technology. The People’s Choice Winner was […]
Billionaire Vinod Khosla doesn’t want to be called a venture capitalist. And that is news. Both the Wall Street Journal and Forbes ran a blurb on this fact. Now that is good PR. “Call him a visionary for his role co-founding Sun Microsystems Inc. Call him a rainmaker for his prescient investments in companies like Juniper Networks while […]
As a university teacher, a lover of technological advances, and a communication scholar, the notion of 58,000 students participating in a free online course enthrals me. Today’s NY Times article, “Virtual and Artificial, but 58,000 Want Course” describes how Peter Norvig and SebastianThrun are offering a course on artificial intelligence this fall through Stanford. Anybody, […]
Here is a quick presentation on how you can create more visual presenations. Download TipsVisualPresentationsJuly2011
We all know intuitively that communication is an important aspect of medical care. Each of us can recall experiences where a doctor did a good or bad job communicating with us. For me, the bad job was in the ER just before my mom was diagnosised with colon cancer when I was literally arguing with […]
Harvard Business Review did a short blurb on reserach by Emily Moyer-Guse of Ohio State and Robin Nabi of UC Santa Barbara showing that a narrative is an effective form of persuasion. The research study had 367 undergraduates view either a narrative or a non-narrative, news-style program about teenage pregnancy. Those who saw the narrative […]
When you want to get somebody to change an attitude, belief, value, or behavior — happens just about every day — you need to employ the art of persuasion. A quote from a student of mine: “Thus, to change a person’s view, their belief or their actions is to slide through their ears and into […]
Speech recognition technology has come a long way. I now use Dragon Dictation on my iPhone to send texts to others. It is as least as accurate as my touch typing. It is refreshing to have a different way to interface with technology. The future holds yet another way to interface — with our eyes. […]
At the recent Western States Communication Association (WSCA) Conference two panels “Social Networking and Beyond: Computer Mediated Communication and Community” and “Relational Communication and Social Networks” contained interesting research on how people are using social networking. The overarching theme is that people are using social networking as a means of simultaneously forming and communicating their […]
As an individual who prefers the spoken word over the written word, I have been longing for the day when I could have my eloquent phrases automatically turned into flowing text. When working on my master’s thesis a few years back, I purchased iListen for Mac in hopes of typing less. After 5 or 6 […]
Technology can be turned off. That is a reminder from Sherry Turkle director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self from a USA Today article, “2010: The year technology replaced talking“. According to the article “Americans are connected at unprecedented levels — 93% now use cellphones or wireless devices; one-third of those are “smartphones” […]
80,000 hours of video and 120,000 hours of audio recording. That is the massive amount of data collected by MIT Media Lab‘s Human Speechome Project to analyze how one child learns to speak. You can see a visual of the data on Forbes.com to get a feel for how words are gained over time. Just […]