Can you believe it? 2011 is coming to an end. Did you accomplish anything, or did you “make it”? Don’t feel bad if that’s the case, sometimes just making it can be an accomplishment. Especially in an annoying economy with equally annoying political and social issues all around us. Now’s the time of year when [...]
READ MORE »I recently read a writing prompt (The Writer’s Idea Book, Jack Heffron) that suggested writing about the 5 things you would want to have with you if you were stranded on a desert island. I thought another interesting approach would be to think about the 5 things I would want with me if I were [...]
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Seems fair, right? If the retailers can keep pushing Black Friday back into Thanksgiving (10pm tonight for one retailer, midnight for many others), then I can wish you a happy 2012 today, right? As the holiday season really kicks off today, maybe it isn’t a bad idea to look to where you’ll be in just [...]
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Do you see yourself as a coach, or want to know what strategies work in becoming a highly successful one? I do, so I picked up Million Dollar Coaching – Build a World-Class Practice by Helping Others Succeed by Alan Weiss, PH.D, the Bestselling author of Million Dollar Consulting. Alan uses a methodical approach to defining the [...]
READ MORE »Do you think you can do it all yourself? Are you suffering from an irrational fear of asking for help? I watch a lot of people working on improving their speaking ability, and they tend to fall into two camps: those who seek help to become better and those that don’t. Those that look for [...]
READ MORE »Have you ever heard or read a reference to something “everybody” does, and realize that you don’t do it? i.e. “Everybody likes President Obama”, or “We checked with Everybody and couldn’t find someone who could do that”. You get the idea, right? You may have heard the old reference that 80% of all statistics are [...]
READ MORE »Sitting at the Toastmasters International Convention, I watched as a friend of mine went to the stage to receive an award on behalf of her district. They were being recognized for having the most clubs with 20 or more members, over 80% in their case. I was looking at the statistics and there are quite [...]
READ MORE »Have you ever heard the wrong word used to describe something, and realized the mistake happened because of similarities? Here are a couple of examples, and how they’re used/misused: Simple vs. Easy These words are not only used interchangeably, but also as a redundant pair on a regular basis. If fact, it is simple and [...]
READ MORE »I’m reading Great on the Job, by Jodi Glickman. Early in the book, the author asserts that asking “How can I help?” may cause more problems than it solves. How can that be? I was wondering that too, at first. It’s simple if you think about it. Lets say you have a group of tasks [...]
READ MORE »What does it take to be a great evaluator in Toastmasters? More importantly (as we enter the contest season), how do you give a winning evaluation? First – Open Strong. The first words out of your mouth should be something great about the presentation. i.e. “Mike, it’s clear that you did quite a bit of [...]
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