communication^(17/2)

Wise planters learn everything they can about leadership

Once a planter recruits a team, it takes constant communication to maintain the bond of working together. In the same way that a modern soldier must clean his gun, so the planter must regularly look after the team. Many planters have not been taught basic leadership principles and know little about managing teams. Therefore, wise planters learn everything they can about interpersonal communication, team leadership, conflict resolution, and Christlike leadership.

Short stories are modern parables

While reading The Space Traders by Derrick Bell it struck me that short stories are the modern world’s parables. The genre’s are different: parables are bare-bones and have one main point, while short stories can expand beyond a single point and include details which don’t develop the message directly. This was a fascinating discovery, since I’ve been pondering what it’d be like to develop my own parables. Would it be possible, like Jesus, to craft a short message in a cryptic parable that I could share with friends and family that wouldn’t be immediately understood but might later produce a light-bulb moment.…

Parable and poetry hit harder than prose

The lyrical imagery of poetry communicates more powerfully than any fact. Parables have a similar quality. Perhaps poetry shares the parable’s delay of the facts in favor of the story image. When the facts emerge, during or after the poem (or perhaps hours later), they hit the reader all at once. Prose tends to lay facts like bricks, one on top of the next, which distributes the truth’s weight over time; poetry piles all the bricks atop a board over the reader’s head, then removes the board at poem’s end to let them fall in a crushing cascade.…

Relativity inspirational talk

(This was a paper written as an example of a speech meant to inspire action) I propose we make available our core product, Relativity, as a resource to obtain justice, not only to those who can afford our software, but to those who will never afford it. Before we look at my proposal, let’s spend a couple minutes reviewing current pro bono work and its relation to electronic discovery so we can grasp the weight of this opportunity.…

Stakeholder communication is crucial

Project managers (PMs) are detail-oriented people. They live in a world of statistics, charts, graphs, timelines, and schedules. With the success of the project on their shoulders, they put all their effort towards managing an on-time, on-budget project. When in this mindset, PMs can minimize stakeholder reports, which seem irrelevant to the project’s completion (Campbell C. and Campbell M., pg. 15). Yet stakeholders will ultimately decide the project’s success or failure and can halt the project or add resources.…

All communication benefits from eloquence

Although the title suggests sales pitches are the only target, McGowan’s book “Pitch Perfect” applies to a wide range of communication types. Presentations and interviews are listed, but so are speeches, business meetings, one-on-one conversations, and Q&A sessions. His seven principles of eloquence shape both impromptu speeches and carefully executed announcements (Mcgowan). Due to the universal need for eloquence, each principle may be honed any number of ways. From tomorrow’s morning stand-up to an answer to your wife’s “How was your day?…

Pitch script example

Pitch Script Senior citizens in Arkansas must move to Colorado, before it’s too late. Arkansas' senior citizens want to grow old in their homes, to remain an active part of society and stay interconnected with their community. None desire to languish in a nursing home. Yet only one in nine state tax dollars are invested in home and community support. The remaining eight sustain nursing homes, where every fifth resident could have stayed at home with some assistance.…

Prepare pitches or pay the price

If you don’t prepare what you mean to say, you’ll say what you don’t mean. No actor steps onto the stage without memorizing his lines. Entrepreneurs fare no better than an ad-lib actor when they fail to prepare for critical communications. As Bill McGowan says, “Spontaneity is another word for regret (Mcgowan, pg. 174).” Jodie Foster’s acceptance speech at the 2013 Golden Globe awards began well. She’d prepared her presentation, rehearsed it, and executed it before thousands.…

Sales calls trump email

Direct phone calls trump responsive email. Every sales representative gets buried under floods of email. The effort to decipher what customer’s mean, what they need, what their angle is, etc. can easily take one’s entire day. What appears a simple request can lead into a rabbit trail of well-meaning but unanswered questions, misunderstandings, and rising discontent. To mitigate this, Sambucci’s constant rule is to “PICK UP THE PHONE (Sambucci, pg. 17).…

Neither charisma nor experience replaces practice

Neither skill nor experience can ever replace practice. Barack Obama’s personality is warm and engaging. But when faced with his first debate of the 2012 presidential campaign, he trusted his personality, not deliberate practice, to win the night. The week prior to the debate, Obama’s chief advisor expressed concern that the presidential candidate wasn’t putting his best effort into preparation. Instead of careful hours of practice and review to hone his message and anticipate his opponent’s moves, Obama decided to go sightseeing and gave a lackadaisical effort in rehearsal.…

Attunement, buoyancy, and clarity are crucial sales skills

Those who sell must be emotionally aware, able to rebound, and clear in their goals, presentation, and next steps. If you’re in sales–Pink would argue almost everyone–you’ll need to develop three skills: Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity (Pink, pg. 66). Attunement simply means awareness. A salesman must be ‘in tune’ with those he sells to; to see the world from the customer’s perspective. The better a salesman is able to understand the customer in front of him, the better he can find their problems and, if he has a solution, offer them what they didn’t know they were looking for.…

Personal connection improves performance

Short interpersonal connections make work a better place to be. Although the man who spent 27 years alone in the wilderness may not agree, (Finkel) humans were made to connect with one another. Cultures vary widely on the relevance of this fact, from those who require personal connections prior to business transactions to those single-minded in getting the job done. Nevertheless, every culture recognizes a need for a connection with others when conducting business.…

Communicate at the lowest cultural context

Multicultural teams must communicate in the lowest context for the cultures in that group. People in the United States tend to have the lowest communication context of any cultural cluster in the world. On the polar opposite, those in Japan communicate with the highest context ((Meyer, pg. 40)). What explains this? The history of the United States is a short story of migrants from all cultures and backgrounds trying to live together under one government.…

Ask individuals for feedback not groups

It’s not enough to ask the room what it thinks. A leader must ask individuals. Imagine you’re one of a dozen presidential aids gathered to assist Kennedy in the growing Cuban crisis. You’ve had a week to consider current events and chart potential results from the available presidential responses. Earlier, in conversation with other aids, you discover the most popular approach is an invasion trained and funded in secret by American forces.…

Decide who makes the final decision

Specify when a decision is final or temporary. Among the many differentiating factors between cultures, the individual or group who holds the power of decision-making is one factor that affects cross-cultural business transactions regularly. On average, cultures with a high power distance centralize decision making at the top, while egalitarian cultures decide by consensus. Swedes fit the latter category; Saudis the former. Were a Swedish company to attempt a trade agreement with a Saudi company; however, distrust may derail the agreement because of the way each perceives the other’s decision-making.…

Know and share your story

Effective entrepreneurs know and share their stories. Nothing engages an audience like storytelling. The story’s hero is inspiring, the villain is recognizable, and everyone cheers when the hero wins the day. Stories not only capture the audience’s attention, they cause emotions in the hearers that coincide with the speaker’s own response to the story ((Gallo, pg. 50)). Stories shape our perceptions of life and history. Who remembers the details of the Spanish-American war?…

To be natural practice incessantly

To be natural, practice incessantly. “Just act naturally,” you think before taking the stage. “Be yourself,” your mentor told you last week. Doesn’t that sound simple, common sense even? What does preparation have to do with acting natural? Gallo points out, “authenticity doesn’t happen naturally ((Gallo, pg. 76)).” Not just a couple tries in front of a bathroom mirror beforehand; his illustrative story is from a woman who spent four months in preparation and received feedback from over one hundred people, all for an eighteen minute speech ( (Gallo, pg.…

Employees need communication, growth, recognition and trust

What makes employees feel engaged at work? Answers range from the complex to the simple, but Kruze believes engagement can be distilled into four categories: Communication, Growth, Recognition, and Trust ((Kruse, pg. 23)). Employees typically favor one category over the other three, although some have the advantage to equally value two or more. The category an employee favors is the most important factor to the employee’s feeling of engagement in the workplace and, while all four should be present, this factor makes the greatest difference.…

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe[1] by the word of his power[2].…