Tom Peters' Leadership Thoughts: Listening
I don't know what I like more--Peters and his idea or this Twitter post from @OliviaMitchell that led me to the video:
Take your audience with you on a wave of passion - watch the master Tom Peters
The Irish Times reports that video games are stimulating to the brain
A multidisciplinary team of neuroscientists at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, has discovered that video games increase brain activity.
The team, consisting of neuroscientist and engineer Dr Philip Zeman, behavioural neurologist Dr Ron Skelton and PhD student Sharon Lee, is set to publish findings indicating that playing video games utilises the area of the brain associated with spatial reasoning and navigation...
The results grew out of a project to increase understanding of the potential for recovery in patients with brain injuries.
“Originally we were seeking to provide a new measure for tracking recovery,” said Dr Skelton. “It turns out that skill doesn’t really return after brain injury. It’s a matter of finding what areas of the brain are damaged, which are still functioning, and how to compensate.”
The development has potential applications in diagnostics for pharmaceutical prescriptions and for brain injury patients.
Once I would have welcomed this news to justify playing games, but I give watching Jeopardy and other TV game shows a lot of the credit for my recovery of cognitive skills after a stroke. Reported on Twitter by @BrainDamageNet,
Missy Hargraves looks nervous as she focuses on the dusty stage of the dimly lit El Cid in Los Feliz. She's hoping to tell a story on stage for the first time, in front of a packed house of strangers. Every third Tuesday and last Monday of the month, budding storytellers like Hargraves put their name into a hat hoping to be one of the 10 selected to participate in an event called the Moth.
I like to see stories about The Moth because I like the stories they bring me--the quality is almost always high. What can Toastmasters learn from these guys, though? Every storyI read has references to "packed house"; every photo does show crowded audiences. If you're a Toastmaster, can you say your club generates this kind of excitement and has this kind of following?
1. Your speech has more than one overall point (Saving the environment AND supporting the health care program - both points could be used as supporting points in a speech about political philosophy, but then the one overall point is about the political philosophy).
2. You are presenting points as soundbytes instead of stories. When you tell me what you want without showing me why you want it, you are wasting your breath and my time.
3. You are presenting more than one point every 4-6 minutes. In a 60 minute speech, have ONE overall point (saving the environment) and no more than one supporting point for every 10 minute period. Your audience can only take in so much information at one time.
4. If you aren't allowing your audience to Go Ahead and Laugh at least every 2-3 minutes, you need to find the humor in your speech before your listeners transform into uninterested watchers, cartoon scribblers, or Blackberry escapees. When you add to, you'll always need to edit out.
5. You find yourself running out of time before you reach your conclusion - preferably in your practice sessions as opposed to live, paying audiences.
From Rich Hopkins, advice on recognizing that your speech is too long. Whole post contains the tips for what you can do about it.
From Tom Peters
The great American psychologist, William James, tells us, "The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated."
I have long thought that those are among the most profound words I've ever stumbled upon. For I do fervently believe that appreciation is indeed the most powerful force of nature and hence, practically speaking, the premier "motivational" "tool" available to bosses-managers-leaders (not to mention parents and teachers and spouses)...
And that pair in turn leads me to the last of this set, and back to the James brothers, this time the prominentnovelist Henry: "Three things in life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind."
Tough times, which are still the context for many of us, provide the greatest tests of character. Tough times are the period when basic human decency matters most. From a commercial standpoint, tough times are the best of times to deepen relationships with employees, customers, suppliers, and the communities in which we work and live. Yes, difficult decisions must be made ... again and again. But the way in which these decisions are approached and executed is the bedrock for the relationships that will re-ignite first and most fiercely and move us forward with alacrity when the worm does turn.
Relationships based on thoughtfulness and benevolence and kindness and appreciation are the sort that you "can take to the bank." Or, to use the strategy mavens' metaphor du jour, deep relationships make for the deepest of "blue oceans"—a/k/a, sustainable competitive advantage.
Believe it!
The whole post contains more examples and is worth reading.