Category: Audience Analysis
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Communication requires 2 people
Communication happens in the recipient. If there is no recipient, it is not communication. It is called noise, or as the Irish say: “shouting at the storm”. Communication can only begin when you understand what the recipient wants, what their goals are, what is missing in their current way of life. If you don’t know…
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India is Not Chaotic: Look at its Patterns
Devdutt Pattanaik tells TEDx that if you know the patterns that you are looking for, India’s apparent chaos is actually order. The mythology of the West: kill the chaos-creating dragon, create order The mythology of India: liberate yourself from boundaries A beautiful western garden is ordered. Weeds are weeds, trees are trees and flowers are…
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Leading Teams: The 5 Styles of Managing People
I was teaching a seminar recently and a young film producer told me “I am not a good manager”. I asked him why he believed this. He described a recent series of disasters that he had overseen with his team. I asked him “who are the people on your team?”. He said his cousin helped…
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How to Present the News
Have you ever harboured ambitions of a role in TV news broadcast? Learn the ropes in 2 minutes with Charlie Brooker. Structure Always Matters This video is a joke (yes). However, anyone who has attended my communication courses has learnt the importance of good speech structure. It allows your message to reach the audience in…
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The Real Reason Why Audiences Love Reality TV
I was watching the UK version of the TV show “The Apprentice” a few months ago. This particular week’s challenge was to sell caravan and camping equipment at a trade show. Early on, there was a key decision to make: Which model of caravan would the team try to sell? Now, this was a trade…
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How Ideas Die: The #1 Reason
A person can have the great idea, but if that person cannot convince a number of people: the idea dies. Good ideas do die. Good ideas must have good advocates. Good advocacy and good idea makes an idea live. Ideas need advocates like humans need oxygen. The Leader as Communicator The Leader’s #1 job as…
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Audience Analysis
The purpose of giving a speech is to give the audience something valuable to them. If I open most of the books on communicating well that I have on my bookshelf, they will tell me that step one is to know my audience. How do we achieve this? How to do Audience Analysis First, you…
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If You Can’t Explain What You Do in a Paragraph, You’ve Got a Problem
I so loved the title of Brad Feld’s post, that I just had to copy the title. This is an important one. We live in a world of personal branding, quick online reputation checks and a lot of noise. Authors, Entrepreneurs and job seekers get less and less time to explain themselves. This morning I was…