Category: Communication
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Athens, Home of Rhetoric. Where the Power of the Spoken Word first began
I’ve just returned from a few days in Athens, visiting with my daughter. She became a big fan of greek myths and legends from her reading of the Percy Jackson series of books. As we walked around the Acropolis area, the Parthenon and the ancient Agora of Athens, I reflected upon the elements of civilisation…
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What Question would you ask the Oracle of Delphi?
I am in Athens this week with my daughter. On Friday we drove to Delphi to visit the ancient ruins. For over one thousand years, during the time of the Greek city states, Delphi was the center of the Greek world. Delphi became famous far and wide between 700BC and 400AD for the Oracle. The…
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If You Want to Use Your Phone Less, First Figure Out Why
This is a summary of the article on the HBR blog: “If You Want to Use Your Phone Less, First Figure Out Why” by Marcello Russo, Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Gabriele Morandin 4 Common Reasons People want to Use their Phone less Many of us would like to spend less time attached to our phones. But to…
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Happiness is about Searching more than Finding
Barcelona-based philosopher Eduardo Punset developed a formula for happiness. I forget much of the details, but I always remember his description of “Search” as a fundamental part of the state of being happy. The video below shares a story that Eduard used to demonstrate the importance of the search (it is about his little dog).…
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How to Get Paid to Speak
“Your ability to communicate with others will account for fully 85% of your success in your business and in your life.” Brian Tracy Imagine being paid well to travel the world and share your message with people that want to hear you speak? If something in that question resonates, this post might be helpful. Today,…
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Do you have a Career or do you have a Job?
Most people who get paid have a job. A job is where someone pays you to do something that they don’t want to do. A career is where someone pays you because you are awesome at something valuable. In order to build a career you need a couple of things: Mastery – A Rare and…
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The Top 10 Words in Commencement Speeches
NPR have a wonderful speech database with over 350 great commencement speeches on their resource The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever What are the Most Common Words? Excluding prepositions and other super-common words, the most frequent words appearing in this database of Great Commencement Speeches were: Life Make People World Yourself Make Success Generation Define Human…
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My Father’s List: Leaders and Non-leaders
This list was put together by my father, Terry Neill, in the 1980’s as a reminder for himself and those around him about the nature of good leadership, and the easy pitfalls of Non-Leadership. He led businesses through good times and through tough times and I can see the positive impact he has had on…
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IESE Leadership Communications: Q&A with John Zimmer on Common Questions
This is an interview with John Zimmer, one of the leadership communications coaches who joins me regularly at IESE Business School for various programs. This week we are teaching the Executive MBA program. John has a wonderful blog: Manner of Speaking. Four of the top posts at his blog are: The Gettysburg Address: An Analysis…