Resources

Loose Briefs Cause Grief - and I'm not talking undies...

We’ve all been there, right? You check your inbox at the end of a busy day, and there it is: a last-minute email from your boss asking if you can “quickly cover” something for tomorrow’s leadership meeting. No details on what they really want, no context, just a “thanks heaps” at the end. You’re left wondering, “What am I supposed to focus on? How much time will I have? And, wait—do they even need slides?”

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The Best Books on Presenting...That Aren't About Presenting

I often get asked to recommend books on presenting and public speaking, but I've found some of the best books to improve your presenting skills aren’t about presenting at all.

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Seven stories leaders should tell

Now settle in, Best Beloved, it’s time for a story. But what kind of story?  When we talk about business stories, we’re really talking about illustrating our core message with a tale that puts it in context.  We’re making points and making connections, and we’re using stories to make them memorable, clear and emotionally effective.

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Supersize Your Business Storytelling Skills

19/11/19 Q: What did the Arts student say to the Engineering student? A: Would you like fries with that? And there it is, a joke loaded with all the linguistic originality you’d expect from someone who scorns the arts.

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How To Use Spoken Storytelling In Your Business Encounters

Stephen King calls it telepathy: the power of a story to take an image from an author’s head and effortlessly place it in the heads of others. Storytelling is a powerful tool…

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Does Your "Update" Presentation really do Anything?

Sometimes I hear that an inform-style presentation is “just sharing information.” “But why are you informing?” I’ll ask. “It’s just an update. We’ve always done it this way.” And then I channel my inner toddler: “But why? What do you want them to know?”

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Defeating Story Fatigue

Recently, I was working with a client who is the tech officer in charge of his organisation’s IT, and he was struggling to come up with a way to open his next presentation.

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It's a conspiracy!

This election cycle we’ve seen conspiracy theories come to new prominence. The upswell in conspiracy thinking is having a tangible influence over political discourse, and it's tiring. Even the lizard people are over it.

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Why Business Storytelling Is Crucial

In what has become the most watched TED talk of all time, Ken Robinson tells the story of a Gillian, a little girl who couldn’t sit still at school.

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