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To Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking, Stop Thinking About Yourself

Most of us — even those at the top — struggle with public-speaking anxiety. When I ask my clients what makes them nervous, invariably they respond with the same answers:"I don't like being watched.""I don't like the eyes on me.""I don't like being in the spotlight."...

Maintaining Eye Contact While Talking Overwhelms the Brain

To humans, eye contact is everything. From infancy onward, humans look to the gaze of others to try to gauge their emotions and thereby determine what those emotions say about their relationship. Yet, despite the social advantages we can gain by looking into someone eyes, we are pretty bad at doing it consistently: Research shows that adults make eye contact 30 to 60 percent of the time in a conversation, but experts say that people should actually be making eye contact 60 to 70 percent of the t...

In Negotiations, Givers Are Smarter Than Takers

In 2010, a Costa Rican diplomat named Christiana Figueres set out to do something that many people saw as impossible. The United Nations had appointed her to build a global agreement to fight climate change. She needed to get 195 countries on board, and one of the biggest challenges was Saudi Arabia. Their economy was dependent on oil and gas exports, so they had every incentive to keep profiting from that rather than reducing their carbon footprint....

How to explain anything to anyone: 4 steps to clearer communication

"Have you ever had this experience?" asks physicist Dominic Walliman in a TEDxEastVan Talk. "You're having a chat with someone, and they're telling you something about a subject they're very interested in or they know a lot about, and you're following along. Then, at some stage you realise you kind of lost the thread of what they're saying … You realise you have absolutely no idea what they're talking about."...

If You Master This Listening Technique, You'll Hear What People Don't Say Out Loud

Most leaders already know they have to be better listeners – they've read the articles and seen the research. Learning to "hear offers" like an improviser can turn obstacles into opportunities....

Why Do We Gesture When We Talk?

We all know people who talk with their hands. Turns out there's quite a bit of research around the relationship between language and gestures....

Great Communication Secrets of Great Leaders

good leaders communicate effectively because they do three specific things well in an ongoing cycle which gets progressively more focused and more targeted over time....

Managing Change

70% of organisational transformations fail. Jayme de Lima suggests failure occurs because the organisation never wins its employees commitment....

Tell To Win

Article by Peter Guber: For Peter Guber, what began as a knack for telling stories as one of the world's leading entertainment executives has evolved into a set of principles that anyone can use to achieve their goals - whatever you do in life, you need to be able to tell a good story....

Persuasion

Article by Dave Lakhani : The art of getting what you want. Persuasion is the art and science of getting exactly what you want. In its highest form, you use persuasive techniques to position yourself as an expert and to help other people get what they want. Persuasion can and must be used to create win-win situations for everyone involved. This is a key distinction between manipulation and persuasion. Manipulative techniques never result in a lasting relationship, whereas those relationships (bu...

Know What Your Customers Want Before They Do

Article by Thomas H. Davenport, Leandro Dalle Mule, and John Lucker: Retailers need to target customers with the right deal at the right time, here's how to nail the "next best offer."...

The 3 Minutes It Takes To Read This Will Improve Your Conversations Forever

Article by Josh Spector: Since my tips to improve your writing in two minutes were so popular, I thought I'd share some similar tips to improve your next conversation. Following are the simplest tips I can give you to ask better questions, which will make your conversations more valuable to you and the people you engage with....

The Mistakes You Make in a Meeting's First Milliseconds

Article by Sue Shellenbarger: A growing body of research shows the snap judgements people make about others' trustworthiness are wrong more often than most people think....

The Business of Kidnapping: Inside the Secret World of Hostage Negotiation

Article by Joel Simon: Official Policy in the UK & US – unlike in many other countries – is never to make concessions to kidnappers. Those taken sometimes die as a result. Is it time to rethink?...

Never, Ever Utter these Phrases in a Salary Negotiation

Article by Josh Doody: A salary negotiation is a collaboration, and a key ingredient of collaboration is good communication. It's important to be very clear with what you communicate....

You Are the Best Visual

Article by Judith Humphrey: The best way to create a persuasive leadership moment is to become the audience's focal point. Audiences that divide their attention will only be able to partially commit to you....

Coping With Stagefright

Article by John Daly & Isa Engleberg: Welcome to the world of stagefright! You are not alone if you have had this experience. Almost everybody has. Luckily, researchers in communication & psychology have identified several strategies that can help you overcome your nervousness....

Start With No

Article by Jim Camp: For many years now, "win-win" has been held up as the ideal to aim for in any negotiation. Why? Probably because it has always been considered to be the fairest way to do business. But what happens if the other party in the negotiation is simply using our desire to think win-win to get us to agree to unnecessary compromises?...

Picture It

Article by Gary Genard: How effective are you at persuading audiences to see things your way? If you fail to speak visually, chances are the answer is "not very"....