Scientists Are Inspired By Effective Communicators To Address The World’s Biggest Problems
An experiment that produced a burst of energy that lasted 100 trillionths of a second might not seem consequential, but considering that it generated 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power (the same process our sun and stars use to create energy), it represents a major...
How To Build Your Dream Career According To This Silicon Valley CEO
Metaphors exert a powerful influence on our daily decisions. For example, many of us strive to climb the “career ladder,” each step taking us closer to the top. But what if some steps represent smaller leaps than others? What if we slip off a rung or take a step...
Climate Scientists Took A 1,300-Page Report And Condensed The Data To Make It Newsworthy
It’s been a week since the United Nations released an exhaustive report on climate change. I’ll wager that few people have read the entire report unless it’s been their full-time job. At 1,300 pages, the climate report would have taken the average reader 43 hours to...
The Most Common Job Interview Question And How To Answer It According To Harvard Career Advisor
Gorick Ng was fourteen when his single mother was laid off from her job at a sewing machine factory. His mom didn’t know how to write a resume, and neither did he. But he learned what he could to help his mom apply for jobs. On weekends, he helped his mother scrub...
Admiral James Stavridis Reveals The Essence Of Leadership
In my career as a communication specialist working with CEOs and successful entrepreneurs around the world, I’ve reached one firm conclusion: great leaders read far, far more books than the average person. For example, retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis reads...
Jeff Bezos’s Four Core Values That Made Amazon A Success
When Andy Jassy takes over as CEO of Amazon, founder Jeff Bezos can be confident that Jassy has internalized the company’s core values. After all, Bezos has been consistently communicating Amazon’s four core principles since the day the company launched in 1995. A...
3 Compelling Communication Strategies Bill and Melinda Gates Use In The Annual Gates Letter
Every year I look forward to the Gates Foundation letter because Bill and Melinda Gates are serious students of communication. They use a variety of writing and delivery techniques to make complex information easy to understand and compelling to read. The 2021 Bill...
What Made President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Speech So Powerful
Joe Biden’s inaugural address at noon eastern on Wednesday was well-written with powerful rhetorical flourishes and inspiring themes. According to one speechwriter who worked with Biden while he served as vice president, “He knows that words matter.” In collaboration...
Build Trust in Science Using This Communication Method
“People are dying because we can’t communicate in ways that allow us to understand one another. That sounds like an exaggeration, but I don't think it is.” The actor Alan Alda wrote that sentence three years ago, but it’s more relevant today than ever. While most...
Elevate Your Communication Skills In 2021 With These 5 New Business Books
Some terrific business books were published this year. I've been able to read at least 50 new books and speak directly to many of the authors. If your goal is to improve your communication skills--and let's face it, everyone has room to improve in this area--these...
Hint Water Founder’s Communication Skills Helped Her Turn An Idea Into A $150M Brand
Kara Goldin, the founder and CEO of Hint Water, turned an idea that struck her one day at the kitchen table into a $150 million a year business. Along the way to building a popular lifestyle brand, Goldin discovered the power of storytelling to grab attention and...
Virologist Explains The Pandemic Uses A ‘Swiss Cheese’ Metaphor. His Message For Educators
The Swiss cheese pandemic defense metaphor IAN MACKAY/VIROLOGYDOWNUNDER/BASED ON THE SWISS CHEESE MODEL BY JAMES T. REASON If a photo can say a thousand words, an infographic on the coronavirus pandemic speaks volumes. The “Swiss cheese model” of...
The Legacy of Zappos Chief Tony Hsieh
It was never about the shoes; it was about the culture. That was the big lesson I took away from my first meeting with Tony Hsieh at Zappos headquarters a little over a decade ago. Like many others this weekend, I was shocked and saddened to hear that the man who...
John McCain’s Concession Speech Reminds Americans That Words Can Inspire and Unite
Twelve years after John McCain conceded the 2008 U.S. presidential election to Barack Obama, the video of McCain’s speech has gone viral, racking up about 15 million views. People began sharing the video on Thursday after Donald Trump claimed voter fraud in the 2020...
Watch Bill Gates Give 30-Second Answers to Common Job Interview Questions
Bill Gates has hired thousands of people at Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He knows what to look for in job candidates. How would Gates handle a job interview if the tables were turned? During an interview for his new YouTube series...
Andrew Cuomo Gave 111 PowerPoint Briefings in the Pandemic. Here’s What He Learned
On March 2, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo gave the first of what would become 111 consecutive days of Covid-19 PowerPoint updates. Cuomo’s ‘daily briefings’ turned into must-watch TV, with millions of viewers tuning in throughout New York, America, and around the...
How John F. Kennedy Turned a ‘C’ in Public Speaking into a Super Power
I’ve often said that great public speakers are made, not born. John F. Kennedy was no exception. In the new book, JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, Pulitzer prize-winning historian Fredrik Logevall traces Kennedy’s transformation from a shy, awkward speaker...
How Ruth Bader Ginsburg Sharpened Her Writing Skills to be Persuasive
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s quotes in this article are based on Ginsburg's interview with Professor Bryan Garner, published in volume 13 of The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing. It’s a fascinating interview that you can read here. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg won...
Guy Raz and Carmine Gallo Talk Storytelling and Entrepreneurship
Famed venture capital investor Ben Horowitz once said, “The CEO’s main job is to be the keeper of the vision and the story.” Guy Raz agrees. Raz is the popular host of several NPR podcasts that reach millions of listeners a month. He shares the stories of famous...
Jeff Bezos Shares an Inspiring Origin Story
All great stories have a structure. Skilled storytellers like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos follow the structure to keep their audiences engaged. On Wednesday, Bezos joined other tech CEOs (Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg) at a congressional hearing to answer very...
5 Ways To Ask For Help And Get It
During a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic, many of us are reluctant to ask for help in our daily lives or in the workplace. An editor for Time Magazine acknowledged the unexpected challenges she and her husband faced when he fell ill with Covid-19. She needed...
How To Prepare To Face Tough Questions Like High-Powered CEOs
According to the New York Times, the tech titans scheduled to testify today at a congressional antitrust subcommittee hearing have been preparing with their teams. The newspaper says Mark Zuckerberg’s legal firm has been working with him at his estate in Hawaii while...
Three Ways To Make Virtual Meetings Less Tiring And More Engaging
The pandemic lockdowns put in place to fight the spread of the coronavirus have accelerated the already growing trend of holding virtual meetings. Millions of remote meetings and online interactions have provided Microsoft plenty of data to uncover the good and the...
3 Strategies To Unleash Your Creativity You Can Learn From Lin-Manuel Miranda
The Disney Plus film release of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s award-winning blockbuster, gives us an opportunity to analyze the creative spark that turned the project from an idea into a cultural phenomenon. According to LinkedIn, creativity is the number one...
These Easy Four Steps Will Help You Become A Better Speaker
Florida State psychology professor Anders Ericsson, a giant in the field of peak performance, passed away this month. Malcolm Gladwell brought Ericsson’s research to a larger audience in his book, Outliers. Many of us are familiar with the now-famous “10,000-hour...
How Apple Was Able To Engage Viewers In Its First Virtual Event
The simplest way to keep an audience’s attention is to break a pattern. In other words, change it up. That’s exactly what Apple did in its first all-virtual presentation to kick off the 2020 WorldWide Developers Conference. Apple CEO, Tim Cook, walked onto the stage...
CEOs Become ‘Chief Empathy Officers’ In Response To Black Lives Matter Protests
It’s easy to meet anger with anger. It’s harder to meet anger with empathy, but the leaders who strive to understand how others feel will earn the admiration of their employees, customers, and the communities in which they do business. A closer look at statements made...
How Andrew Cuomo Uses FDR’s Metaphors to Communicate in a Crisis
Every crisis is unique, but the model for communicating in a crisis follows a time-tested formula. Every crisis is unique, but the model for communicating in a crisis follows a time-tested formula. Leaders throughout history have used plain language to convince people...
4 Steps for Communicating Science like Dr. Anthony Fauci
The lead scientist during the coronavirus pandemic has a gift for translating science into everyday language According to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, his “enduring gift to society” is his ability to make complicated information easy for everyone to...
Andrew Cuomo Adopts FDR’s Communication Style in Coronavirus Updates
Every crisis is unique, but the model for communicating in a crisis follows a time-tested formula. Leaders throughout history have used plain language to convince people to take massive action. In a press conference on Saturday, April 4, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo...