Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

The Pixar story

Interesting read. I can’t believe how many people missed the boat on Pixar. It could almost be made in to an animated movie…

The power of words

Excellent (very long) article with author Alan Moore. Here are a couple of quotes about words that stood out to me:

Magic and language are practically the same thing, they would at least have been regarded as such in our distant past. I think it is wisest and safest to treat them as if they are the same thing. This stuff that you are dealing with – words, language, writing – this is dangerous, it is magical, treat it as if it was radioactive.

If you want to expand people’s consciousness, give them better language, wider language, new words. Learn to love words, learn to delight over a new word that you’ve found.

Pros, Elected Ones and the New Boys: Teaching

This is one of my favorite scenes from WKRP. I can see someone doing something like this for a Table Topic in Toastmasters

Without futher ado: A proper way to make an introduction

One of our more advanced toastmasters mentioned last week gave us a demonstration of how to make a proper introduction. Although I got the gist of it, I wanted to learn more. Here is what I found from the Traffic Toastmaster site:

The T-I-S Formula for Introductions
Like a well-prepared speech, an introduction should be natural, smooth and free of grammatical errors and oral stammers. An ideal method is the T-I-S formula taught by Dale Carnegie in his public speak classes: T-I-S stands for Topic, Importance, and Speaker. When making an introduction, remember to maintain eye contact with the audience, not the speaker.

• Topic. This is the title and purpose of the speech.
• Importance. This explains the relavance of the speech to the audience. It can specify what the audience will gain or learn from listening.
• Speaker. This tells the audience why the speaker is qualified to speak on the topic, but includes only qualifications pertinent to the topic and the audience.

To see how this works, let’s pretend we are going to introduce John Doe who will speak on automotive safety to a group of driver education students. Using the T-I-S method, an introduction might sound something like this:
“Good evening and welcome to tonight’s symposium, titled ‘Arrive Alive.’ We all need to know how to operate a motor vehicle safely, because statistically out of the 40 people here tonight, 10 of us will be involved in as serious accident during our life. By reducing the number of accidents we not only save lives, but we lower the cost of insurance premiums.

“Our speaker is the former director of the National Transportation Council. He designed and patented the first three-point safety belt and was instrumental in developing the airbag, now a mandatory requirement for all passenger cars. He has been a licensed driver since age 11 and has never been involved in an accident. Please help me welcome John Doe!”

Great suggestion and well worth remembering,

Anatomy of a Homurous speech

This is a video of a John Zimmer, a toastmaster in Europe, on his site he’s broken down the contents of his speech and his thought process behind why he did certain things. His commentary is just fascinating as his speech.

Presentation advice from Edward R. Tuft

Edward R. Tufte is a informational graphics guru and does near infinate amounts of public speaking. Here is a run down of some of hi tips for speaking:

Show up early
Something good is bound to happen—if there’s no need to fix a mechanical problem or resolve a room conflict, you can always mingle with the audience.

How to start

• Clearly tell the audience: What the problem is, who cares, and what your solution is.
• Write out your own introduction.

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The day I learned to follow directions

During my years at college, I learned many techniques for making the perfect pitcher of Kool-aid. I like to focused on making sure all the sugar grains were properly dissolved by adding a small amount of water to the kool-aid mix and stirring, making a think syrup, once that was done, I’d add water to taste.

My roomate George made his Kool-aid with hot water and stuck it in the freezer.

My other roommate made the Kool-aid with a practiced eye, and almost zen like quality from years of study and practice.

Over those years I became an addict not only to the Kool-aid but a slave to the process that it took to create the product.

The one thing I learned, and a lesson that I have never forgotten, was because of a discussion with my brother over our shared addition with Kool-aid.

He claimed he knew how to make the perfect pitcher of Kool-aid. I didn’t believe him, every one was of the opinion that “they” made the perfect pitcher of Kool-aid.

“Okay, what’s the perfect way”, I challenged.

He pointed to the back of the package. “The instructions”, he said simply. His thought process went like this: Kool-aid probably spend millions on R&D to figure out the right amount sugar, water and mix, why on earth should he spend time re-inventing the wheel.

I was speechless.

Since that revelation, even though my addictions is years behind me, I rarely rarely don’t take the time to read and follow directions.

The science of listener attention

From the West Wing:

”Food is cheaper. Clothes are cheaper. Steel is cheaper. Cars are cheaper. Phone service is cheaper. You feel me building a rhythm here? That’s because I’m a speech writer, I know how to make a point. It lowers prices and raises income. Do you see what I did with ‘lowers’ and ‘raises’ there? It’s called the science of listener attention. We did repetition, we did floating opposites, and here comes the one that’s not like the others. Ready? Free trade stops wars … and we figure out how to fix the rest.”

In praise of lazy

“Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.” -Walter Chrysler