The United States is in a bad mood. I was talking with a group of smart people recently who agreed that there’s a general sense of malaise these days. I’m not suggesting there isn’t good reason for it, but we’re taking inconsequential things and ourselves pretty seriously these days – ...
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If you make presentations to people – and who doesn’t – here are 31 things to avoid....
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Consensus is, arguably, the true essence of effective democratic public policy. Crafting decisions that most people can live with isn’t easy or quick, but usually beats simple majority voting when 51% wins and 49% of people become losers. Of course, there are people who see consensus as the naïve and ...
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We’ve talked a lot in past newsletters about the nuances of facilitating groups toward conclusions, but we haven’t yet said much about the first order of business – getting people to actually show up. If they’re already mad at you, it’s pretty easy. But, otherwise, just because your little gathering ...
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Meeting facilitation can be a complex art and science when the issues themselves are comparably complex. As we teach in our meeting facilitation training, learning to do meeting facilitation well requires paying attention to nuances, one of which is getting the right people in the room. The room, of ...
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| If this doesn’t make you want to shotgun a tall boy, nothing will. |
Max Hardy is a longtime Aussie mate and colleague of ours who, in this Ted talk, does a nice job of explaining the power of the right question....
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In addition to actually doing this work, we train a lot of other people to do this work. Invariably, people come into training workshops looking for the magical, new, cool thing that will fix all of their problems in dealing with the public. Here’s the secret sauce....
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Ellen Degeneres, the comedienne and talk show host, regularly uses the line – and titled her book, My point…and I do have one. The point here is to get to the point. In speaking, presenting or facilitating any group of people, decide the single, simplest point that you need ...
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I really dislike the Bears, Lions and Vikings. People and the groups we belong to don’t like other people and groups who aren’t like us. This can bloom into hate. Science says, in part, it’s biology, and we can learn to believe differently....
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