Your Voice Is Your Key to Success

by Steve Knight

How to hone your vocal delivery to mesmerize your audience with confidence, style and passion.

In the last article on Passion when we communicate, we discussed Facial Expression.

Here I would like to share with you the vital role that your Voice plays in conveying passion.

When many of my clients first come to me they ask why they don’t seem to be able to capture the attention of their audience when they are speaking in a meeting or delivering a presentation. They feel disillusioned that people are gazing out the window or looking down at the floor. Of course part of the reason for that could be that they have not assessed what their audience needs to hear, i.e. the message needs to be accurate and relevant, so that it strikes a chord. However, once that aspect is covered you absolutely need to deliver your message with confidence, style and passion. The voice plays a crucial role in conveying those three qualities. Continue reading

4 Steps to Building a Culture of Accountability

by Gwen Moran

When it comes to managing your company and serving your customers, you need to be confident that things are getting done. If you don’t build a culture of accountability, holding your employees and yourself responsible for behavior, follow-through and values, it could soon start affecting your bottom line. Continue reading

Invasion of the VUCAns

by Kathy F. Bernhard

 

What, another generation of Star Trek extraterrestrial humanoids to contend with?

Mercifully, no.  Look carefully, and you’ll see we’re not talking about Star Trek Vulcans; rather it is a real life, non-fiction uber-challenging force facing all of our organizations, the advent of the VUCA world. Continue reading

Does Your Company Make You a Better Person?

by Robert Kegan, Lisa Lahey and Andy Fleming

When we hear people talk about struggling to maintain work-life balance, our hearts sink a little. As one executive in a high-performing company we have studied explained, “If work and life are separate things—if work is what keeps you from living—then we’ve got a serious problem.” In our research on what we call Deliberately Developmental Organizations—or “DDOs” for short—we have identified successful organizations that regard this trade-off as a false one. What if we saw work as an essential context for personal growth? And what if employees’ continuous development were assumed to be the critical ingredient for a company’s success? Continue reading

How Business Can Help Measure Education Outcomes that Matter

80-kantrowby Alan Kantrow

Employers the world over tell us that what truly counts in hiring decisions is not the rote knowledge that helps college students answer examination questions, but skills and competencies that are essential for, and often developed at, work.  To be useful, the bricks of modern education need the straw of experience-based skills.  Bricks without straw tend to crumble; they cannot support weight, as has been known from Biblical times. Continue reading