moment

One of the beauties of the broadband revolution is the incredibly cool ability to become your own media figure. The weblog is the sounding board for the would-be or part time journalist; the podcast is an answer for jockeys who won't settle for $6 an hour and free CDs; and soon, consumer generated television, through monetized services like iSee TV will provide the catharsis for all Tom Brokaw wannabes.

The number one requirement, whether you are a business owner or an employee, is to be able to say what you do, and say it with influencing results. Through testing, I have seen, experienced, and received feedback that an elevator speech no longer works. My test results show that elevator speeches are too slow and too boring. People know what's coming and have mindfully tuned out it out before the first sentence. Elevator speeches don't stop the listener in their moment, which is exactly what you need to do. An introduction that starts with a firecracker impact does stop them in their moment.

One of the greatest compliments I had ever received as a Manager was from an employee after I had disciplined her. It took her about 15 minutes after the fact before she realized what I had done. I was reminded of that situation the other day when a reader wrote me and asked me how to go about "calling attention to a person's mistakes indirectly." In my training sessions I talk with managers and team leaders about how they need to create "Teachable Moments". Discipline should be a positive learning experience.

One of our ANEWIST Newsletter subscribers wrote in with a concern regarding bringing up a problem issue at her workplace. It seems that whenever she wanted talk about the issue, her supervisor wanted to cut the conversation short and avoid her. What to do?

Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you try to "fix your life", i.e. organize, maintain your cool, be nicer to others, or create things to enable your life to be all-around-better, that certain obstacles will come up which question exactly what you're trying to create?

When we talk of getting focused this means specifically to see what captures our undivided time, attention and energy. Choosing what you're going to focus on overall imparts clarity. Does this mean you're only going to focus on these specific things? Not at all.