Posts Tagged ‘speaking skills’

I make an effort to avoid violent movies, television programs, and evening news stories.  I’ll admit to watching one cop drama, with occasional violent scenes, on a regular basis.  In general, I also try to stay away from war metaphors and other aggressive language when I’m speaking, in public and in private. Ordinarily I would let the Tucson shooting story play out and not add to the cacophony of commentary about it.  But maybe this is the tipping point for change in our public dialogue. One can only hope.

Words alone don’t cause people to do heinous things, however we are all responsible for the impact our words have on others and on our collective consciousness.  Do my words inspire, support, encourage, praise, give joy or are they critical, demeaning, antagonistic, negative, or dehumanizing?  If we each can start thinking about what we say before we say it maybe we can change the very toxic environment of our public discourse.  To paraphrase…speak to others the way in which you would like to be spoken.

“Your little book was a big hit in my course” says Kathy Berggren, who teaches communications at Cornell University. Using my framework for getting to the “meat of the matter” Kathy’s students were able to experiment with creating effective statements about themselves which they can use in a variety of ways including looking for  work.  They also suggested that I include more details about using the elevator speech for personal branding, job searching, and career transitions.  Great feedback and I am working on the second edition of the book right now and was planning a chapter on how to craft an elevator speech for job hunting!  Thanks to Kathy and her students!  And they will continue to use my little book at Cornell University! Yowser! That’s way cool!