How to manage your inner lizard
Your 'inner lizard'? That's the nasty little creature that takes over your brain in a crisis. Given the interesting times we are living in, yours may well be hyperactive at the moment. And believe me, I know how that feels. Two years after I took the plunge and went...
Confident public speaking – our five top tips
Confident public speaking. Is that something you've mastered - or just something you wish you could achieve? If you're nervous about getting up on your hind legs in front of an audience, you're certainly not alone. Most people are. And even actors with an...
Terrified of public speaking? Here’s how to manage your inner lizard…
Are you terrified of public speaking? For a lot of people the very idea of getting up on your hind legs and talking to an audience - any audience - is so frightening that they try to avoid it at all costs.. And believe me, I know how that feels. At the tender age of...
Running to keep up your skills?
Ever had the feeling that everything's changing too fast for your skills to keep up? If you haven't, then take it from me that it comes with age. I may feel like a 23-year-old when I'm having a good day, but my passport wouldn't agree... And - as the old joke has it -...
Helping your client get what they need
'Helping' your client? 'Educating' your client? 'Collaborating with' your client? Are those all polite ways to talk about 'telling the client what they need to do'? Perhaps, in a way, they are. But even when your relationship with a client is at its most frustrating,...
Change – riding the wind towards a futureproof business
In times of change, how do you find a futureproof business? The short answer is 'you can't'. You really can't plan for everything, because some things just aren't predictable. Except, of course, with 20-20 hindsight. My wife tells the story of a friend who wanted to...
Public speaking for beginners
What scares you? In fact, what scares you the most? How about death? Scary enough? Failure. Does that worry you? Then, of course, there's pain. No one loves pain. But in a well-known survey... ...one fear topped them all. The fear of public speaking. And death? That...
Embracing change
What happens when the whole basis for your business - disappears...? You really have just two options: to close the business, or to take the plunge by embracing change. If you've read my earlier piece - All change? - you'll know what I'm talking about. In it I...
All change?
Change, in business, is something that comes with the territory. Mostly because if it doesn't, the business won't survive. There's a (very) old joke among typographers about the Latin tag 'in perpetua floreat nihil'. Which they translate as 'nothing looks good in...
Talking the talk – writing for the spoken word
We don't speak in the same way that we write. So if you're writing something that's going to be read aloud, you need to think a little differently. Short sentences. Ungrammatical constructions. (Or, at least, not strictly grammatical.) Careful word choice. (No...
