Category: Blog

As a new year takes off, many of you are gearing up presentations for new business or proposed budget spending, or a brilliant departmental plan. You may be thinking, “How can I structure my presentation so that it is clear, concise, and memorable to my audience?” or “Listening to boring a presentation is painful. I don’t want my audience to feel that way.”

Well that was a bit different! It started with booking the flight. The options were severely limited, there was no priority security lane but there wasn’t any need – the teams were bored waiting for the next passenger to scan. How lovely!

If a soft skill becomes measurable, does that make it hard data? In case you haven’t heard, metrics are the wave of the future. (And the future was yesterday.In an age when our time is at such a premium, we better know in advance that something is going to be worth our while. When it comes to Learning & Development, that translates as: “Will this training drive measurable growth?” And while instincts go a long way, nothing says measurable like a line graph.

People ask me all the time for tips for working from home, specifically how to improve on time management. My response: “have you ever heard of energy management?” Psychologist Adam Grant makes the argument that productivity isn’t about time management

Many people I know experienced an unsettling adjustment to a growing reality: working from home. As for me? I’ve spent the majority of my career working partially or fully from my couch, dining room table, or a desk squeezed into the corner of my bedroom.

We have trained over 1,000 teachers. Here are some of the virtual learning tips they have found most helpful: 1. Do something different every 8 minutes to keep attention. No matter how much the class likes you and you know your content, you need to change something to keep attention (every 8 minutes according to our dial testing research).

You’re running a meeting online, leading a virtual training, delivering an online presentation. It’s nearing the end & you ask: Does anyone have any questions? Silence. You try again, anyone got any questions at all? Nothing.

Personally, I’m not convinced this whole internet thing is going to catch on. It’s probably just a fad, like rock and roll. Another two weeks tops. But on the off chance virtual calls stick around, we might as well figure it out. Life is more fun when you’re good at things and we can get you there quickly. Having trained over 130,000 people as communication coaches, we’ve put together our top video conference tips to be a whiz at virtual calls, presentations and video calls:

Recently, we did a training for a group of women investment managers at a large financial service company in Zurich. Each woman came prepared with a short presentation they were working on, which we filmed when they first arrived in the morning. Then we did a full day training, the same one that we do all over the world for companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, MTV, universities and non-profits.