(Perfecting Your Messaging in Four Parts: Part 1– The Hook) Imagine you’re a bank robber. The job is planned to the last detail: you have exactly five minutes and fifteen seconds to be in and out. The bank is full and the last thing you need is for someone to have an agenda other than…
(Perfecting Your Messaging in Four Parts: Part 2– Clarity) All across Canada, countless red and white banners flutter proudly. To half the viewers they read “mumitqo” (https://twitter.com/hashtag/mumitqo) . To the other half, they read “optimum”– it all depends whether you’re approaching from left or right. That’s what happens when you print banners on see-through fabric…
(Perfecting Your Messaging in Four Parts: Part 3) There’s nothing quite like the sizzle of a barbecue to whet an appetite! And there’s nothing like sizzle to empower a message. Sizzle (or zest, pizzazz, flair– call it what you like) is the magic which turns ordinary communicators into great communicators. With sizzle, your listeners will…
(Perfecting Your Messaging in Four Parts: Part 4) In the last three Briefings we’ve examined how to hook the listener’s attention, we’ve considered the importance of clarity, and we established the potency of “sizzle”. But even if you perfectly master each of these elements, you will have wasted your time unless you know how to…
“A lie travels around the world before the truth gets its boots on.” So said Mark Twain– at least that’s who usually gets the credit. But since it didn’t appear until nine years after Twain’s death, there is room for scepticism. But no matter the author, there is solid scientific support for the principle. Researchers…
We rarely see adversity as opportunity, but nature does. Some of earth’s richest soils, for instance, were byproducts of “disasters” such as floods, volcanoes and the Ice Age. We may see forest fires as catastrophes, but nature sees them as a time of rebirth. In fact, some plant species (known as pyrophytes) actually need such…
Can you spot the error in this CBC news item?: “Every year the four key nurseries in Ontario participating in the program cultivate 2.5 million seedlings between them…” Yes, you’re right– they should have said “among them”. Silly CBC. But it’s not just the CBC– the error is pervasive. Fortunately, the rule is the simplest…
In the last week I’ve encountered the expressions “mailing it in” and “calling an audible”. Sorry, I had to look them up. A while ago I was chatting with a colleague from South Africa and mentioned “the tip of the iceberg”. He roared with laughter and reminded me that they don’t have a lot of…
In my nearly thirty-seven years as legal counsel, I would estimate that easily a hundred times I was asked outright to lie on behalf of a client. Straight out. And many more times it was hinted. There are two reasons I always refused. First, the notion was abhorrent. It’s just plain wrong, all the time,…
Interestingly enough, many of the most capable lawyers speak two languages– in Canada typically English and French, in South Africa, English and Afrikaans, in India, English and Hindi, and in large parts of the American Southwest, English and Spanish. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. When young people go off to professional school…