Soft Skills Volume 1: A Collection of Strategies, Anecdotes, Techniques, Observations, Stories, Tactics, Advice, Experiences, Ideas, and Methods

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

It is the reality that your audience cannot process information in two forms at the same time. What does that mean? It means that when you reveal a slide in PowerPoint and immediately begin speaking about the contents of that slide, your audience is neither listening to you nor reading the data on your slide. They are in a state of imposed limbo that leads to distraction and ultimately disengagement - that's a presentation fail.

Sticking with PowerPoint, the best practice, and it comes very easily with a little practice, is to introduce your next slide before revealing the slide.

We all like hearing that someone thinks well of us, especially when a third party is involved. By complimenting someone to others, there is a further validation to your comments that directly telling your compliments to someone first-hand just lacks. It's another dimension, an insinuated confidence in your comments as you are making them public.

Triangulating this process allows for a wider influence on behaviour.

Compliment in front of others, it's more important than one-on-one. Think public versus private.

If you do not choose the specific language to describe your skills, competencies, educational background, experience and overall contributions, it will be chosen for you. It's as simple as that. Be active and choose your brand or be branded. The next part of watching your brand is in the absolute necessity of then repeating your specific chosen language. Think of this as an advertising campaign or an educational blitz. Same difference. When you educate those who you work with on the quality and uniqueness of your work - that is your brand. When you allow others to label and assign language describing your work that is your brand. Make it; don't have it dished out to you.

Because if you don't brand yourself, others will for you. Promise.

Eyes up please---whether it is a physical copy of a report or a soft copy of a partially completed e-mail on someone's monitor. I often recommend asking if there is anything that would be best turned over or if a screen might be better positioned out of sight during a conversation. You will be surprised at how delighted people are at your offering to be excluded from the possibility of prying into their privacy.

Your words, voice & tone, as well as body language, need to be in alignment to be perceived as you intended.

Well, we understand each other by filtering messages through our own experiences and background. We can sometimes be listening more for what conforms to our expectations in our minds rather than what is actually being said in the moment. There can be a lot of security in each of us approximately thinking we know what the other person is going to say as long as it fits into the framework of expectations that our experience has formed for us.

We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are.

"That's how we have always done it." These are dangerous words. Be warned.

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." Nietzsche.