Posts Tagged ‘teaching’

Get Out More: 6 Ways to Be More Social

Whether you’re a web worker, an overworked corporate employee, or just a homey sort, you’ve probably heard the refrain: “Get out more!”

Yes, you could take a walk, take to drinking alone in a seedy bar, or drive around looking at billboards, but it’s likely that just physically getting out of the house isn’t all you need. No, those people who care about you are telling you to go out and… » Continue

July 2 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: class, networking, relationship, social, teaching | 4 comments»

Rico Clusters: An Alternative to Mind Mapping

I’m not a big fan of mind mapping, though I concede that it does have its uses. Recently, I learned of a different approach to brainstorming that seems both more practical and better grounded in the way the mind works than traditional, Buzan-style mind mapping. This approach, called the Rico Cluster after its developer, Dr. Gabrielle Rico, focuses on the creation of a “web” of related and… » Continue

October 24 2007 | By Dustin | Tagged: brain, brainstorming, creativity, mindmap, outlining, rico_cluster, teaching, thought, writing | 31 comments»

Sticky Ideas Workshop (Part 6): Stories

We humans are story-telling creatures. On the face of it, telling stories seems absurd, for anything other than entertainment, and yet throughout the various societies of humankind, and throughout all the history we’ve uncovered in dusty libraries and remote archaeological sites, humans have told stories not just to entertain, but to teach, to build and strengthen social ties, to convey the deepest truths of their personal, spiritual, and religious… » Continue

September 5 2007 | By Dustin | Tagged: Communication, experience, madetostick, stories, teaching, training, writing | 5 comments»

Sticky Ideas Workshop (Part 4): Credible

”I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” Back in the early ‘80s, Vick’s Formula 44 cough syrup ran commercials that opened with that line, featuring Peter Bergman, who indeed played a doctor on The Young and the Restless All My Children. Vick’s could, of course, have chosen an actual doctor to tell us how good Vick’s product was, but instead chose a TV star – someone… » Continue

August 24 2007 | By Dustin | Tagged: Communication, credibility, ideas, madetostick, statistics, teaching, writing | 4 comments»

Sticky Ideas Workshop (Part 3): Concrete

Remember Mikey, the kid from those Life cereal commercials in the ’70s? “Hey Mikey, he likes it!” In 1983, the actor who played Mikey was at a birthday party where he ate six bags of Pop Rocks, that fizzy candy, and also drank an entire six-pack of Pepsi. The pressure from the reaction of the two in his stomach caused his stomach to explode and he died! That’s… » Continue

August 20 2007 | By Dustin | Tagged: Communication, concreteness, detail, idea, madetostick, teaching, writing | 6 comments»

Sticky Ideas Workshop (Part 2): Unexpected

He was dead the whole time! Darth Vader is Luke’s father! She’s his sister and his daughter!

The endings of movies like Sixth Sense, The Empire Strikes Back, and Chinatown — and the stories that lead up to them – stick with us for years and even decades because they trigger a deep psychological reflex: surprise. They come at us out of nowhere (seemingly – repeat viewings tend to reveal… » Continue

August 15 2007 | By Dustin | Tagged: Communication, idea, madetostick, surprise, teaching, unexpected, writing | 6 comments»

Sticky Ideas Workshop (Part 1): Simple

“Just Do It.” Those words make up perhaps the stickiest marketing slogan of the past couple decades. In three words, only eight letters, Nike manages to say everything they want you to think, feel, believe about their brand. Three words to sum up the competitive edge Nike shoes and sports equipment promises, the can-do attitude that Americans so strongly believe, the strength, control, and optimism that Nike… » Continue

August 10 2007 | By Dustin | Tagged: Communication, idea, madetostick, simplicity, teaching, writing | 3 comments»

Book Discussion: Chip and Dan Heath’s “Made to Stick”

Imagine: a teacher stands in front of a classroom filled with bored, listless students. As he repeatedly fills the board and erases it, fills the board and erases it, he drones out a list of names and dates, formulae and proofs, theories and evidence. His students drop one by one into a dazed stupor, drool puddling beneath their vacant faces, necks craning to catch quick glimpses of… » Continue

August 8 2007 | By Dustin | Tagged: Communication, idea, madetostick, teaching, writing | 18 comments»

Sharpen Your GTD Chops by Teaching Others

For all of my high-minded pimping of this GTD stuff, I have to admit that I’m still very new to it. The fact is, I only read the book for the first time about 5 months ago and here I am spouting off like I wrote it. Having said all that, I do feel that I’ve got a pretty thorough understanding of how the system should work… » Continue

April 6 2007 | By Brett | Tagged: Communication, gtd, Productivity, teaching | 4 comments»

Training the Trainer: 5 Basics

At Say Leadership Coaching (SLC) we concentrate our efforts on just that which our name implies; coaching the leadership in companies to reach their greater potential. Executives are but one group we work with; there are leaders at every level of a company’s official org chart, and we find that titles can be irrelevant when it comes to discovering leadership talent.

Once we discover leadership talent, one of our objectives… » Continue

February 1 2007 | By Rosa | Tagged: leadership, Management, meetings, presentation, process, teaching, technique, trainers, training | 2 comments»

Great Managers Teach (When They Should)

Great Managers cultivate a work environment where lifelong learners thrive. Everyone simply learns for the sake of learning, thrilling to its personal reward. In these workplaces, curiosity is admired and all ideas are prized, and the Great Managers are those who facilitate the learning process in which those ideas incubate until innovation breaks through. People grow magnificently in the process.

Among studies of their own, managers will learn how to be… » Continue

January 25 2007 | By Rosa | Tagged: coaching, effectiveness, expertise, learning, teaching | 3 comments»