Crazy situations call for crazy reactions. Resilience as a team matters more than as an individual. Crises need to be turned into a stories you can eventually laugh about. Look for the pattern, not for the moron. You can make a difference, you can make things happen. Hope is not logical nor reasonable, yet it is essential and must be followed by actions. Don't bounce back, bounce forward. The most resilient groups aren’t the ones that keep everything together, they’re the ones who fall apart and keep working to reassemble themselves anew.
Eric BarkerFitting in is overrated. The biggest wins don’t go to the people who blend in but to the outliers, the people outside the norm who lean into what makes them different. Seemingly perfect moments and phenomenal outcomes don’t come from great timing or ideal conditions, they refuse to quit when things get hard but show up, again and again, when it would be far easier not to. The ones who win big aren’t the ones who never struggled, they’re the ones who kept going anyway. Run through barriers, not around them. True commitments are deeply apparent in every choice you make. The gap between where you are and where you want to be is probably not as wide as it seems; what you want is closer than it appears. If it doesn’t serve you, it will hold you back.
Julie GurnerGreat speakers are concise and clear. Anxiety when speaking has to do with your status in the group. Communication is operationalized empathy and key to problem solving. Reduce stress prior to speaking by deep breathing with long exhales. The desire to say it right leads to choking because you’ve exhausted your cognitive bandwidth, don't speak from memory. The goal of communication is to connect and get the message across to the listeners, don't hesitate to use the Problem-Solution-Benefits structure. Preparation should be about variety of syntax, not fixed repetition, and working bits separately rather than the speech as a whole, to give each part proper attention. You are at the service of your audience, tell them the time instead of proving that you can build a clock. Don't feel forced to speak, asking good questions and paraphrasing conversations well are critical skills too. What makes a conversation great is if you are interested, way more than if you are interesting. Pay attention and have intention. Filler words are natural parts of a speech, they only get annoying when they occur between thoughts meaning at the beginning or the end of sentences. To combat this, practice finishing sentences out of breath in order to be forced to inhale and unable to speak. What are you accustomed to also defines what you are annoyed by, even in a speech or during a conversation. Confidence is essential for public speaking, both in yourself and your message, but connection is more important than charisma: laugh at the heat rather than stressing about the sweat. Don't pre-apologies if you are nervous, it makes people more aware of any nervousness signs. In the same way that you warm up your muscles in sports, you must warm up your voice in public speaking. Small talk sucks because it is ambiguous, give it a purpose.
Matt Abrahams