Posted on September 23, 2014
http://youtu.be/455o05o2_ww
About you? No, about.me. Well, isn’t it all about you?, yes, its about me and you, but wait, I’m confused…..sound familiar, as in a Progressive car insurance commercial? If you have never heard of the website about.me, I suggest you head over there right now and start an account and see why I feel this site is the modern day version of people watching.
About.me allows you to talk about yourself in the bio section. It allows people to know more about what you stand for in your own words and to be able to find your web-presence easily, whether it be on LinkedIn or twitter, you can easily have access to said individuals.
After reading several bio’s and please let me state for the record, the majority are so incredible that you have no choice but to be humbled by their accomplishments, but once in a while you will come across some really funny ones such as:
– The Professional Daydreamer (What do you think the Salary on this one is?)
– The Coffee Drinker, Maker, Faker (A Coffee Faker? Never heard of that)
– The Imagination-centric Husband (uh? Needs to imagine himself with another wife?)
Finally, I came across a bio that is the epitome of what I call “Negative Noise.” A bio that actually prompted this blog post. For the protection of said individual, I will sum up his/her bio in a short sentence… “If anything can not go wrong, it will anyway.” Basically they are quoting Murphy’s Law under their own rendition.
Everything this person speaks of is negative. Therefore, they have no chance at all of achieving anything but negative results. I must revert to a saying I repeat many times in a day; “What ever the mind can see and perceive it can achieve” but the pendulum swings both to the negative side as well as the positive. Be careful what you hold yourself out for. YOU WILL GET WHAT YOU WANT!
In the meantime, I will look for an AA meeting. (About.me Anonymous)
Posted on September 9, 2014
We have all seen the funny Verizon commercials in which the technicians states over and over again, “Can You Hear Me Now?” Over the years in business and in my role as a CEO, I’ve noticed that people really don’t “hear” what the other person is trying to say and even worse, they can’t express properly the thoughts they form in their mind. I call this, “ineffective communication”, and it’s the most common type of mistake I’ve witnessed over the years.
People often say to me, “David, isn’t communication a broad, over-used term?” To peel the proverbial onion, I’ve found that there are generally four types of ineffective communication and yes, I will admit to having made every mistake that follows.
- Context
- Wrong Audience
- Delayed Information
- Inaccurate Information
Now I won’t bore you with a detailed explanation of each of the above mentioned but I will say briefly that people often fail to provide background information which is key to the recipients decision making. We also tend keep our audience out of the loop, thus making it difficult for the listener to react on the correct message being delivered. At the end of the day, we must provide timely information as in the words of William Shakespeare himself, “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” Finally, and more detrimental is verbalizing inaccuracies and although it doesn’t frequently happen, when it does, it could be detrimental.
