Connection is the New Currency
March 30, 2018 § Leave a comment
In this post, the focus is on Trust, Transparency, Leadership, Storytelling, and how all these concepts interlink:
Trust and Permission
“We seek out people who tell us stories that resonate, we listen to those stories, and we engage with those people or businesses that delight or reassure or surprise in a positive way. And all of those behaviors are the acts of people, not machines. We embrace the humanity in those around us, particularly as the rest of the world appears to become less human and more cold.“
Leadership
“Management is almost diametrically opposed to leadership”
Leadership, though, is a whole other game. Leadership puts the leader on the line. No manual, no rule book, no überleader to point the finger at when things go wrong. If you ask someone for the rule book on how to lead, you’re secretly wishing to be a manager.
Leaders are vulnerable, not controlling, and they are racing to the top, taking us to a new place, not to the place of cheap, fast, compliant safety.”
StoryTelling
“After trust is earned and your work is seen, only a fraction of it is magical enough to be worth spreading. Again, this magic is the work of the human artist, not the corporate machine. We’re no longer interested in average stuff for average people.”
Humanity
“the people you seek to lead, the people who are helping to define the next thing and the interesting frontier, these people want your humanity..”
This was all taken from the following: I thought
Cosmos: Flatland and Googol
July 20, 2013 § Leave a comment
One of the biggest influences on my young scientific brain was the amazing thirteen part Cosmos series written by Carl Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan. It aired in 1980 when I was 13 years old and I still feel it’s impact and influence on my young mind. It was the most widely watched series in the history of public television and is still one of the most widely watched PBS series in the world. It’s been broadcast in more than 60 countries and watched by more than 500 million people. For it’s day, it was so well produced from the special effects to the soundtracks to the simple Storytelling. The series brilliant blending of science, history, poetry, music creates tremendous education for a young mind and at 13 I was a sponge.
In this series, the concepts include our universe, DNA, astronomy (Kepler, Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe), an entire episode devoted to Mars, Space-Time and Einstein, Voyager’s Golden Record and our collective intelligence. It’s all here.
One particular episode stood out for me above all others. The concepts described in the Flatland episode intrigues me to this day. The possibilities of “what’s out there?” and how it might look make me full of wonder. I still love the part how the 3D cube casts a shadow on the 2D Flatland and further, how we can imagine the fourth dimension by creating a “shadow” in our 3D world…even though we can never physically see this 4th dimensional “shape”.
FLATLAND:
Today I think of this concept as “Perspective” and I regular use this Flatland analogy when I feel perspective is needed.
I love how Carl simply poses great questions and teaches without lecturing.
“Cosmology brings us face-to-face with the deepest mysteries of questions that were once treated only in religion and myth”
“Who know for certain? Who shall here declare it? Whence was it born?…….these words are 3500 years old. They are taken from the Rig Veda, a collection of early Sanskrit hymns. The most sophisticated ancient cosmological ideas came from Asia and particularly from India. Here, there’s a tradition of skeptical questioning and un-selfconscious humility before the great cosmic mysteries..”
I marvel at the consistent blend of poetry, science, history, and cultural concepts and begin to understand how these ideas were planted in my young mind as they were in many other young minds.
As for the Googol and Googolplex, little did we know that 20 years later, these words would take on a whole new meaning. The concept of “the infinity of small” and the “infinity of large” still intrigues me to this day.
GOOGOL and a GOOGOLPLEX
I’ll end this mini-video series with one of Carl Sagan’s most persistent and timeless messages for humanity
“Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them, there’s a succession of incidence, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical branch-point in the history. What we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or stupidity, we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars.”
Ethos Pathos Logos – Communicating Aristotle Style
June 25, 2013 § Leave a comment
Communicating Aristotle Style:
1) Ethos – Establish the Who and How of You: Establish your Character and Credibility with the Audience
Ethos is a Greek word meaning “character” that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence the listener’s emotions, behaviors, and even morals The word’s use in rhetoric is closely based on the Greek terminology used by Aristotle in his concept of the three artistic proofs.:
2) Pathos – Make an Emotional Connection to your Audience; Make your communication matter to them; Lead them down the path with a compelling story.
Pathos: Greek for “suffering” or “experience;” representing an appeal to the audience’s emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric (where it is considered one of the three modes of persuasion, alongside ethos and logos).
Aristotle focused on whom, toward whom, and why stating that “It is not enough to know one or even two of these points; unless we know all three, we shall be unable to arouse anger in anyone. The same is true of the other emotions.”
Emotional appeal can be accomplished in a multitude of ways:
- by a metaphor or story telling, common as a hook,
- by passion in the delivery of the speech or writing, as determined by the audience.
- Language choices matter. Specific words matter. Great writers and storytellers are born from tremendous pathos.
3) Logos – Logic; Make fact based connections explicit from your analysis to conclusions. Persuading by use of reasoning. This was Aristotle’s favorite.
Effectively Communicating was figured out over 2000 years ago……a simple 3 step approach.