[This post is part of a series on Communication Skills Exercises for Business and Life. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Storytelling is a fundamental element of human communication. Tell someone what you did the other day and they may end up bored. Tell them a story well and[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on Communication Skills Exercises for Business and Life. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Do you ever start a conversation you want to talk to, then run out of things to say? This exercise will help. I adapted it from my friend[…] Keep reading →

In the midst of my series on Communication Skills Exercises, yesterday I worked with the brilliant, talented, and accomplished Nina Paley — free culture advocate, creator of Sita Sings the Blues, cartoonist of the insightful, funny, and subversive Mimi and Eunice, and friendly neighbor. We animated the Freedombox logos John Emerson and I worked on. She also does things like post blog entries titled “I am awesome,” suggesting an obvious[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on Communication Skills Exercises for Business and Life. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] I love starting seminars with this exercise. It’s simple and interactive. It gets people’s blood flowing and meeting their neighbors. It works best in a group, but you[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on Communication Skills Exercises for Business and Life. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] I wasn’t born with great communication skills. I don’t think I had great problems with communication, but I was behind the curve in many areas. As I learned[…] Keep reading →

Someone I’m coaching wrote the following: I will be graduating from college in May, and I am trying to decide which two cities I should move to after graduation. I’ve been wanting to move to NYC ever since I first visited in high school and been going there ever since. On the other hand, everyone that I know tells me that I should move to LA instead and think I[…] Keep reading →

It’s still July 4th in the States as I’m writing this even though it’s July 5th in Shanghai. Of all our national holidays, I value and celebrate Independence Day perhaps the most. By value and celebrate I don’t mean I go to the biggest barbeque I can, though a couple years ago I went to an amazing July 4th party only being an alumnus of an ivy league business school[…] Keep reading →

I had heard of the Great Wall of China. Now I’m behind it. They block Facebook, Youtube, plenty of Wikipedia pages (like pages on internet censorship in China), and links to software to get around the firewall. There seems to be a paid service to circumvent it. I can’t say I understand the strategy behind blocking these sites. It seems counterproductive to my concept of what government is for —[…] Keep reading →

Many people have a counterproductive yet common model for solving their problems. If you use it, you’re holding yourself back from a better life. There’s an alternative, however, which I’ll write about below too. The Dandelion Model I call it the “dandelion model” because it’s based on the idea that to get rid of a dandelion, you have to get to its roots. If you don’t, it will grow back.[…] Keep reading →