People won’t listen to you talk the talk if they haven’t seen you walk the walk. Communicator of the Week Award goes to golf star, Anthony Kim, who this week won his first tournament after coming back from a 12 year absence during which he battled drug and alcohol addiction. We often hear cliche messages from celebrities and sports stars. ‘Believe in your self’ ‘Keep grinding’ ‘Never underestimate your opponent’ Lovely words that get easily forgotten because they are often not backed up by...
8 days ago • 1 min read
Racism generally is not a good look. But it is a sad indictment of society today that it is only when that racism is indefensibly ugly and outrageous that it will not actually be defended. MisCommunicator of the Week Award goes to the Truth Social account of Donald Trump for the post depicting the Obamas as apes. You know things are bad when even Donald Trump deletes and disavows one of his own posts. And as much as there is so much that can and has been said about the despicable post, there...
22 days ago • 1 min read
Show don’t tell. As Albert Einstein reportedly observed: ‘if you cant explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough’. Communicator of the Week Award goes to Gordon McKee MP for his now viral and brilliantly simple explanation of the impact of the UK’s national debt. Here is the video itself to watch Most politicians are terrible communicators, so when an effective one comes along, it’s worth taking note. Gordon McKee has been building a steady following with short TikTok videos...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Always consider if someone before you has said it better! Communicator of the Week Award goes to my friend, Alex Ktorides for the moving eulogy he gave on the sad passing of his father. Eulogies are tough to get right. Should you go through the whole life of the departed one or just give snippets? Should you be funny or sombre or a mixture of both? Do you let your emotions show or button them up to get through it? And what theme can you use to tie it all together? Alex’s answer to the ‘what...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Sometimes, the cruelty is the point! Communicator of the Week Award goes to Shabana Mahmood (the new Home Secretary), who this week set out the Labour Party's new strategy to tackle the perennial political problem of immigration. Labour has an identity problem. Its roots are working class. Its heart is progressive. Its head is neo-liberal. And its fear is that it is being outflanked by the far right. What to do? Whether the new approach to immigration she announced will work is way above my...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Message discipline matters. Communicator of the Week Award goes to newly elected New York Mayor, Zohran Mamdani. There is a lot of excitement about the new young Mayor. He is a good-looking, eloquent, social media savvy progressive politician. No doubt the excitement over his election will fade once the reality of governing vs the fantasy of campaigning comes into stark focus. But there is one simple reason that Mamdani won (and won handily). Despite the wide-ranging attacks from the...
4 months ago • 1 min read
You wouldn’t think that a made up YouTube golf competition would provide some of the most dramatic storylines in sporting history. But it did. And it led to one of the greatest motivational speeches ever given in sports. Communicator of the Week Award goes to Coach Jon Gruden for his inspirational rallying cry in the middle of the ‘Luke Kwon’ incident. Quick summary: Luke Kwon is a YouTube golfer influencer with about 400K subscribers. He entered a Ryder Cup style YouTube golf competition...
4 months ago • 1 min read
When your leadership and example matters, your mistakes can have greater consequences. Mis-Communicator of the Week Award goes to Reform UK (Kent County Council) for the debacle of their zoom council meeting, which was leaked to the papers this week. Reform have a credibility challenge. People are angry with the status quo and Reform have very effectively stepped into that gap with a message that panders to fears and promises change. But now they are in government in Kent County Council, they...
4 months ago • 1 min read
In his seminal work on the art of rhetoric, Aristotle identified that there were 3 cornerstones of persuasion: Logos (the use of logic), Pathos (the appeal to emotion), and Ethos (the credibility and character of the speaker). Communicator of the Week Award goes to US President Donald Trump for the considerable part he played to secure the tentative Gaza peace deal. You may (as many do) consider Donald Trump to be an unpredictable, unprincipled, uncouth autocrat, but where all the parties on...
5 months ago • 1 min read