Good at what you do, but struggling with your communication skills? Igotchu! 😎
Someone said it before you...
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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 theme?’ question was to use a quote from the 1950s dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451 by the American writer, Ray Bradbury. It's a beautiful quote that, I think, sums up the essence of life and death. “'Everyone must leave something behind when he dies', my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built, or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way, so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so as long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.” It's a quote that fit perfectly with the stories he and others shared about his late father, George, who lived a full life and definitely left his mark on the world. Sometimes, it is difficult to find the right words to communicate the thought you want to share. Sure, you can agonise to work it out in your own words; you can use ChatGPT or Gemini and hope it doesn’t feed you some vanilla-sounding tripe. But one of the most effective options is to simply borrow the words of someone, who said it better than you could ever say it yourself. Quotes, sayings, and proverbs are wonderful ways to capture and communicate ideas to audiences. They are like mini-stories that engage. They encapsulate a wisdom or an insight that resonates with your audience, who will still give you the credit for the idea and sentiment that the quote conveys. My advice to all my comms clients is to build your Quote Library. Create a simple file or database, and whenever you come across a great quote or saying that you might like to use at some point in the future, just drop it into the database. Your audience will see you as erudite and well-read. You will know that you just did the work. Kolarele |
Build your Communication SuperSkills
Good at what you do, but struggling with your communication skills? Igotchu! 😎
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...
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...
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...