Boring To Bravo

90-plus practical tips for engaging and interacting with an audience. Drawn from her extensive experiences as a nationally recognized speaker and master facilitator, Kirstin Arnold's proven techniques will help you transform any presentation into a powerful, interactive experience.With this user-friendly guide, you will learn how to take a collaborative approach to the communication process so that you can connect and converse with the members of any audience. Arnold's powerful audience-centered "Interactive Insights" cover the spectrum of practical presentation techniques:- Setting an interactive tone before you start- Using Titter/text messaging to engage your audience- Involving audience members with a specific task- Personalizing your language for your audience- Making eye contact--even with a large audience- Taking polls and running Q&As- Recovering from humor that falls flat- Facilitating conversation- Creating accountability for action to occur after your presentationKristin Arnold has the experience, the wit, and the foolproof methods to take your ho-hum presentation to the next level. By incorporating just a few of the author's tips, you will dramatically improve your ability to engage, involve, and inspire your audience to action. Read and use Boring to Bravo and your audiences will demand an encore. Bravissimo!Kristin Arnold, MBA, CPF, CMC, CSP, is one of North America's most accomplished high stakes meeting facilitators. An accomplished author and keynote speaker, she is on a crusade to make all events in the workplace more engaging, interactive, and collaborative. One of the first women to graduate with high honors from the US Coast Guard Academy, Arnold earned an MBA from St. Mary's College of California and finished her twenty-year career in the US Coast Guard Reserves as an internal consultant. She divides her time between Phoenix and Prince Edward Island.

This book shows experienced presenters how to transform boring monologues into scintillating dialogues by employing simple yet powerful presentation techniques. Features: 90-plus practical techniques for engaging and interacting with an audience. Drawing from her extensive experience as a nationally recognised speaker, the author gives readers tips that apply to any presenter. Readers will be amazed at their ability to attract, involve, and inspire by incorporating just a few of the author's suggestions; A proven methodology for upgrading any presentation. By taking a collaborative approach to the communication process, the author shows the reader how to care, connect, and converse with the members of any audience; Incoming NSA president with strong promotional platform. As the incoming president of the National Speakers Association, the author will promote the book on a nation-wide tour. An experienced team facilitator and military veteran, the author has a large plat-form of clients, including the Coast Guard, NASA, and the IRS.

Get ready for the ultimate crash course in communicating and solving problems through simple pictures. Thirty-two thousand years ago, your many-times-great-grandparents Oog and Aag drew pictures on the wall of a cave. They had an innate need to communicate, but no written language. So they found an easy and natural way to share their thoughts and stories. Today, after so many years when speaking and writing dominated, we're back in another highly visual age. About 90 percent of everything shared online is now visual—selfies, GIFs, smartphone videos, and more. This explosion of communication through pictures isn't a millenial-driven fad; it's as natural as those lines first drawn by Oog and Aag. Just turbo-charged by the latest technology. And yet over the past twenty years, as I've taught people from Fortune 500 CE0s to White House staffers how to harness the power of imagery, the biggest objection I've always heard is, "But I can't draw!" Trust me, you can. You don't need to be da Vinci to be an outstanding visual thinker and communicator. The most effective drawings are the simplest, and you can get good at those in three minutes. In this little book, I'll teach you how to use seven basic shapes to explain just about anything to just about anyone. If you've read my previous books, you'll see one or two familiar tools here, along with a bunch of new tools you can start using right away. If you're new to my approach—welcome! Get ready to work smarter, communicate more clearly, and get better at whatever you do, just by picking up a pen. Get ready to draw to win.

“Chip Bell's unique perspective, lively illustrations, and practical advice result in one terrific resource for anyone eager to tap a customer's ingenuity for creating breakthrough results.” —Jeanne Bliss, founder and CEO, CustomerBliss; and cofounder, Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) Organizations need to offer customers breakthrough products, services, and solutions to effectively compete in today's innovation-hungry economy. The challenge is customers often don't know precisely what they want. As Henry Ford is reputed to have said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." To surprise and awe your customers, Chip Bell advises developing co-creation partnerships with them. Co-creation partnerships are about fulfilling customers' hopes and aspirations, not just their needs and expectations. Co-creation partnerships require (1) curiosity that uncovers insight, (2) grounding that promotes clear focus, (3) discovery that fosters risk-taking, (4) trust that safeguards partnership purity, and (5) passion that inspires energized generosity. Using examples from organizations like McDonald's, DHL, Marriott, Lockheed Martin, Discover Financial, Ultimate Software, and many more, Bell shows how co-creation partnerships enable you to tap into the treasure trove of ideas, ingenuity, and genius-in-the-raw within every customer.

Leaders leave. It’s inevitable. It might even happen today. Are you prepared? Every organization needs a plan for leadership succession, but few leaders know how to start the process. WHO COMES NEXT? solves that problem and easily guides you through the steps of creating a viable succession plan. The book simplifies the process and gives you the tools you need to build and activate your leadership succession. Whether you are part of a small, family business or a Fortune 500 company, you need to start now by answering the question: WHO COMES NEXT? “This book is a comprehensive look at succession planning, but with a refreshing spin that favors the practical over the theoretical. It’s applicable to any industry, and readers will benefit from action items, tools, and resources with every chapter. Succession planning has never been more critical, and this book is a must-read for any professional looking to answer the question, “Who Comes Next?” --Michael Delucchi, President and Chief Elevation Officer, The Elevate Group “Meridith and Mary are my ‘go to’ experts for succession planning, and they’ve created the definitive guide for how to build a strong succession plan. In this book, they break it down, give you a strategy, and deliver everything you need to create leadership depth at every level of your organization.” --Angela Cox Weston, President, Midwest Speakers Bureau “Succession planning goes way beyond the person at the head of the company. Depth on the bench is essential to ensure an organization’s resiliency and contingency planning.” --Eric Holloway, Captain, U.S. Navy (ret)

If you’ve ever struggled to keep your business staffed with high-performing, loyal employees—even for “unsexy” jobs with high turnover rates—this book is here to solve your hiring and retention woes. Fully Staffed will give you an edge over your competitors by enabling you to streamline your hiring process, expand your brand awareness through job advertising, build a pipeline of qualified candidates ready to fill positions before they’re even vacant, and refine your hiring funnel so that these superstar employees stay with you for the long haul. Packed full of comprehensive research on the resources and strategies available to today's business owners, as well as the stories of business owners and leaders who have utilized them with great success, Fully Staffed lives up to its subtitle of being THE definitive guide to finding and keeping great employees in the worst labor market ever. Each chapter will help you replace desperation with a solid plan of action, as you discover: Why the most crucial employment strategy is perfecting your workplace culture How to implement thoughtful, unique, and digitally-minded job advertising techniques How to leverage the power of community, educational, and governmental networks and programs How to harness the value in under-tapped labor pools like veterans, retirees, ex-offenders, and people with disabilities And how to optimize your onboarding and retention processes In this tough labor market, where the job hunters have become the hunted, employers can’t rely on the hiring tactics of yesteryear. They have to ditch poorly placed “Help Wanted” ads and stop hiring every candidate who walks through the door. Instead, they must be thoughtful about who they want to hire, where and when they will advertise for open positions, how they want to onboard them, and why professional development matters. Read it in part or in full—this encyclopedic guide to hiring and retention has every tip and tactic you need in the common-sense language you want to quickly and easily get off the hire/train/turnover treadmill and get your business FULLY STAFFED.

Become a more effective leader by discovering the resources you already have Pamela McLean, CEO and cofounder of the Hudson Institute for Coaching, has been at the forefront of the field for the past three decades, using clinical and organizational psychology to provide the highest-quality coaching and development training to professionals in organizations and solo practice worldwide. Now, Pamela is teaching readers to cultivate their leadership potential through “use of self as instrument,” a key dimension of developmental coaching that emphasizes the whole person. Her holistic methods give coaches and other leaders a clearer framework for getting to know themselves, exploring their multiple layers, and fostering their latent abilities so that they can foster the abilities of others. Self as Coach guides you along a path that interweaves six broad dimensions of your internal landscape into the fabric of great coaching. This creates lasting improvements, unlike more common remedial, tactical, or performance-based programs, which often only function as short-term solutions. Develop leadership skills using internal resources you already possess Achieve real improvements with long-lasting benefits Based on methodology proven successful in business and personal settings Includes useful practices and exercises for self-reflection and brainstorming Whether you’re an emerging or experienced coach, whether you want to grow your own leadership skills or develop them across an entire organization, Self as Coach can help. With its innovative approach, proven methods, and near-universal applicability, this book will not only provide effective instruction but also help you uncover lasting insights that will benefit you long after you’ve turned the last page.

Mariana Gosnell takes the reader along on her extraordinary voyage across the U.S. in her single-engine Luscombe Silvaire, Zero Three Bravo. Enticed by the ribbon of sky that she could see from her Manhattan office window, she took a leave of absence from her job and made a three-month solo flight, navigating by use of landmarks and landing in America's little-known, back-country airports. She traveled south from her home airport of Spring Valley, New York, down to North Carolina and Georgia, west across Texas to Los Angeles and north to San Francisco, and then east over the Rockies, the plains, and the farms of the Midwest until she was back home.