» Communication

My brother Quentin, shared this story with me and I thought it worth sharing:- “A farmer died leaving his 17 horses to his three sons. When his sons opened up the Will it read: My eldest son should get 1/2 (half) of total horses;My middle son should be given 1/3rd (one-third) of the total horses;My […][...] read more » The moral of the story is… Look for the 18th horse

At Nelson Mandela’s funeral celebrations, there was much controversy about the person who was signing Barrack Obama’s speech for the deaf audience.  It turns out that he was a fake!  Standing before the world, shoulder-to-shoulder with the great and the good, he faked his way through the whole thing!  You have to admire his cojones […][...] read more » Signing for Mandela

I had an interesting experience the other day that set me to reflecting.  I was going to a client meeting and thinking about what we needed to achieve and how best to do that.  I did a brain dump of the key points, which included one that I thought the client would never go for.  […][...] read more » Pushing at an open door

I have often written here about the power of our Flight / Fight response and how deeply it affects our behaviour.  It is a primitive mechanism that kept our ancestors safe from the dangers that surrounded them and helped them survive and breed.  We are the direct descendants of those primitives who ran away fastest […][...] read more » Don’t be so defensive…

I listened to a BBC program about so called “Thankful Villages”; 52 villages that amazingly saw all their men / boys return from WW1, and 14 of which even managed the same in WW2.  It is fabulous to learn that some places were untouched by the slaughter.  What interested me is that it took some […][...] read more » Seeing what’s not there…

I’m interested in all aspects of communication but this story really takes some beating.  Leslie Grange, a signer for deaf viewers on the BBC news, appears to have decided that merely reporting the news was a little dull, so to brighten the days of her deaf viewers she started spicing up the stories.  Here are […][...] read more » Not quite the 9 o’clock News

If you are a man, then this video will probably make you feel that this is all about you.  You may even laugh… it is very well done.  However, it raises an interesting point.  At work, we very much focus on the facts that are being conveyed.  We listen for them and pay attention to […][...] read more » It’s not about the nail

I am, or at least I once was, an accountant, and I always had a slightly jaundiced view of the figures we produced which ‘proved’ a case.  I always felt that you could make figures argue almost any way you chose.  As the following story illustrates, I am not alone in this feeling:- There once […][...] read more » Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

Obviously English has a number of things going for it as a global language; the legacy of the British Empire, the impact of Hollywood, and it is the language of technology.  However what interested me was that there are more native speakers of Mandarin (935 million) or Spanish (387 million) compared with English (365 million) […][...] read more » How English conquered the world by coming second

As previously admitted, I’m a Quins fan and I spent a miserable afternoon this Sunday shivering on a touchline in freezing temperatures to watch my team play a dreadful game against their most dangerous rivals.  Saracens had just nudged us off top place in the league and we needed to to beat them in order […][...] read more » The Power of Leaders telling the Truth