Perhaps you’re interested in promoting an event, or maybe someone at your organization has unique expertise or an interesting story to tell. There might also be a time when your company is facing a public crisis and there’s a need to respond. Whatever the circumstance, here are some things to keep in mind if you’re contacted by a journalist for an interview. Many of these tips are universal, others are more specific to print media. Let’s get started.
10 Grammar Mistakes to Avoid in Business Communications
We’ve all been there before – caught up in writing that last-minute email before rushing off to tackle something else on the work to-do list. Hit SEND and move on, right? Not so fast. Writers and editors know that those last minutes are the best time to fix potentially embarrassing, simple grammatical errors.
Range
We’ve all been told that you have to start young, specialize quickly and get in 10,000 hours of practice or you will not succeed. Yo Yo Ma starting to play the cello at age 4. Tiger Woods showed interest in golf at 6 months old and won the Masters for the first time at age 21. Prodigies, however, are the outliers of those who achieve success, not the rule, says David Epstein, author of the book “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.”
The Inner Game Of Tennis
I have an inner critic who is incessantly telling me I’m not good enough, I’m not trying hard enough, or that I’m not meeting its expectations. Sound familiar? In “The Inner Game of Tennis,” Timothy Gallwey describes ways of calming that inner critic and what doing this can do for your tennis game and, ultimately, your life.
The Power of Bad
Why do we fixate on a few negative or critical comments, when we hear hundreds of positive ones? It seems one bad event, or even a not-so-great event, can discolor our day. Yet all of the positive and pleasant things go unnoticed or can’t be recalled, according to John Tierney and Roy Baumeister, authors of “The Power of Bad.”
The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—And Why
What would you do in a plane crash? If your office building were filling with smoke, what would you do? Typically, we avoid these questions, but when we hear how others dealt with such a crisis, we tell ourselves that we would do better, that we would keep our wits about us.
Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most
Farsighted is at its core a book about making better decisions, and strategies to overcome our natural tendencies that lead us to make poor decisions. Here, I highlight three concepts that anyone can easily apply to individual or group decision-making.
Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career
Thinking back to your high school chemistry class, how much do you really remember? The way we are taught information and skills, and the way we learn and absorb knowledge are vastly different. Even when we get to choose the subject and it is something we are genuinely interested in learning, we find that the information has slipped from our memories. Continue Reading…
Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes
Is it possible to make small tweaks to what you are already doing to create big change? Who doesn’t want to make minimal effort to go from good to great? This small book walks the talk of being small itself and yet identifies achievable ways to help you make big changes. Continue Reading…