Haven’t been over to see Tara at HorsePigCow lately (my feed reader dropped her when her blog moved and I’ve been lazy etc.) but she’s doing some incredible stuff and posting some really good good thoughts.
Two I wanted to highlight …
About public speaking or (I think) presentations in general. This one is from her speaking coach.
“It’s not what you say, it’s how you make people feel.”
Love it. Not – as Tara says – that content is irrelevant. But … the key is the emotions people leave with. Are they understanding, trust, happiness, insight? Or confusion, discontent, mistrust?
And about structural holes and the people who fill them. Hint: you want to be a hole-bridger, filler, dweller.
Opinion and behavior are more homogeneous within than between groups, so people connected across groups are more familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving. Brokerage across the structural holes between groups provides a vision of options otherwise unseen, which is the mechanism by which brokerage becomes social capital…The organization is rife with structural holes, and brokerage has its expected correlates. Compensation, positive performance evaluations, promotions, and good ideas are disproportionately in the hands of people whose networks span structural holes. The between-group brokers are more likely to express ideas, less likely to have ideas dismissed, and more likely to have ideas evaluated as valuable.
Whoa. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! (This one is from Ron Burt.)
(In case you’re wondering why I’m posting stuff like this, my blog is my memory. ‘Nuff said.)
[tags] tara hunt, citizen media, horsepigcow, john koetsier, public speaking, social brokerage, structural holes, ron burt [/tags]