How to build a metaphor to change people’s minds | Aeon Essays. If you could ask Dante where he got the idea of life as a road, or Rilke where he found the notion that time is a destroyer, they might have said the metaphors were hewn from their minds, or drawn from a stock of poetic imagery. Their readers might have said the imagery had origins more divine, perhaps even diabolical. But neither poets nor readers would have said the metaphors were designed. That is, the metaphors didn’t target people’s cognitive processes. They weren’t engineered to affect us in a specific way. Can metaphors be designed? Here’s an example. Ordinarily, seeing a paintbrush this way would be considered a mistake. Metaphor designers create these pseudo-mistakes deliberately. Get Aeon straight to your inbox Consider the thing to be communicated – a business strategy, a discovery, a new look at a familiar social problem – and then make a pseudo-mistake. It was the Princeton psycholinguist Sam Glucksberg who in 2003 argued that metaphors are really categorisation proposals.
Your essential ‘how-to’ guide to writing good abstracts. Article abstracts typically say little about what the researcher has discovered or what the key findings are, what they are arguing as a ‘bottom line’, or what key ‘take-away points’ they want readers to remember. Here we present a simple ‘how-to’ guide to writing good abstracts. Abstracts tend to be rather casually written, perhaps at the beginning of writing when authors don’t yet really know what they want to say, or perhaps as a rushed afterthought just before submission to a journal or a conference. Once an abstract exists, authors are also often reluctant to reappraise them, or to ask critically whether they give the best obtainable picture of the work done and the findings achieved. To counteract these problems the checklist below offers a structured set of suggestions for what an abstract should include, and what should be kept to a small presence. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Nothing is Written | Creative Facilitation. We have now published the pdf copy of our new short book, Nothing is Written. It’s based on our experiences facilitating and training groups from San Francisco to the Solomon Islands, working with businesses, charities, government bodies and colleges. It shares eight simple ideas that guide how we work: Nothing is Written Emotional Connectedness Experiences over Explanation Shared peril Avoiding the teacher trance The value of loose ends Getting out of our heads Getting over ourselves We think it’s possible to create more engaging training that plays to human strengths and avoids many of the cliches found in training rooms worldwide.
You can download the whole book here. Nothing is Written In the film Lawrence of Arabia, there’s a scene where Lawrence is crossing the desert. It’s a common human response to stress. Rather than admit to sadness for Gasim, or fear for themselves, they talk about “the way things are”. Theconversation. Employees want more feedback. Gen Y employees in particular, want constant feedback. Managers however are often reluctant to give feedback if they fear that what starts as a rational conversation may degenerate into an emotional one.
Even managers trained in coaching have admitted to being reluctant to tackle employees seen as abrasive or aggressive. Some simple guidelines can help managers to achieve positive outcomes from difficult conversations: 1. State what you believe to be the facts, without any interpretation. 2. Ask the employee in a non-judgemental way about what happened. For example, if the employee who hasn’t met deadlines is stressed because they are coping at home with an ageing parent who has Alzheimer’s disease, training in project management or time management is unlikely to lead to improvements. Treat the information which employees give you as confidential unless you both agree it should be shared. 3. 4. 5. 6. Follow up and acknowledge when improvements are made. How to Deal with Chronic Complainers. How to Talk About Sensitive Topics so That People Will Listen.
How to Have a Meeting That Isn't a Complete Waste of Time. Top 10 Uncomfortable Situations and How to Deal with Them. What it means to "hold space" for people, plus eight tips on how to do it well - Heather Plett. When my mom was dying, my siblings and I gathered to be with her in her final days. None of us knew anything about supporting someone in her transition out of this life into the next, but we were pretty sure we wanted to keep her at home, so we did. While we supported mom, we were, in turn, supported by a gifted palliative care nurse, Ann, who came every few days to care for mom and to talk to us about what we could expect in the coming days. She taught us how to inject Mom with morphine when she became restless, she offered to do the difficult tasks (like giving Mom a bath), and she gave us only as much information as we needed about what to do with Mom’s body after her spirit had passed.
“Take your time,” she said. Ann gave us an incredible gift in those final days. In the two years since then, I’ve often thought about Ann and the important role she played in our lives. The work that Ann did can be defined by a term that’s become common in some of the circles in which I work. Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Communication Skills. The art of meaningful conversation | Playlist. Barbara Walters on the Art of Conversation, How to Talk to Bores, and What Truman Capote Teaches Us About Being Interesting. By Maria Popova “Things being what they are in the world today, we are more and more driven to depend on one another’s sympathy and friendship in order to survive…” What The Paris Review has done for the art of the interview in print, Barbara Walters has done for it on television. By the time she was forty, Walters was seen by more people than any other woman on TV and had grown famous for her ability not only to land interviews with seemingly unapproachable guests — presidents and politicians, actors and writers, tycoons and entrepreneurs — but also to crack open even the hardest shells and coax into the open the tender humanity within.
Walters, never one to shy away from strong opinions, begins by debunking a common myth about the key to great conversation: I happen to disagree with the well-entrenched theory that the art of conversation is merely the art of being a good listener. Walters goes on to outline a number of conversation strategies for different situations. Thanks, Ruth Ann. You alright? You ok? Why we could all pay a little more attention to our conversation this month. Doug and Trevor had worked in the sam e building for years. Their morning conversation went like this: ‘Morning Trevor, you alright?’ ‘I’m alright Doug, you alright?’ ‘Yea, I’m alright’. Some mornings, of course, they were alright. But how often does your conversation go like this? You ok? Of course, this type of language doesn’t really invite honesty.
Actually, I think lots of people do. Are you ok? Poor Doug and Trevor. As part of my role within the West Kent Recovery Service, I work with an amazing community group called aspire2be (about to become a charity in their own right but that will be a whole other blog). One of the ways in which the volunteers support each other is their weekly forum, during which they encourage the use of mindful language. June is recovery month. After all, we say in this sector that recovery is contagious. ‘Morning Trevor, how are you today?’ ‘That sounds great. Happy Recovery Month! Comments. Julian Treasure: 5 ways to listen better | Talk Video.