Willing to learn? How far will you go?

When new gradutes are interviewed, undoubtedly 9 out of 10 will claim "Willing to learn" as one of their strengths. When it comes to "Willing to learn", no one can beat a young man called Larry.

        A final year student in finance, Larry travelled 20 hours by train to/fro to listen to one corporate professional speak for 2 hours.

        Intrigued, I asked Larry. Is she famous like Hillary Clinton? No. Do you know her well? No. I never met her before. Is she a good speaker? I don't know. Will you get a certificate? No.

        My goodness, why are you taking all the trouble? He smiled and softly replied, "Because I love to learn. And I believe I can learn from her."

        Larry travelled not only once, but twice to learn from the speaker, who each time spoke for only 1 or 2 hours. He said he will travel the third, fourth, N-th time as long as knowledge awaits him on the other side of the journey.

        THAT my friends, is the true King of Willing To Learn.

        H a p p y   f o o t n o t e:  The corporate speaker and Larry are now friends, and this young man is invited as VIP guest for all her speaking engagements - including those that are for C-level participants only. 

Larry can be reached at weixin:briliantlarry

Uhm......is this your bad habit?

I have a bad habit.

Very often, I don't zip back my bag after opening it. Kind strangers will walk up to me and worriedly caution, "Miss, your bag is opened." Actually, I have lost things too. Still, I never quite learnt to zip up my bag.

Most of us have this or that bad habit. Have you ever thought where it came from? When it started? And most importantly, how to motivate yourself to kick the bad habit?

One bad habit some speakers have is the constant use of Umm, Ahh, Err or You know. When used too much, these are annoying noises to our listeners.

Want to know my Ahh secret, how I stopped this habit?

Very simple. Here's how.

Whenever you are about to say Umm or Ahh, just open your mouth but do not let the sound come out! It may escape the first few times, but later, you will learn to catch it before it slips from your lips. 

Your Ahh when silent, becomes a pause in your speech. Remember what I say about Pauses? Pauses in speech - no matter long or short - are always welcomed by our listeners. So there you are -- cure a bad habit and gain a brownie point. Are you motivated to give it a try?

Now, your turn to advise me how to kick my bad habit of not zipping up my bag, ok?  :)

Footnote:  Talking about habits, author Charles Duhigg of the Power of Habit found a sure-fire way to replace bad habits with good ones. 

Drop us your name and email if you like to receive more information onThe Power of Habit. Let's learn some good habits together!

Zero to One Hundred in 3 lessons

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From Terrible to Terrific

        Absolutely no one. Yes, no one would believe that I used to be horrible at public speaking. No one except my boss, Wander Meijer, who saw me stutter and stammer, turned pale and then turned very red in the face as I stood on the stage to deliver my annual address as CFO of the company.

        Up to then - that was in 2006, I was hopeless at presentations. Did I do anything about it? Yes! I usually make up my lack of confidence with heavy laden PPT slides - full of words, full of numbers, full of pictures. Slide, please speak for me. Did I do anything about it? No. I thought I am too hopeless to be helped by any training. So I suffered silently for many years.

        In 2006, I received a global award from USA Centre of Creative Leadership and with it,  invitations to speak publicly. Out of desperation, I hired a coach to save me. It was baptism by fire with 3 sessions of 1:1 coaching over 2 weeks.

        Surprisingly, my first public presentation post-coaching was so well received. Audiences of C-level calibre generously awarded me with 3.95 out of a maximum score of 4 for content and style. Magically and almost overnight, I transformed from a Terrible speaker into a Terrific speaker. Literally from Zero to 100% confidence in 3 lessons.

        As a result, I am now very passionate in helping you make the same transformation because I know it is very easy. And I promise you, really fun and practical.