Tag Archives: Education

Want To Change The World? Harvard Has The Answer


Many in their 50s and early 60s have reached a stage of “generativity” in their lives, a concern in establishing and guiding the next generation. A desire to make a difference.
But how?
According to the NYTimes.com, Starting Over, With a Second Career Goal of Changing Society, Harvard has started a program to teach them.
More ambitiously, if successful, Harvard professors say, it can serve as a model for schools at other universities. Many at Harvard believe “that developing this third stage of education must be part of the evolving mission of leading universities”.  Good goal.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at the Harvard Business School who heads the program notes: “We want to make the case to the world that experience matters.”

If the students resumes are any indication, this experiment should be a blazing success: the incoming students include a ” former astronaut, a former senior official at the United States Agency for International Development, a physician-entrepreneur from Texas, a former public utility official from California, a former health minister from Venezuela and a former computer executive from Switzerland.

They gathered at Harvard on Thursday to begin the yearlong program intended to help them learn how to be successful social entrepreneurs or leaders of nonprofit organizations focused on social problems like poverty, health, education and the environment. Their interests include sickle cell anemia, women’s education in Africa, health care quality and water conservation.”

I think it sounds like a great idea and I hope it will be a solid success.  I predict it will be.

David Gergen, 66….. you know, that same fellow you see on the panel of talking heads at CNN, having advised 5 presidential administrations and therefore pretty unruffled but keenly observant of all unfolding political dust ups, crises and news stories….. is also a professor at  Kennedy School of Government: “All of us are motivated to some degree by that fact that we’re at or near this stage in our own lives,” Gergen says, “We want to know how to go through this and how to help others to go through this to have more of an impact”.

I think many of us want this as well, so hopefully we will end up with a model of how to do it. Thanks, Harvard.

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Two Important Speaking Tips | chrisbrogan.com

Two Important Speaking Tips | chrisbrogan.com.

Chris Brogan, as usual, has some really insightful tips about speaking. Chris says “Here are two really fast and important speaking tips for you to learn and understand. Start with answering your audience’s most pressing question: “what’s in this for me?” And then finish by giving your audience actionable takeaways. Making these two speaking tips top of mind becomes vital in delivering a presentation that matters. Too often, we have a tendency to clear our autobiographical throats before we dig into educating an audience. Then, we end with no real sense of what comes next. This means we leave people excited, but with nothing to do.”

Brogan provides us with an example: “Takeaways should be very actionable. If you’ve finished up your speech on how podcasting changes communication, give people an assignment to find five podcasts on iTunes and subscribe for a month. Take notes on the ways each show introduces information, etc. Review your current corporate communications documents. Do any lend themselves to a potential audio format as well?

By starting with WIIFM and ending with 5 takeaways – even if you do it in a creative way that breaks the mold a bit, people will feel like they better understand and appreciate your efforts to educate and entertain them.”

The WIIFM and ending with 5 takeaways gives you a structure, a roadmap. AdvancingWomen.com believes having a proven structure always makes a presenter….you…. feel more comfortable and confident and leads to a more effective presentation and better results. Your audience, after all, is coming not just to hear you, but to know what to do next on their own. The more they understand what they need to do next to execute on the main points of your presentation, the more successful you will have been and the higher your audience will rate you.  Always a good thing when jumping on the speaker’s circuit

Do you have any speaking tips or techniques to share?  If so, please jump in and add a comment.  Thanks

For the whole post, go here Two Important Speaking Tips

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