Chairs at Rouen Cathedral, France

Table and chairs, Everglades, Leura, NSW

Spent the long weekend painting. Thought I'd give you some samples (see the left hand column). As you can see, I'm a little obsessed with chairs at the moment!

I'm finally going to do another public NLP workshop (subtitled Mind reading, influencing and questioning). It's for January 2008 (when we're all less busy). It's restricted to smart decision-makers and influencers (you can do it already, but you want to make it more consistent and easier). You can check out more about it here. And to make it even more tempting, consider this irresistible offer: Enrol in this Corporate NLP program and the companion program Become a Fearless Facilitator (run by the inimitable Jill Chivers) run in December 2007, and you can bring a friend, colleague or client to both programs for free. That effectively halves the price on both programs.

The calibre of attendees will be an experience in itself. My own NLP training (from 1994) caused me to double my consulting fees in the first 6 months, and again within 12 months. Is that an outcome you want for your own business? Check it out.

Oh, and we're running another Ludic Creative impro-based Life is not a rehearsal training day on Saturday 7th July 2007 1 - 5pm in North Sydney. Come play with us! Special deal for ezine readers - enrol yourself at $297, and you can bring a colleague or a friend along for nothing (normally $297 per person). And story on June 23rd, same venue, same deal. To claim the deal, just put "ezine" in the discount code section and we'll make sure to process it correctly.

Enrol in both courses and pay only $500, and bring a friend for free. Can't get a better deal!

In this month's ezine we have:

• Improving your consultancy: Try the SU coaching conference, make PDFs online, sell with story
• Managing better: Marketing across cultures, Brainstorming and the "Presentation Rebellion",
• Fascinating: Crying and tears, what's in them, what they do for you
• Fun: "finger" painting - a whole new take, Immortality through dolls, and Impro (of course) in Sydney.

May your June be productive, healthy and fun!

Cindy

p.s. I'm down to the last hard copy of the Australian Consultant's Guide. This happens once a year or so. It will be some months before I have time to go through the printing process. You can buy the ebook now, or if you're quick, you can get the last copy here! Read the Introduction.

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Blue chair

Coaching conference

Third Australian Evidence-Based Coaching Conference has a theme of Wellbeing and Coaching: how is coaching really doing? It's in Sydney on 5 & 6 July 2007.

They plan to discuss questions like: How well is the coaching industry? What do we as coaches do well? Are we really effective in enhancing the performance and well-being of our clients? What evidence do we have that coaching works well? What does work well in coaching? How well are coaches being taught and trained? How well is the coaching industry presenting and promoting itself? Does coaching need regulation?

Excellent questions!

More on PDFs

Last month I mentioned that you could make pdf files from the web. Scott Carpenter from InvoicePlace recommends CutePDF for printing straight to a PDF document from Office - some free PDF printing libraries don't handle images too well and you can end up with a really large PDF file.

Selling with Story

According to RainToday, there are 3 types of story you need to tell when selling - The Eureka Story, the David and Goliath Story, and the Against all Odds story. Read the article for more information. Ludic Creative's running another Story telling day on June 23 2007 - come along to practice and polish those stories!

Managing better

Lunch, Paris

Lunch, Bellaggio

Marketing to different cultures

The influence at work people have some interesting cross-cultural research on "individualist" vs "collectivist" (me vs we), and marketing messages.

Not surprisingly, they discovered that in individualist cultures the marketing message which enhances the individual, their needs and their desires worked better than a collectivist marketing message (and vice versa). They summarise it by saying blanket marketing doesn't work across cultures.

For those of us working in and with multi-nationals we sort of already knew this, didn't we? Of course the nice thing is we know have psych research to back this up.

Brainstorming and the presentation rebellion

In case you're after a concise, pretty set of rules of brainstorming, try this one at ChangeThis. Change This is a series of "manifestos" about whatever it is that people feel passionate about within a business context. On the same site, consider becoming a presentation rebel. Again, 17 short pretty pages on better presentations, which comes down on the side of "death by powerpoint" is so unnecessary!

Limits of the open source model

This Strategy+Business article evaluates the pros and cons of the open source model (most famously Linux and Wikipedia are the "open source" icons, where multiple people are constantly working independently to improve the quality of the product). Their conclusion: "if you’re looking to bolster your company’s creativity, you should by all means look for opportunities to harness the power of the crowd. Just don’t expect the masses to take the place of the lone wizard or the band of mages. The greatest breakthroughs will always begin...with “one good idea in one person’s head,” and the greatest products will always reach perfection through the concerted efforts of a highly skilled team".

Fascinating

Five chairs

Have a good cry - it makes you feel better

South Australian site for kids on Tears, includes such interesting concepts as What are tears?, What makes eyes water, Why we cry, Some interesting stuff about crying, Dry eyes. It also talks about interesting facts like baby boys cry more than baby girls. According to this site, women are more likely to cry when they are angry or frustrated - like a 'bad hair day', when everything starts to go wrong and whatever you do doesn't work. Men on the other hand are more likely to cry when they are happy or proud - like when they or their team win a Grand Final game, or an Australian wins an Olympic gold medal.

Then try this more serious site dealing with the crying and health. - Apparently crying in public was OK until the Industrial Revolution, even for men. And it would seem that chemical tears (caused by onions) are 98 percent water, while emotional tears contain more toxins.

And Fun, fun, fun

Red chairs, Rouen Cathedral, France

Three chairs

Finger painting - a whole new take

Check out this "finger painting" - an artist who paints on hands. I love the dog (about 3 down).

Yearning for immortality

Springwise reports on major consumer trends. They have coined the term gravanity to refer to trends which relate to people's desire for immortality, to "leave a legacy" as Stephen Covey calls it. A Singaporean business allows you to do this is through a doll made in your own image - your face, your hair, your gestures if you like. Imagine a full set of CEO look-alikes for guests at the work Christmas party, or a "copy" of the bride and groom (or eeewh, what about a "copy" of the person whose funeral you're attending?). Or a Mummy or Daddy doll for kids with often absent parents?

And impro, of course

Scared Scriptless' Theatresports®, famous as the show which I'm actually in most Friday nights, continues at the Clarence Hotel, Petersham (in Sydney). Doors open 7:30, show starts at 8. Drinks at pub prices, food available. There's a second show (The Late Show) at 10:30, so catch them both for an unheard of $5 whenever you're near Petersham in Sydney.

I'm directing this season of Scriptless - each week a different genre - 15 June 2007 is "film noir" night, and 22nd June 2007 is "chick flick". Come along and see the show - and if you're wearing a costume in the genre, and you can win free tix to Theatresports® Impranos at Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, 17 June - 22 July 2007.

I would be interested to hear from you if any of these ideas spark something good for you and yours!

C

Cindy Tonkin The Consultants’ Consultant
Certified Management Consultant

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This month's images are original acrylic paintings ©2007 Cindy Tonkin. See more here.

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