It is October so it has become natural in the past few years to notice lots of pink (silly me, I thought October was autumn, so I used to think of browns and oranges during this month).

But The Susan G. Koman for The Cure (of breast cancer) organization has done an amazing job of enrolling people, companies and organizations in supporting their cause and they seem to now own the color pink and the month of October.

I've noticed pink towels for NFL Football teams (the towels were all signed and then sold at auction), a pink edition of Deal or No Deal - where the contestant was a breast cancer survivor, and this morning, pink Campbell's Soup at my grocery store (here is a link to that story from a year ago).

All of this thinking of the pinking of our products and services leaves me with several lessons for all of us.

• Branding is incredibly powerful for any business or cause.
• You can brand your message with anything, including a color (beyond pink, think UPS and brown).
• The color pink will (continue to) help cure breast cancer.

But since this isn't a marketing blog, let me connect all of this branding talk to leadership.

We as leaders can take lessons from great brands. For example:

• We communicate more powerfully when are messages are consistent.
• We communicate more powerfully when we connect our core message to something memorable.
• We communicate more powerfully when we communicate frequently.

Think about great brands the next time you have an important message to communicate (which is probably now) and think of these lessons the next time you see pink.

Also posted in Leadership.

Labels: communication

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I read a formula somewhere - I wish I knew who to attribute it to - that talked about our attention span. It correlates our attention span with our interest and activity in this way:

Attention Span ∫ Interest x Activity

This in an interesting concept for us as trainers and learners, and I believe puts the often-tossed around idea that our attention spans are shortening (cue the laments of television's effects) in better perspective.

In Microtrends, the new book by Mark Penn he talks about the trend of teen knitters - the supposed poster children of short attention spans taking up knitting. If they are interested, the activity of knitting and pearling certainly seems to be driving longer attention spans.

I have often led workshops where people commented that they couldn't believe how quickly the day had flown by. If they are interested, and you create an interactive and participative learning environment, attention span soars.

These two factors - attention and interest can work together to enhance attention span - and learning results - for ourselves or others.

Also posted in Learning and Training.

Labels: attention span

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That was the title of the sermon J.K. Jones gave at Traders Point Christian Church yesterday. While in this post I won't include the scripture references, I believe the five points he made are extremely relevant to all of us as leaders, team members, and professionals (and as human beings).

He suggests asking these five questions regularly:

Are my words true?
Are my words helpful?
Are my words inspiring?
Are my words necessary?
Are my words kind?

If you take the first letter from the key word in each question: true, helpful, inspiring, necessary, kind; you get THINK.

Asking these questions, and adjusting our actions accordingly will make us better communicators, better team members, better leaders . . . and better at just about anything else you can think of.

In short, words matter, so THINK.

Also posted in Customer Service, Leadership, Learning, Teamwork and Training.

Labels: communication

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