Mitten Shaped Flights

  As I prepare for my future story presentation next week, I found Nancy Duarte’s video (2011) interesting and look to incorporate the following five elements and attributes into my presentation. Body language I think that my body language will be one of the most important parts of my presentation. Human body language, as a nonverbal communication, including gestures and facial expressions, is actually often used to communicate in countless subtle and complex ways (Tai, 2014, p. 1205).  Audiences look to a presenter and take in the global view, such as how I’m moving around with my body, speaking with my hands and the type of facial expressions I’m making. Eye contact Obviously, a presenter needs to look at the audience in order to connect with them. The eye contact doesn’t need to be constant, as nothing does, but it needs to be stated that it is important. The audience needs to understand I’m speaking to them and by looking at the audience, the presenter can make tha...

A great example of a “burning platform” story that achieved sustained change was a year ago in the City of Romulus, Michigan. Romulus had been known for a long time as a corrupt and poor municipality in the metro Detroit area. At one point in the last 10 years, the mayor, several police officers and a bench judge were all indicted for bribery, racketeering and theft. Many of them are now in prison for these crimes and that didn’t bring much positive attention to the city.  Fast-forward to the present and the new mayor of Romulus, LeRoy Burcroff. I had the pleasure of attending Mr. Burcroff’s State of City address last year and did he ever deliver. The event was well attended and by many of the regional leaders of Detroit, including legislators from the Michigan House. Mr. Burcroff was incredibly enthusiastic during his presentation by using excellent body language, gestures, emotions and visual aids on the projector. He pointed to and showed pictures of all the economic improvement...

I unconsciously think about my values every day. Whether it be when I’m challenged by my job, my family or school, I know that I fall back on who I am and what I’m made of. This includes my integrity, faith, compassion and motivation to do what is right, meaningful and fair. A personal value system ‘is an enduring organization of beliefs concerning preferable modes of conduct, or end states of existence along a continuum of relative importance’ (Rokeach, 1973, et al Fearon, Nachmias, McLaughlin, & Jackson, 2018, p. 270) . Those values influence my decision-making by making me pause and connect with reality before I make a choice. I can generally know in that instant if I’m about to make a decision that goes against my values and I must make the choice to break my vow, my promise or my word. I recently completed a core workplace values assessment exercise and found the results to be extremely close to what I thought they would be going into it. I found from this exercise that my to...