Now that's worth thinking about!

WORD OF THE DAY How about this for a word - paraskevidekatriaphobia. It comes from Greek and means “fear of Friday the 13th”! Perhaps not easy to place in a conversation, except, for example, today! And I've managed to do it. Today, there is yet another...

Read more

January is quite often a difficult month; the holiday period of Christmas and the New Year are behind us while what we may have to look forward to is a long period of cold weather and not enough sunlight. Indeed, the third Monday of January is often referred...

Read more

CELEBRATING THE NEW YEAR... IN MARCH? I’d often wondered why the origin of names of the months from September to December indicate, the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months. So, in a year of twelve months, that puts February at the end of the year...

Read more

WORD OF THE DAY How about this for a word - paraskevidekatriaphobia. It comes from Greek and means “fear of Friday the 13th”! Perhaps not easy to place in a conversation, except, for example, today! And I managed to do it; I was visiting a training centre...

Read more

A few years ago, I stumbled across on amazing story. The hugely expensive NASA Mars Polar Explorer probe had exploded in flight because of this simple error: somebody had calculated distances in miles and weight in pounds, instead of kilometers and kilograms...

Read more

This time, I’m going to round off the theme of how to have a successful rentrée, having focused on a number of different themes already. I started by looking at the Japanese method, known as the 5S’s, for being better organized in your work place. While...

Read more

Carrying on with the theme of how to have a successful rentrée, I’ll focus this time on a key element of office communication skills - the art of interrupting! There are many self-help guides and internet tutorials – not to mention one or two articles...

Read more

And so here we are again in September. The summer holidays are finished – and I hope that all went well and that you have a nice tan as well as some great photos to show and anecdotes to share. I certainly do! Now, of course, the big event is “la rentrée”...

Read more

This time, I’ll come back to the theme of how to give successful presentations. So far, I have spoken about what to do before a presentation and how to succeed the introduction and the first few minutes. Now, I’ll turn to the main part of your presentation,...

Read more

I’m coming back to the theme of successful presentations. Last time I wrote about what happens upstream, or before the presentation. I focused specifically on how looking at WHAT and WHO can help you with your presentation. In a way, a successful presentation...

Read more