My older son who is about to turn 18 loves driving my car. Some weeks ago, we had gone out for dinner and as I was paying the bill, he asked if he could bring the car over from the car park as that would save me a long walk. I hesitated a bit because we were in a very crowded place with a lot of traffic around but I knew he wanted to drive so I said yes. 15 minutes passed and just as I was getting worried, he walked over to me, looking very sheepish, and said he had banged someone else’s car and the car driver was wanting to see me. I started to feel irritated at this unnecessary complication and was getting ready to give my son a lecture. Just then, the car driver whose car had been damaged came over with a broad smile and a warm handshake. The first thing he said to me was “It’s OK – don’t be tough on your son. Anyway, it’s just a small scratch.” Now that was unexpected…
Tag: language
If you keep rephrasing the question, it gradually becomes the answer – Robert Brault
Before you can fix a problem or decide the course of action to take in solving a difficult issue, it helps to first of all spend some time defining what the problem is. It was after all Einstein who is known to have said “if I had one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution“…
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” ― Voltaire
Once you know what kind of information you need and who to ask, you have to ask your questions the right way. The right way means the way that gets you the most valuable information possible. Here are some questioning techniques to get that valuable information out into the open…
Here’s a very simple fact. You can make a stronger impact on those you communicate with simpler writing – in your emails, in your proposals, in your reports. In fact, the simpler your writing is, the more powerful it becomes in terms of the impact you create…
Writing with purpose means that you start your message with a statement of purpose. You explain, right at the outset, why you are writing. You don’t do this at the end just before signing off. You do this if you can in the very first sentence or at the beginning of the introduction. This provides the reader with an immediate understanding of what will be covered in the rest of the document…
This piece was published in one of the English dailies or magazines (not sure now) but it is an amazing testament to the idiosyncrasies of the English language and an even more obvious demonstration of the bewilderment of the foreigners who have had the fortune to engage in this strangest of languages. Perhaps this was the secret weapon that the British used to conquer the world…
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