Be Kind to Yourself When Juggling Your Career and Home Life

In her book Tweak It: Make What Matters to You Happen Every Day, Cali Yost reveals strategies that she uses to help clients achieve a better work-life fit. "Twenty years ago, the clocks on the wall told us when work ended and the rest of life began. Now there are no boundaries, so people can't figure out when to finish a project vs. when to go to the gym, or when to follow up with a prospect vs. when to send a birthday card to their mother." Cali adds, "Knowing how to manage your day-to-day work-life fit is a modern skill set that you need in order to succeed."

We all have expectations that we think we need to live up to and when we feel that we've missed the mark, we tend to get overly judgmental with ourselves. That is why the second item on our holiday list for you is:

#2) Be kind to yourself when juggling your career and home life.

Your home and work worlds are constantly changing and colliding; try as you might, there is no perfect balance. But there are ways to organize your career to bring more harmony to your home so that everyone is happy - especially you.  At Ty Boyd, our faculty coach our with clients to do something everyday to improve their communication skills. It may seem small when you are in the thick of it, but daily consistent practice will amount to something big down the road. There is no doubt, communication skills become more polished with practice. The same can be said of a work-life balance. It can be achieved through small, consistent, everyday changes that cumulatively will optimize your job performance and overall well-being. But keep in mind that achieving a work-life balance is a journey and that your needs will be different at different times in your life.

Set aside some time to reflect on your current work-life balance. What you would like it to be? And what is the plan to get there?

Making the Grade: Interview Skills for Students

By Sophomore year, most college students start to consider their major and look for an internship as a way to try things on and see what fits. Internships are an opportunity to take the knowledge learned in the classroom and apply it to the workplace - a great way to truly test drive a career. Aside from gaining experience, skills, perspective, and professional connections, an internships is a foot in the door and can be a giant step toward a post-college position.

But landing an internship is a highly competitive process. The hope of gaining an advantage for future employment has increased both the number and quality of internship applications. Companies eliminate the first round of candidates based on their resumes and then use the interview process to make the final cut. So, if a candidate is lucky enough to be granted an interview, it's important to step it up and make it count. Students are given general advice and resources at their college career centers, but at Ty Boyd, we are taking it to another level.

Responding directly to feedback received from our clients, our faculty worked extensively to develop an interactive approach to student career development. In our newest course, Making the Grade: Interview Skills for Students, we provide a career toolkit; an opportunity to practice mock interviews and elevator speeches. Our classroom atmosphere provides a safe environment to try out and improve interviewing skills before applying for an actual internship or job. With the help of our coaches, students who have great stories to tell will learn how to articulate their abilities in the best way possible. The key to getting the job is knowing yourself, knowing your strengths, and then being able to articulate your value.

College students are juggling school work and other commitments while applying for internships, but it's important to set aside productive time to prepare and practice for the interview process. It can make all the difference in the world as employers hire students who are confident, relaxed, and ready to meet challenges.

Making the Grade is being offered as two consecutive afternoon sessions on December 18th and 19th in Charlotte. The class is limited to 12 college students to ensure that each participant receives one-on-one coaching, as well as practice and training in a group setting. Throughout the course we will get the students up on their feet in front of an audience, as well as a video camera. The feedback they receive will show them where their strengths lie, and where they may need to improve their performance. If you have a college age intern, family member or friend who wants to get a leg up on the competition, please tell them about our course.

How They Will Benefit:

• Learn to make a good first impression
• Stand out from the crowd
• Think on one's feet and become more fluent in the ability to answer questions
• Envision a future and articulate a plan without sounding scripted
• Strengthen overall communications skills both verbal and non-verbal
• Become more self-confident through plenty of practice and candid feedback
• Recognize strengths which will result in greater self-awareness
• Become more passionate about who you they are and what they have to offer

Visit our website to register for December's class. Regardless of where a student interns or where he or she might go after graduation, the time spent with the coaches at Ty Boyd working on  communication skills will put any student on the road to a lifetime of professional success.

The Pursuit of Eloquence

Knowing how to speak well is one of the most important skills that you can learn. Speaking eloquently means communicating all that is necessary with simplicity and grace, with enthusiasm and passion, and with an underlying force of persuasion. Eloquence is being fluent in not only what you say, but how you say it so that your audience is captivated, inspired and motivated.

Whether you are trying to grow a business, raise money for a charitable organization, or present to your colleagues, when you speak eloquently with confidence and clarity - people listen. Not everybody is born with the ability to speak eloquently, but as we've mentioned before in this blog, everybody has the capacity to improve their skills. Leaders who rest on their laurels without making an effort to refine and develop their communication skills will not be leaders for long. Those who can communicate eloquently are more likely to become leaders - and eloquent leaders are the ones who become respected and revered.

The good news is, the language of leadership can be learned. At Ty Boyd, Inc. we have the communication resources that you need: classes to attend and professional coaches to increase your capabilities. Your goal is to maximize your skills though knowledge, preparation, rehearsal and performance and our goal is to help you every step of the way.

Aaron Sorkin: Mr. Conversation

Do you find that when listening to an articulate speaker, you not only admire that person, but you also feel connected and almost attracted to that person? Don't be alarmed, it's not as weird as it sounds. An articulate speaker is self-confident, self-assured, charismatic and creates a rapport with the audience - a connection. If you are a sucker for linguistic brilliance, you may already be a fan of (or maybe even attracted to) Aaron Sorkin.

Sorkin is an Academy and Emmy-award winning screenwriter whose works include The West Wing, A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson's War, The Social Network, Moneyball and The Newsroom. His trademark dialogue is highly literate as well as funny, reflective, and chock full of facts. Most of us would be thrilled to sound half as lucid as one of Sorkin's fictional characters; his brand of brilliant rapid-fire dialogue makes his audience feel smarter for just having heard it. In fact, Sorkin's ability to take a complex concept and have his characters discuss it in a way that his audience understands it is one of his finest skills.

At this year's Emmy Awards on September 24th, Jeff Daniels scored his first Emmy as lead actor in a drama for his role as acclaimed but troubled news anchor Will McAvoy in Sorkin's HBO drama The Newsroom. When asked what it is like to perform Sorkin's words, Daniels admitted that after two seasons he still grapples with managing the rhythm of Sorkin's heavy-detailed dialogue:

"Every two weeks, we get 80 to 85 pages. We want it to feel like these words are just falling out of our mouths. That's the trick. But we work hard at it to make it look natural and spontaneous."

Asked about his ability to talk like one of his fictional characters, Sorkin has this to say:

"I haven't met anyone who can. When I write these things, I'm alone in a room for a very long time, and I get to rewrite them, and I get to think for a long time about what's going to be said. If I get on a roll, then I can write a conversation like that without stopping, but I can't do it when talking to a real person. That's not who I am in real life."

Over the years Aaron Sorkin has given us a vast array of sharp, witty characters who have not only mastered that snap, crackle, pop dialogue, but are able to deliver it with a blend of humor and intellect. Vulture, the entertainment destination from the team behind New York magazine, has ranked Sorkin's TV characters here. Enjoy.

What Are People Saying about George Saunders?

Over the last few weeks, college students have been heading back to school, so it hardly seems like the appropriate time to discuss 2013 commencement speeches, but that's precisely what I'm about to do.

The text of the speech given by writer George Saunders back in May at Syracuse University's graduation was printed in The New York Times Magazine on August 21, 2013. It didn't take long before the speech was posted on hundreds of social networks and blogs and emailed all over the internet. This resulted in Random House announcing that it would publish an expanded version of the speech in book form in the Spring of 2014. "Congratulations, By the Way," will hit book stores just in time for the next commencement season. But don't wait until then to read the speech.

Audiences connect with Saunder's theme and are drawn in by how passionately he believes in what he is saying. Sincere belief makes the difference between a good speech and a great speech. Saunders' words are motivating and inspiring - in fact - his speech is good enough to perhaps make you rethink how you're living your life. It's the speech that keeps on giving; a beautiful and simple reminder to be kinder:

So here's something I know to be true, although it's a little corny, and I don't quite know what to do with it:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded...sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly. It's a little facile, maybe and certainly hard to implement, but I'd say, as a goal in life, you could  do worse than that: Try to be kinder.

So, what are people saying about George Saunders? He attracted a lot of media attention earlier this year with his bestselling short story collection Tenth of December. The New York Times called it the "Best Book You'll Read This Year." A few months later his speech gained traction and people are once again talking about George Saunders. Considering his simple plea for people to "Be Kind", I would say that's a pretty good person to be talking about.

What Are Your Clients Saying about You?

Throughout our communications courses and coaching sessions, Ty Boyd's faculty solicits feedback through conversations to ensure that they are making an impact with our clients. At the end of each course, we ask our clients to fill out a written evaluation form to help us ascertain our success and to determine whether or not there are any unmet needs. And we continue our customer conversations via Facebook, Twitter, and our blog.

 
For over 30 years, this feedback has provided us with constructive suggestions and opportunities to see things from a variety of perspectives. The questions we ask focus on the entire Ty Boyd experience and the answers we receive have helped us tailor our services to meet our clients' demands.  

At Ty Boyd, our customers are our partners and we believe in nurturing those relationships. We are in the communications business and we strive to practice what we preach:

• we ask our customers what is important to them
• we find out why our customers do business with us
• we determine what a customer's expectations are

On our feedback forms, we leave plenty of space for comments because if you ask the right questions, you just might be lucky enough to discover factors that you'd never even considered. It's all about communicating.

What are your clients saying about you? Let the communication experts at Ty Boyd help you foster the relationship between your organization and your customers.

Watch an Old Movie

According to the Book of Lists, public speaking ranks number one in the category of what we fear. For the majority of people, above the fear of death, comes the fear of standing in front of an audience. Until, that is, they are at the beach. Queue the Jaws music. (It's amazing how two notes played on a tuba can elevate fear.)

I first saw Jaws when I was 11 years old. For years, I was terrified of getting into water of any kind - rivers, lakes, swimming pools, bathtubs - for fear that a Great White shark would pull me under and snack on my right leg. And, yes, I knew it wasn't possible for sharks to survive in fresh water, but my fear knows no logic. Steven Spielberg's timeless classic about a killer shark might be irrational fear, but it gets me every time. Thirty-eight years later I still cannot go into the ocean without trepidation.

But, while a shark attack is undoubtedly a very scary thing, it is incredibly rare. Did you know that you are more likely to die falling out of bed? That's right - you are actually safer in the open water than you are in your own bed. Every year in the United States alone, about 450 people die falling out of bed. But how many times have I worried about my bed killing me? Never. Not once. Shouldn't I be more afraid of things that can actually happen? Why is it that we as humans have a tendency to fear worst case scenarios - things that usually do not happen?

Let's take the fear of public speaking: what is it that people actually fear about speaking in front of a crowd? Worst case scenario: being laughed off the stage, being booed, being bombarded with rotten eggs and tomatoes. But does that really ever happen? Outside of the movies? If you can make peace with the worst case scenario, you will take much of the fear out of the fear of public speaking.

Here's the truth about fear:

• Fear only controls you when you give into it
• The simple task of walking through your fear - doing what you fear, then doing it again - transforms your fear into courage
• Fear is a habit. You can establish a new habit by faking it until you make it
• Your fear rarely shows. And when it does show, it shows less than you think
• Fear is rooted in perfectionism - accept that you are human and remember that vulnerability is an asset in effective communication.
• Fear is normal
• Fear can be transformed into one of your greatest tools...

At Ty Boyd, Inc., we help our clients disarm their fear and make it work for them. You can survive even your worst-case scenario; preparation and practice will see you through it. Give us a call, we'd love to help.