How to unlock the door …
“The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential: these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.” Confucius
What does ‘Black Tie’ mean?
You’ve been invited to an event where the dress code is “Black Tie”? British etiquette expert William Hanson can give you some advice in this crash course here.
A tricky question
Give this difficult question some thought.
“Is there another word for a “synonym”?”
Why not walk and talk?
If you’re like me, you probably sit too much. Well, I do try and move as much as I can, but there are times, particularly in training sessions, when I can’t jump up and down and run around.
So do we have alternatives? According to Nilofer Merchant (link to TED.com), we should change our one-to-one meetings into ‘walking meetings’. I do like the idea of letting our ideas flow while we’re walking and talking. What about joining me?
A bit of legal English
Translating the German word “Rechtsanwalt” can be a bit tricky. According to the Macmillan Dictionary, “lawyer” is the word used for a trained legal adviser (in the UK and in the US). I find their explanation quite helpful:
“In the UK, a lawyer who usually works in an office but may also work in some courts of law is called a solicitor.
Lawyers who do most of their work representing people in court trials are called barristers in England and Wales, and advocates in Scotland.
In both the UK and the US, counsel is the formal legal word for a lawyer who is representing people in court, and in a US court you might call them counselor.
A lawyer in the US is also sometimes referred to as an attorney, especially in formal speech or official letters.”
Annual performance reviews
You probably know what yearly performance reviews are. (If you want to learn how to conduct them, take a look here.) What do you think? Are they helpful?
Geoffrey James claims that they don’t really improve anything and recommends Adobe’s approach. Instead of annual performance reviews, Adobe’s employees and their managers have regular, informal “check-ins”. It’s an interesting concept we might be hearing more of, and one which appears to work!
