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The goal for any leader is to build strong and productive relationships with their team and other stakeholders. And the best way to do this is by inspiring their audience every time they speak. This means creating believers with every set of remarks, whether theyre having a brief hallway conversation or delivering a keynote speech. But how? To inspire others, embrace these five fundamentals: 1. ADOPT AN INSPIRATIONAL MINDSET The starting point for becoming an inspiring leader is developing the right mindsetone that is focused not on informing but on inspiring. Information, even when its up-to-date and accurate, lacks the power to move others. Avoid content-rich presentations or conversations full of too many facts. Instead, always be in inspire mode. Inspire mode keeps you away from delivering content-heavy slides or numbing statistics, and instead gets you to engage your audience with your belief or idea. Bring your listeners to the realm of possibilities. 2. LISTEN INTENTLY To inspire others, you need to listen intently. Leaders who fail to listen will not understand their audiences mindset and they wont be able to focus their message so it has maximum impact. There are three ways to listen. First, listen with your body. Face your audience and align your body with the person (or people) to whom you are speaking. Stand or sit up straight. Keep a receptive expression on your face and make strong eye contact. Keep your arms open. This body language will send a message that you care about your audience. Second, listen with your mind. You need to listen for the points the other person is making, and you also need to show that youve heard what theyve said. You might interject phrases like Oh, thats so true or Yes, thats a good point or I agree or Tell me more about that. Such responses show that your mind is engaged and responsive. Third, listen with your heart. When you listen with your heart, you show that you are emotionally engaged. Heartfelt responses include being polite, being sensitive, and using expressions like I share your feelings and That must have been difficult. (For a full discussion of these three ways to listen, consult the chapter Listen, Listen, Listen in my book Speaking as a Leader.) 3. SPEAK WITH A MESSAGE If you want to inspire, you need to speak with a message. Without a big, central idea, you cant expect people to follow you. Your message should be stated at the beginning of your remarks and elaborated on by everything else you say. So, after opening your conversation or speech with a bridge or a grabber, get to your point. If youre giving formal remarks, you might say My message to you is . . . If its a less formal situation, you might say, I believe that . . . Own your message and present it clearly at the beginning. After you state your message, prove it. This requires sharing supporting evidence, usually in two to four points. Youll lift your audiences thinking from what is to what can be. 4. USE STRONG WORDS Inspiring leaders use compelling language. They know that every word testifies to their credibility. A leaders language is confident. They own what they are saying with expressions like I believe, I see, I know, and I care. They avoid tentative language like Im not sure, I dont know, and I cant. They also avoid filler expressions like um and ah. 5. END WITH ACTION Whether you are giving a formal presentation or offering a comment at a meeting, be sure to end your remarks with a call to action. After a job interview, you might say to the candidate, This has been a great meeting. Well be in touch with you shortly. You might conclude a more formal presentation with If we take the steps I have outlined, we will be a much stronger company. I look forward to your support for these initiatives. By ending with a call to action, youll move your audience from the present to the future you envision. You’ll inspire your listeners by taking them from what is to what can be.
Category:
E-Commerce
Krista Vasquez had her heart set on getting married in a body-hugging, halter-style gown from Spain. In April, the Atlanta paramedic learned her dream dress would cost nearly $300 more because of new U.S. tariffs on imported goods. With little wiggle room in her timing, the bride-to-be quickly checked around for similar styles. The story was the same: Any dresses from Europe would come with tariff-driven price increases ranging from $150 to $400. And that was before President Donald Trump said he would increase the tariff on goods produced in the European Union from 10% to 50%. Vasquez, 33, went with her first choice, fearing shipping delays or additional costs like a rush fee before her October wedding if she placed an order elsewhere. It’s already expensive enough to get married, she said. It just kind of made me a little sad.” Wedding cakes, decor, attire, flowers, party favors, photo and video equipment, tableware, wine and Champagne. Not many goods used in the wedding industry remain untouched by the tariffs Trump has imposed since returning to office. How much of the import taxes get passed down to consumers is up to florists, photographers, caterers, and myriad other vendors and intermediaries, such as wholesalers. Olivia Sever, a 28-year-old online content creator in San Diego, has a lot of wedding shopping ahead of her. Much of what she wants may cost more because of tariffs. An immediate concern is some of her paper goods. Her wedding planner has already flagged a 10% price increase for the menus, place cards, and signage she wanted for her September celebration in Hawaii. Sever said shifting to American goods isn’t always cost-effective. For instance, flowers grown in Hawaii are in high demand, with increased prices to match, in response to 10% tariffs imposed on a large number of imports around the world. That includes flowers from Ecuador, Colombia, and other countries that grow the bulk of the flowers the U.S. imports. There’s just so many unknowns, but we have our budget and were trying to work within our budget, Sever said. If that means we cant get these, you know, specific shell cups I want, then we just wont get them and well get something else. Here’s a look from inside the wedding industry on tariffs. Tariffs and the wedding cake industry Clients of Phoenix cake artist Armana Christianson pay roughly $750 to $800 for one of her creations. She spent two years perfecting the 16 flavor combinations she offers. They range from simple vanilla bean, made with vanilla bean paste imported from Mexico, to dark chocolate raspberry with a whipped hazelnut ganache that’s dependent on chocolates and powders from Belgium. Not all of Christianson’s cost woes are tariff-driven. The chocolate industry was already struggling because of a cocoa bean shortage. I’m a small business with just myself as my employee. I’ve seen at minimum a 20% increase in just the chocolate I use. It’s a type of chocolate that I’ve built into my recipes. Changing brands isn’t acceptable, Christianson said. The imported white chocolate in her white chocolate mud cake, a popular flavor, shot up from $75 or $100 per cake to $150. She used nearly 10 pounds of it in a recent order, a cake that had five tiers. Christianson may have to come up with new recipes based on less expensive ingredients. In the meantime, she said, she’s eating the cost of tariffs for clients already on her books. I don’t have it in my contract where I can raise prices for unexpected events like this, she said. Unfortunately, that’s something I have to add to new contracts for my future couples. Tariffs and the wedding dress industry Almost all bridal gowns are made in China or other parts of Asiaand so are many of the fabrics, buttons, zippers, and other materials used, according to the National Bridal Retailers Association. Manufacturing in those countries, where labor generally costs less, has put the price of high-quality bridal gowns within reach for many American families. Retailers and manufacturers say the U.S. lacks enough skilled labor and production of specialized materials to fully serve the market. Skilled seamstresses are hard to find and often come from older generations. The materials that we sell in a bridal shop include lace, beadwork, boning for the corsetry. We dont really make stuff like that in this country. There just arent very many designers who create and put their whole looks together in this nation, said Christine Greenberg, founder and co-owner of the Urban Set Bride boutique in Richmond, Virginia. The designs done here are normally very simple designs. You dont see a lot of American-made gowns that have a lot of detail, a lot of embroidered lace, and thats a really popular wedding gown style, she said. Many designers with gowns labeled “made in the U.S.” still are using imported materials, Greenberg noted. If Trump’s highest tariffs on China are reinstated after a current pause, Greenberg said her small business will pay between $85,000 and $100,000 extra in import taxes this year. For a small, family-owned business that only hosts one bride at a time, this will absolutely lead us and many others to close for good, she said. We can’t buy American when the products don’t exist. Tariffs and the cut flower industry Roughly 80% of cut flowers sold in the U.S. come from other countries. And lots of quality faux flowers are made in China. Colombia is a large supplier of roses, carnations and spray chrysanthemums. Ecuador is another major rose supplier. The Netherlands produces a huge share of tulips and other flowers. In addition, some of the cut greens used as filler in flower arrangements and bouquets in the U.S. are imported. If youre talking about cars and computer chips, theyve got inventory thats sitting there. Its already stateside. Our inventory turns in days, and we saw the impact almost immediately, said Joan Wyndrum, co-founder of the online floral distributor Blooms by the Box. Were all absorbing a little bit, but its inevitable that it comes out on the consumer end of it. Wyndrum, who works drectly with wholesalers and growers, said the U.S. flower industry isnt capable at the moment of absorbing all the production from elsewhere. She does a lot of business with U.S. suppliers, though, and sees a huge opportunity for growth stateside. Theres a benefit to the U.S. bride to have flowers grown here. Its the simple reason of freshness, she said. Tariffs and the wedding industry overall Jacqueline Vizcaino is a luxury wedding planner and event designer in Atlanta. She’s also national president of the Wedding Industry Professionals Association, a 3,500-member, education-focused trade group whose members include transportation and photo booth providers, makeup artists, caterers, linen distributors, and planners. Any one wedding may involve 40 or more vendors, Vizcaino said. Huge jumps in costs are already widespread due to tariffs, she said, with florals and fabrics among them. With many weddings planned up to a year or more in advance, she and others in the industry are girding for more bad news. We’re going to see a lot of interactions that aren’t so pleasant in the next eight to 12 months,” she said. Tariffs have delayed decision-making among many couples planning weddings. Decisions are taking double the time because of the uncertainty. People are shopping around more and wanting [vendors] to lock in at the lowest price possible, Vizcaino said. McKenzi Taylor, a planner who coordinates weddings in Las Vegas, San Diego, and the Black Hills in South Dakota, said: Our inquiry-to-booking window has grown from 40 days to 73. Cancellations are up so far this year, on pace to double from last year, with costs definitely being a concern for couples. My vendors are shaking in their boots. By Leanne Italie, AP lifestyles writer
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E-Commerce
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser, and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the worlds largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflorshort for Forest Drought Study Project in Portugueseset out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is the longest-running project of its kind in the world, and has become a source for dozens of academic articles in fields ranging from meteorology to ecology and physiology. Understanding how drought can affect the Amazon, an area twice the size of India that crosses into several South American nations, has implications far beyond the region. The rainforest stores a massive amount of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is the main driver of climate change. According to one study, the Amazon stores the equivalent of two years of global carbon emissions, which mainly come from the burning of coal, oil, and gasoline. When trees are cut, or wither and die from drought, they release into the atmosphere the carbon they were storing, which accelerates global warming. Creating drought conditions and observing the results To mimic stress from drought, the project, located in the Caxiuan National Forest, assembled about 6,000 transparent plastic rectangular panels across one hectare (2.5 acres), diverting around 50% of the rainfall from the forest floor. They were set 1 meter (3.3 feet) above ground on the sides to 4 meters (13.1 feet) above ground in the center. The water was funneled into gutters and channeled through trenches dug around the plots perimeter. Next to it, an identical plot was left untouched to serve as a control. In both areas, instruments were attached to trees, placed on the ground and buried to measure soil moisture, air temperature, tree growth, sap flow, and root development, among other data. Two metal towers sit above each plot. In each tower, NASA radars measure how much water is in the plants, which helps researchers understand overall forest stress. The data is sent to the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where it is processed. The forest initially appeared to be resistant to the drought,” said Lucy Rowland, an ecology professor at the University of Exeter. That began to change about eight years in, however. “We saw a really big decline in biomass, big losses and mortality of the largest trees, said Rowland. This resulted in the loss of approximately 40% of the total weight of the vegetation and the carbon stored within it from the plot. The main findings were detailed in a study published in May in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. It shows that during the years of vegetation loss, the rainforest shifted from a carbon sink, that is, a storer of carbon dioxide, to a carbon emitter, before eventually stabilizing. There was one piece of good news: The decades-long drought didnt turn the rainforest into a savanna, or large grassy plain, as earlier model-based studies had predicted. Next steps include measuring forest recovery In November, most of the 6,000 transparent plastic covers were removed, and now scientists are observing how the forest changes. There is currently no end date for the project. The forest has already adapted. Now we want to understand what happens next, said meteorologist Joo de Athaydes, vice coordinator of Esecaflor, a professor at the Federal University of Para and coauthor of the Nature study. The idea is to see whether the forest can regenerate and return to the baseline from when we started the project. During a visit in April, Athaydes guided Associated Press journalists through the site, which had many researchers. The area was so remote that most researchers had endured a full-day boat trip from the city of Belem, which will host the next annual U.N. climate talks later this year. During the days in the field, the scientists stayed at the Ferreira Penna Scientific Base of the Emilio Goeldi Museum, a few hundred yards (meters) from the plots. Four teams were at work. One collected soil samples to measure root growth in the top layer. Another gathered weather data and tracking soil temperature and moisture. A third measured vegetation moisture and sap flow. The fourth focused on plant physiology. “We know very little about how drought influences soil processes, said ecologist Rachel Selman, researcher at the University of Edinburgh and one of the co-authors of the Nature study, during a break. Esecaflor’s drought simulation draws some parallels with the past two years, when much of the Amazon rainforest, under the influence of El Nio and the impact of climate change, endured its most severe dry spells on record. The devastating consequences ranged from the death of dozens of river dolphins due to warming and receding waters to vast wildfires in old-growth areas. Rowland explained that the recent El Nio brought short-term, intense impacts to the Amazon, not just through reduced rainfall but also with spikes in temperature and vapor pressure deficit, a measure of how dry the air is. In contrast, the Esecaflor experiment focused only on manipulating soil moisture to study the effects of long-term shifts in rainfall. But in both cases, were seeing a loss of the forests ability to absorb carbon, she said. Instead, carbon is being released back into the atmosphere, along with the loss of forest cover. ___ The Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. By Fabiano Maisonnave, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
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