Inspiring Tools

What Inspires Us

Bob’s Top Five

  • Change that also Motivates and Builds Confidence
    One of the most powerful tools in my professional and personal toolkit is Appreciative Inquiry. Asking about what works. It’s a much faster way to improve, and to gain buy in for improvement. And wildly enough, it feels great for everyone involved. I love it! Another amazing tool is Feedforward. I find this to be more powerful and effective than feedback 90% of the time. Fast for growth, good for morale.
  • Learning How to Make a BIG difference
    There are many ways to try to solve problems. This one is faster, more exciting and far more effective for almost all challenges.  Positive Deviance uses uncommon sense in to create stellar results. It’s “best practices” on steroids.
  • World Class Learning and Deep Understanding Meet the brightest minds in the world today. If you are someone who loves to understand the world we live in, and haven’t yet been to Ted.com, GO! It’s fantastic. They also hold conferences for these types of brilliant people to come present their break-through ideas.
  • Practical Brain Science
    I love understanding why I do what I do — and how to do it better!.  Recent discoveries in the field of Brain Science explain effective and ineffective methods of influencing people.  I particularly like Brain Rules by John Medina. Get the hardcover book because it comes with his humorous and enlightening DVD! A must have if you teach, inspire or help people.
  • Powerful Visual Presentation
    Given that 75% of the sensory circuits in the brain are dedicated to processing visual information, we need to communicate using visual images more than with words.  Death by PowerPoint is not necessary.  Gar Reynolds book Presentation Zen can keep you from killing your audience with bullets.  Dan Roam’s book The Back of the Napkin explain how simple images can help us uncover solutions more easily.