Tag Archives: Thomas Jefferson

Tuning In to Your Creativity

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to use music as a strategic thinking tool. Reading time: 3:09

How do you fine tune your creative thinking skills?

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

With a fine tune.

Albert Einstein chose to play the violin to help him relax and problem solve more readily, according to his son, Hans Albert.

Whenever Albert Einstein felt that he had come to the “end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music. That would usually resolve all his difficulties,” Hans Albert recalled of his dad’s String Theory of a Different Kind.

At any rate, music just may be the oil in the engine of creative and strategic thinking. In fact, some of the world’s most renowned thinkers -leaders -were musically talented:

Galileo, the son of a musician, played a guitar like instrument called the lute.
Thomas Jefferson played the violin.
Ben Franklin, who invented the glass harmonica, played the guitar and harp.
Henry David Thoreau played the flute.
Albert Schweitzer played the organ. Continue reading →

Word to the Wise: Sesquipedalophobiacs Welcome

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to clarify your meaning and enhance your authority. Reading time: 3:14

The sesquipedalophobiacs are coming! The sesquipedalophobiacs are coming! Hail to the sesquipedalophobiacs. Also known by its 15-syllable cousin hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.

The Wizard of Oz gave up on using big words.

Still trying to spit out that mouthful? No wonder leaders strive for clarity. They hate big words. They even have a name for the fear of long words: sesquipedalophobia.

(Hey, there’s a long word for everything, even a long word for the fear of long words.)

Leaders seek clarity and embrace the biblical reference (Ecclesiastes 6:11) when Solomon observed: “The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?”

They agree with President Dwight Eisenhower’s observation that “an intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.”

And these haters of long words -sesquipedalophobiacs — acknowledge Thomas Jefferson’s point that “the most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” Continue reading →

Body Language: Speaking Meaningfully Without Words

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea of how to use visual language in your next speech. Reading time: 2:56

The vice president stood on stage like a sleek, well-balanced flamingo bird. Standing on one leg in front of more than 200 people, he shared his vision for a reorganized department.

“We have had people standing on one leg,” he said, making like a flamingo with a one-legged stance. “And so today I am announcing a reorganization of our department that will give more people two legs to stand on.” He planted his second leg firmly on the stage. And the audience applauded the news.

The vice president demonstrated a significant leadership skill : exercising your body language to clarifies and amplifies the words of a leader so that they more fully command attention, understood and acted upon.

Read on to learn how George Washington and Thomas Jefferson leveraged their body language to communicate effectively in dire situations.

Continue reading →