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Well, it’s been another labour of love but my new book on public speaking has just been published!

Speaking with Impact: an Essential Guide to Public Speaking is based on over 30 years of me giving talks and speeches in public. This book offers a practical guide to speaking with impact in public. While some people may be born with an innate skill in public speaking, my experience has shown that people can learn practical tools and, with practice, can become effective public speakers.

This book sets out a practical step-by-step approach to delivering a speech in public. From design and preparation, to just before you go on, to actually delivering the speech with or without notes. Each chapter sets out the theory based on Jonathan’s practical experience, and this theory is then applied to the development of a short speech. There is an exercise at the end of each chapter to use the new learning on the development of your own speech.

So, by the time you have finished the book, in addition to learning some practical tips, you will have seen them put into action, and you will already have begun to use them to build your own speech. This book will help you to speak with impact in public. And I really hope that it helps people to do so!

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I was delighted to see recently that the Climate Centre has published online an international advocacy toolkit. I worked on this toolkit for the International Federation of the Red Cross/ Red Crescent back in 2017.

The advocacy toolkit is available in two parts. There is a guide for participants. And there is a guide for facilitators to help them to run an advocacy training workshop.

Before we published it, we ran a pilot workshop with the Nepal Red Cross just outside of Kathmandu in November 2017.

It is geared towards helping national Red Cross/ Red Crescent Societies to develop advocacy around the world, but I hope that it will also be a useful resource for other people seeking to build capacity and confidence to run advocacy campaigns.

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I recently came across a great course on rhetoric. Over the summer I had been doing some reading around Greek philosophy. Repeatedly I came up against how importantly they viewed the subject of rhetoric.

It made me conscious that in all of my education, I had never studied rhetoric. While I have had a lot of experience in delivering rhetoric, and have a new book coming out about speaking with impact, I have never had any formal education on this topic. Read more ›

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I recently came across great a leadership course. It’s run by the Open University’s Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership.

I must confess that I started out on this course with a large dose of scepticism. I have done leadership courses before and very often they struggle to move on from the general and the banal! Read more ›

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Recently I got back in touch with a colleague of mine now working out of Berlin. While we were catching up with each other, he suddenly said to me, ‘you know what? I think we are both network entrepreneurs!’

I hadn’t come across this concept before; of course I’d heard of a social entrepreneur but not of a network entrepreneur. Read more ›

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I was running a campaigning webinar recently with colleagues across Bulgaria, and I was asked – how do we get the credit?

The point was expressed that you can do loads of campaigning work, develop evidence and policy, build support and get policy or practice change. But how do you get your target, for example, the government, to acknowledge your work and give you credit?

Interesting question. And one that I have heard raised many times. I think key to answering this question is why are you doing your campaigning? Is it to achieve change on your issue or is to raise the profile of your organisation? If it is the former, then you will be relaxed about a lack of credit.

But my view has always been, you will probably not get the credit you seek from your target. That’s life! It is rare that you build a big campaign to pressure say a politician to change a policy, and then that politician gives you attribution.

What I think is more important is that your key people know the impact you are making. So while you may never receive credit from your target, you can let your supporters, allies and funders know what you have been doing to bring about change. If these people know, then surely that is enough?

So maybe for a campaigner this is the wrong question? The critical point surely is how do we bring about change? What do you think?

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I’ve recently started doing some work exploring how adding a campaigning twist to leadership can enhance a leader.

What do I mean by a campaigning twist? Well, for a long time I have been intrigued at the inter-relationship between campaigning and leadership. And I have now begun to set out more explicitly how the application of some campaigning skills can encourage people to develop their leadership potential.

I call this application of campaigning skills: adding a campaigning twist. Now, I’m not saying that all leaders should be campaigners (although that would be neat), but that aspiring leaders can benefit from applying some campaigning skills.

And with the increasing focus in the voluntary sector on management skills, I’m also interested in how this campaigning twist can help to make managers better leaders.

If you’re interested, do look at my summary paper or webinar. And I’d love to know what you think. Do get in touch if you’d like to discuss.

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I have just put a new webinar on my site on 1832 and all that. Well, to be a bit clearer, it’s about the development of Parliamentary Democracy in the UK.

This short webinar offers a simple introduction to this important topic not just for campaigners. It was developed from my experience as a campaigner, Parliamentary candidate, history teacher and student.

I have delivered this content in different forms to audiences such as the Bond network and City of Sanctuary’s Sanctuary in Politics course. I am always interested in how many of us living in the UK as well as people further afield have little idea about how the UK moved to being more of a Parliamentary democracy.

It is a compelling story of change without a revolution. Much has happened, but certainly much more needs to happen to continue the development of our democracy!

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I’ve just added a couple of new webinars to my site. At the beginning of the year, I published a new pamphlet which sought, in a very simple way, to explain how a theory of change could be used to drive a campaign forward.

And recently a colleague of mine recommended Loom to me. If you haven’t come across this free educational software, I think that it is well worth a look.

It’s just so easy to be able to record webinars with either slides and audio or slides and video. You will see that I have used the slides and audio format for these webinars.

In the past I had thought about using podcasts as a way of conveying some of my information. But for some of the content, which I want to share, it just feels better to be able to share some slides as well as an audio of video feed.

I just love how the advent of this new technology is aiding teachers, who want to communicate and share learning but to be able to do so in ever more engaging ways. My plans now include more such webinars to convey other key messages. So watch this space!

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Over the last two months I have seen a dramatic surge in demand for my online campaigning courses.

I like to think it is all those people at home around the world at the moment, using this time to sharpen up their campaigning skills. As we emerge out of the global crisis, we’ll have all these people ready to campaign!

At the time of writing, there are currently 3,584 students studying on my two courses in 134 different countries across all continents.

My two courses are a free introduction – what is campaigning? – and a paid for course – campaigning for change (based on my book of the same name). So most of my students are on the free course – but I love how far and wide these campaigning ideas are spreading.

I am now beginning to work on my next online project – so watch this space!