8 Tips for Engaging Your Audience

Beginning speakers focus on themselves—how to speak best to the audience. Experienced speakers learn to shift the focus onto the audience and their needs. For this shift you need to understand how to break down the wall between speaker and audience and. These eight tips from experts help you to connect with the audience:
🎭 Tell great stories
🙋‍♀️ Ask powerful questions
🤗 Tap into empathy
🤝 Build their trust
🎹 Use contrast and variety
♥ Make the personal, universal
🤦‍♀️ Embrace mistakes
🦸‍♂️ Be real. Let them be real

👉 https://www.toastmasters.org/magazine/magazine-issues/2022/jan/engaging-your-audience

Un_ and Under_ employment

The unemployment rate is a headline indicator, widely reported and used in policy debates. However, low
unemployment rates could mask reality and underestimate under_employment. 

The unemployment rate shows the percentage of people in the labour force who (i) do not have a job, (ii)
are looking for one; and (iii) available to start a job. This is a set of questions, asked in a questionnaire of Labour Force Survey, the primary source of labour data nationally and globally. People, who have a job, are employed, so the unemployment rate doesn’t care about them. In a similar vein, people, who are outside of labour forces, assumed to lost connection with labour market, quit the job search and not ready to take a job. However, these assumptions could be wrong. People could work less hours than desired, be discouraged to continue job search.

Since 2013 ILO has been collecting and publishing data on underemployment, which includes three measures. One is the combined rate of time-related underemployment—persons in employment whose working time is insufficient in relation to alternative employment situations in which they are willing and available to engage—and unemployment (LU2). Another is the combined rate of unemployment and the potential labour force—persons who are not in employment, while express an interest in it, for whom existing conditions limit their active job search and/or their availability (LU3). The broadest composite rate of labour underutilization (LU4) includes all three categories, time-related underemployment, unemployment and the potential labour force.

Chart below shows these rates for countries in Europe and Central Asia. The picture varies by countries, however there are three common points here:

Underemployment rates are much higher than traditional unemployment rates. For instance, in cases of Kosovo*, Georgia, Armenia there is huge number of people out of labour force, who would like to work, but limited by circumstances. Contrary, in Montenegro, Azerbaijan, Albania, there is significant time-related underemployment.

These differences call for a systemic approach in tackling un_ and under_employment, taking into account local conditions. Lack of affordable transportation could be an obstacle in some urban areas, while lack of housing could be a limiting factor in other urban areas.

One form of labour underutilization is a skill-related inadequate employment, resulting from imbalances between skills offered by workers and those needed for jobs. We need a flexible and forward-looking approach to skills formation, which should combine traditional learning approaches with practical application during apprenticeship or internship.

LU2 is the combined rate of time-related underemployment and unemployment. LU3 is the combined rate of unemployment and the potential labour force. LU4 is the composite rate of labour underutilization. Reference year for the unemployment rate and may differ for LU2-LU4.
Data from ILOSTAT https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/unemployment-and-labour-underutilization/

Four performance techniques for successful public speaking

Do you want to influence the audiences in presentations and speeches? Here are 4 performance techniques for successful public speaking

🦸‍♂️ Establish Your Credibility. Tell them why they should listen to you during the first 60 seconds of your talk.

✨ Be Honest. Show listeners your true self, don’t try to be “as good as” someone else.

🤝 Connect with Your Audience. Greet and involve people, keep eye contact, check reactions, and adjust as you go.

🏃‍♀️ Think in Terms of Action. Think about what you want your audience to do after your talk, finish with call to action.

Skills for Green Jobs Transition

Every crisis is an opportunity. The Great Reshuffle and post-COVID recovery present an opportunity for the green transition and activating the jobs. However, LinkedIn’s Global Green Skills Report suggests that we face a number of challenges. This chart shows one of them. The current pace of transitions into green and greening is too slow. According to LinkedIn data, for every 10,000 workers leaving a Not Green job, only 1 moves into a Green job.

One possible accelerator of transition is skills formation. Recent publication by the European Training Foundation “The future of skills: A case study of the agri-food sector in Morocco” provides a glimpse into future of skills. Trends like automation, digitisation, global trade, competition, climate change, sustainable farming and changing consumer behaviour put a pressure on the agri-food sector, which has relied upon traditional technologies and skills.
No doubts, the forthcoming radical changes will affect jobs, by creating new ones or transforming existing ones. For instance, the boundaries between disciplines call for entirely new professions, like environmental economist or nutritionist engineer. In general, these changes imply introduction, use, and maintenance of new technologies, and more interactions with people from different disciplinary or professional backgrounds. From the skills point of view, this mean increase in demand for multi-disciplinary competences and the ability to cooperate and interact with people from different backgrounds.
This could be done by improving collaboration between education providers and companies, enhancing continuing training and reskilling and upskilling, and structuring learning courses around certain value chains.

4L Technique for Feedback

Feedback is vital for growth. Good structure makes feedback memorable and actionable. One way to organize review is to provide 4Ls Retrospective:

💖 Liked. What went better than expected? What are the positive aspects of an otherwise difficult exercise?

💡 Learned. What was a valuable lesson learned during the exercise?

😳 Lacked. What was missed during the delivery? What could have gone better?

🎯 Longed For. What support could help to achieve the goal?

Food Crisis and Role of Social Protection

The 2022 is going to be a very difficult year for the global food system, due to disruption of supplies and effects of sanctions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This chart from UNU-WIDER suggests that a food crisis was brewing even before the Ukraine war.

A combination of factors could make it much worse than hikes of 2008 and 2011-2012

1️⃣ This time it is compounded and still unfolding—we witness growing prices for cereals AND fuels AND fertilizers. Worst yet to come. Between 2019 and March 2022, cereal prices already has increased by 48%, fuel prices by 86% and fertiliser prices by 35%. Food, fuel and fertiliser prices could stay high for years if the war in Ukraine protracts and the isolation of Russia’s economy tightens

2️⃣ The poor are still recovering from the COVID-19 crisis, which had the most severe economic impact on the urban poor. Food price inflation is higher than CPI in many countries of the world, hurting the most vulnerable

3️⃣ Governments have little room to manoeuvre, due to shrinking tax base and growing dets debts for the unprecedented protection for households and businesses during the pandemic.

▶ What could be done?

Most impactful measures are increasing food supply and increasing fuel supplies to help bring down fuel and fertiliser (inter alia through resolving logistical bottlenecks and reducing shipping costs). However, it is not clear if countries are willing and ready to implement these measures.

Social protection could provide necessary support, via food or financial aid. These measures require concerted efforts of international institutions, governments, local actors, NGOs and the private sector. International community must help governments, facing tough post-pandemic fiscal circumstances, to mobilize resources for social protection. Combining universal programs with targeted programs could help to make the most of constrained fiscal space. World Bank real-time review of social protection and jobs responses to COVID-19 documented 3,856 social protection and labor measures planned or implemented by 223 economies Advanced big-data-driven technologies, like artificial intelligence and machine learning, could help in better targeting. However, they should be complemented with thick data and human solidarity to ensure proper combination of empowerment and protection.

Three Lessons Learned From the Return to Hybrid Presenting

Hybrid meetings are here to stay, and they pose new challenges for truly collaborative, inclusive, and empathetic workplace. Three Lessons Learned From the Return to Hybrid Presenting

🥱 Never deliver a hybrid presentation you wouldn’t want to sit through—in-person or online

🐱‍💻 Hybrid presenting creates unique obstacles to overcome—tech (CHECK YOUR MIC!), taking care of both audiences, considering the impact of your visuals, engaging in networking and socializing, being mindful of your scene and screen moves

💃 Speakers need to combine their in-person skills with their more recently built virtual presenting skills The goal of hybrid presenting is the same as all presentations: form a connection with the audience to move them from point A to point B. But your job as a speaker is undoubtedly harder with hybrid presentations. There are now two audiences you need to connect with at the same time. But the flexibility and opportunity that we gain from the hybrid environment is worth the effort.

How COVID-19 caused a global learning crisis

COVID-19 can undermine life-long perspectives of young people. Students globally lost eight months of learning and the impact varies widely from staggering 12 months in South Asia and Latin America and Caribbean to modest 4 months in North America and Europe and Central Asia. Recent McKinsey study identifies three archetypes of countries:
🚩 Most affected countries with moderate levels of pre-COVID-19 learning and significant delays in education, where students may be nine to 15 months behind.
🚩 Prepandemic-challenged countries, with very low levels of pre-COVID-19 learning, where losses were daunting but not so dramatic in absolute terms, about three to eight months
🚩 Least affected are high-performing countries, with relatively high levels of pre-COVID-19 performance, where losses were limited to one to five months.

Lower levels of learning translate into lower future earnings potential for students and lower economic productivity for nations (📉 losing 1 percent of global GDP annually, according to McKinsey estimates). By using scenario modelling UNDP came to similar conclusions. The study shows how governments can make choices today that have the greatest potential to boost progress in the future. School systems can respond across multiple horizons to help students get back on track: ⭐Resilience, 🔁Reenrollment, 🔼Recovery, and 💡Reimagining.