A visit with S. Chris Edmonds

Chris Edmonds is a speaker, author, and senior consultant with the Ken Blanchard Companies, a leadership consultancy firm. He has authored two “Tweet Books” which seemed like a challenging medium to me. So I sent him an email and asked him if he’d answer some questions about his work. He agreed! Here are my questions and his answers.

What made you adopt the tweet medium for your latest book, #POSITIVITY AT WORK? Are there some limitations to the brevity required by tweeting?

 

My first tweet book, #CORPORATE CULTURE tweet, was released in April '11. I've been learning a bunch about social media over the past two years and had begun seeing a real community develop around my culture insights delivered daily in tweet form.

Putting the most popular/educational tweets into a book was a natural evolution of my desire to educate leaders (particularly senior leaders) about why they should pay attention to their team's/organization's corporate culture. That book has done very well - I'm blessed by its success.

 

On the subject of his newest book:

This second tweet book, #POSITIVITY AT WORK tweet, came about from my learnings with a Blanchard colleague, Lisa Zigarmi. She recently completed the master's program on applied positive psychology at U-Penn and I was fascinated at what she'd learned (and what she was teaching me and other colleagues).

The #POSITIVITY AT WORK (PAW) book came together quickly around our vision of creating a "positivity revolution."

The PAW book is not directed so much at formal leaders; ANYONE on the planet can take responsibility for their well-being and enjoy the benefits. As one's personal well-being improves, people around them benefit, as well. The science is really fabulous.

 

On the construction of the book:

It was a challenge to take academic knowledge and proven recommendations and formulate them into 140 character statements/ahas. And, our approach worked. The positivity tweet book has done extremely well in the marketplace; Lisa and I are gratified that the message has been embraced by so many people in such a short time.

 

Kasie's Thoughts

What I found interesting while formatting this post was the way Chris uses shortcuts in his writing: the & instead of and and the – instead of ;  

As an English teacher and a writer this interests me because his written language sounds spoken. He manipulates the written symbols to give the text a sound like he’s saying these things instead of writing them. It’s like reading dialect in a Neil Simon script. I think it probably echoes his speaking style and is evidence of the reduction mediums’ (tweeting, email, etc.) effect on language.

 

Want to know more?

Part Two of the S. Chris Edmonds interview will appear next week. I asked him who influenced him and a little bit about Servant Leadership.

Follow Chris (@scedmonds) or some of his cohorts (@kenblanchard, @JonesAndRaine, @lisazigarmi). See Chris and Lisa’s web home for the Positivity at Work initiative at positivity-works.com.

Thanks, Chris, for the opportunity to speak and for agreeing to be a guest on Life on Clemson Road, a blog about life in transition.

Do you have an interesting life-in-transition story to share? Want to be an interview? Or a guest blogger? Send me a note!