I've just returned from my talk at the NCVO.  Thanks to everyone who came along and made it an interesting event.  I'm happy to say the attendees threw themselves enthusiastically into a rather unusual communications exercise, and had a collection of interesting questions for me at the end.  I really enjoyed the event, and I hope the attendees took some interesting ideas away with them.  I did hear talk of at least a couple of people considering restructuring their campaigns based on ideas I'd been discussing, so I think that's a win…

Over the next few days, as time permits, I'm going to be posting up some further thoughts from the talk and hopefully expanding on the themes a little.  One of the frustrations of doing these events is that I've always got more to say than I have time to cover, and when I leave I'm bubbling over with other ideas for things I wish I'd had been able to discuss.  But blogs are an ideal outlet for such overflow.

I also just wanted to post my thanks to Chloe Stables for organising the event and inviting me along in the first place – you were as helpful and charming as ever.

This Tuesday, the 4th of August 2009, I'll be giving a talk to the NCVO Parliamentary Workers Group.  The NCVO is an organisation that offers support and training to the third sector, whilst lobbying for, and representing the interests of, voluntary organisations.

The NCVO have kindly invited me to talk on how Emotional Intelligence can be used to make lobbying more effective.  I've called the talk "Why politician's don't listen (and how to make them)" in a rather tongue in cheek way – of course politicians do listen, but an awful lot of people are talking to them all at once.  So perhaps it might more properly be called "Why politicians may not always listen to you, what with their work load and the number of people trying to get their  attention" but it seemed less catchy.

I'll be discussing how the concepts of Emotional Intelligence, particularly when applied to communications, can help us spot the flaws in some of the more traditional approaches to lobbying.   I'll be looking in more detail at how some campaigns rely too much on facts and figures to do their work for them, or at the other extreme how overly emotive campaigns can be counterproductive.  I'll also discuss 'building a better lobbyist' – what personal qualities are required to be a really effective lobbyist.