At the Tango/04 Monitoring Symposium in Europe this year, we invited serial entrepreneur and communications guru Conor Neill to open with a memorable keynote. Conor Neill runs Persuasive Communications seminars at IESE Business School, one of the world’s top MBA schools. As you probably know, he also has a great blog (The Rhetorical Journey). But the good thing is that he is starting a crash course in “speaking as a leader” in just twelve e-mails. (About one per week, short, to-the-point lessons, so you have no excuses.) And the best thing: it´s free.

I am convinced that public speaking is an art that you should try to master even if you don’t speak in public frequently. The skills you could learn would be useful to talk more persuasively to your boss, your peers, your team. I’d add that you can also use these skills to convince your wife or husband to do something you want. Well, that may be stretching it too far.

So, whether you are in IT or not, you should take advantage of this opportunity and enroll right now, before my good old friend Conor discovers that he´s letting too much value slip away (hope he´s not reading).