Just sat through a talk with a long and useless introduction concerning what the speaker had considered saying but decided against, how he stumbled upon his approach to the topic, and finally, the five elements of it he planned to… Read More »Public speaking error # 17
I am on the island of Serifos in the blue, blue Aegean. My wife Sharon is engrossed in her month-long seminar, and I am left to my own devices. I have slowed down considerably – reading, swimming, and sleeping is… Read More »Greeks on strike
It just so happens I have two clients who talk too much in public. Both are extremely bright, and both strive to speak as though they were writing lapidary prose. When in the act of public speaking, they challenge themselves… Read More »Public Speaking: The professorial approach
You know the saying in the telecom biz. You can have the greatest fiber optic network in the world, but if you don’t have the fiber running from the main pipe to every house on the block, you ain’t got… Read More »The last mile in high stakes presentations
Just back from a trip to the West Coast, where I was working with people at the top of the food chain in terms of their cognitive intelligence. Yale, Stanford, Notre Dame–brainiacs. My assignment? Help them get presence! I skirted… Read More »The wonders of vehemence
Harvard and Google got married (NY Times article, Fri Dec 17) and have given birth to a database containing all the words in all the books published between 1500 and 2008 in English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese and Russian. You—yes… Read More »Counting the words that count in high stakes presentations