When she was a year old, I held my daughter Georgia at the closed window of our 30th floor New York City apartment so we could look out over Times Square.<\/p>\n

Across the street, stretching the full length of a 40-floor building, was a painting of Dwight Gooden, the ace Met\u2019s pitcher, coiled in his wind-up with his eyes staring straight at us from under his cap.<\/p>\n

I had the habit of asking Georgia, \u201cIs it a cloudy day or a sunny day?\u201d\u00a0 Soon enough, however, it got more complicated, and our conversation evolved.\u00a0 In other words, sometimes it was not all cloudy or all sunny.\u00a0 Sometimes, it was both.<\/p>\n

So it is with effective communication<\/strong>.\u00a0 Not in terms of sun and clouds, but in terms of assertiveness and empathy<\/strong>.\u00a0 We need both\u2014the will to assert and the sensibility to speak into the listeners\u2019 capacity to hear.<\/p>\n

We do the audience a service to be assertive because we give them something to push against, to poke holes in, and thus create a dialogue between our experience and theirs.<\/p>\n

And we do ourselves a service to understand their capacity to listen<\/a><\/strong>\u2014to see the world as they see it\u2014so that we can clothe our assertions in terms that will help them see more clearly the validity of our view.<\/p>\n

Some of us lack empathy<\/strong> and find it hard to comprehend what the audience is able to hear.<\/p>\n

And some of us lack assertiveness and find it hard to engage constructively in intellectual combat.<\/p>\n

But those who can do both earn the respect and trust of followers and opponents alike.\u00a0 We call these people leaders, movers and shakers, high potentials, charismatics, persuaders, influencers<\/a><\/strong>, top guns, visionaries, sales stars.<\/p>\n

My daughter and I thought Dwight Gooden was staring at us, but in reality he was staring at the catcher\u2019s mitt, trying to hurl his pitch where the catcher could catch it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When she was a year old, I held my daughter Georgia at the closed window of our 30th floor New York City apartment so we could look out over Times Square. Across the street, stretching the full length of a 40-floor building, was a painting of Dwight Gooden, the ace Met\u2019s pitcher, coiled in his… Read More »Public speaking as empathetic assertiveness<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":""},"categories":[336],"tags":[344,279,30,904],"yoast_head":"\n