In a recent article in Harvard Magazine, Amy Cuddy, who teaches at Harvard Business School is quoted as saying that the success of venture-capital pitches to investors apparently turns, in fact, on nonverbal factors like “how comfortable and charismatic you… Read More »How to Raise Money from Venture Capitalists and Other Investors
On a train to New York, I saw a man unpack a portable electric guitar, assemble it, plug earphones into it, and begin to play. He was sitting at the window with two people packed next to him. No one… Read More »Welcome to the game
On the first day of a workshop, an accomplished client delivered an effective presentation with verve and style. On the second day, I asked him to reorganize his talk to make it more customer-centric, a challenge he embraced with enthusiasm. … Read More »The New is hard
Years ago I splurged on a course at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where, among other things, I learned that leadership is a constant tug between assertiveness and empathy. Assertiveness without empathy, I learned, leads to conflict with followers and… Read More »Empathy in Action
I read the following in The Alternative Board’s newsletter today and want to pass this on to presenters and persuasive speakers. What conversations are you avoiding? Maybe it’s with a good friend you don’t want to hurt. Maybe it’s with… Read More »Fierce Conversations
I spent a day working on sales messages and presentation of those messages with a sales force, except the sales force was divided in two—half were an outside field force, and half were inside sales. We discovered that it was… Read More »Two kinds of selling