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
Over cigars and Chivas on Sunday night with Dikki Ellis, Michael Christensen and Zach Grenier, we came across an interesting distinction between clowning and acting, and one that is helpful to business speakers. Michael is a Co-Founder of the Big… Read More »The fourth wall or not
I was steered to a web video the other day by an e-mail from a friend, and found myself in a garden of presentation skills coaches (also on video), many of whom quoted research done by Dr. Albert Mehrabian of Stanford… Read More »Scientific research on communication