If you want to position yourself as a high-status individual with the capacity to lead, consider this: Power comes from abstraction, not from facts. According to research in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, abstract thinkers feel less constrained by details… Read More »Presentation Tips: Think Forest, Not Trees
Many people acknowledge that President Obama is a good public speaker. At the same time, many note a significant difference in the quality of President Obama’s speech between those occasions when he uses a Teleprompter and those when he speaks… Read More »Public Speaking: On the use of TelePrompters
All the world’s a stage, which means Twitter is a stage too, a stage that is new to me, and new to most of us. I’ve been told that I need to tweet for marketing purposes. That I should talk… Read More »Effective Communication: Performing on the Twitter Stage
What makes smart people dumb? Elizabeth Newton, a psychologist, conducted an experiment on the curse of knowledge while working on her doctorate at Stanford in 1990. She gave one set of people, called “tappers,” a list of commonly known songs… Read More »Communication Skills: Why Mr. Smarty Pants Has His Knickers in a Twist
Derrick called and spoke a mile a minute. His boss, the founder of a new hedge fund and the primary money runner had to speak at a capital intro in a week. Could I come and help? I asked if… Read More »Business Presentations: Hedge Fund Capital Intro
Michael Jendrzejczyk died at the age of 53. His obituary in the New York Times reveals a remarkable man: empathetic, principled, and, most instructive for those of us seeking to become more skillful influencers, a very effective advocate for what… Read More »Interpersonal Skills: A Happy Warrior Teaches the Art of Influence