Robert Selander, the former CEO of MasterCard, had a thing for “presence.” When asked what he looked for in those he hired, he said, “Leadership, results, and presence.” About presence he said, “At varying levels of the company you deal… Read More »Presence is knowing what to say
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
This from Body Odd: Before now, those with performance jitters have had to contend with the nausea and the nerves on their own, or take beta blockers to battle the symptoms. New research has come up with another way to… Read More »Stage Fright Vanquished
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
Gary Forman is a friend of mine. He’s a great speech writer. He was working on a stump speech for himself. He came over to read it to me and get my feedback. It was fabulous, and so was he, a fierce partisan in… Read More »The Youie Youness of You
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