I read What's Your Story? Storytelling to move markets, audiences, people, and brands by Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker with high expectations. Wacker has been a futurist for a number of years, and his trendspotting is always interesting and illuminating. The book is most useful when it gives practical advice on how to tell stories […]
I’m going to do a series of blogs inspired by recent books on communications. The first is Levinson and McLaughlin’s book, Guerilla Marketing for Consultants. What’s great about this book, especially for mid-sized and small consulting firms, is that the authors put the focus squarely on practical, straightforward communications that will be readily achievable by […]
What’s the difference between giving a speech and training? I’ve had reason to think about that question recently as a new client of ours came to us with lots of experience in training, but not much in keynoting. She wants to expand her keynote speaking to comprise the majority of her business. So what does […]
For my last post in this series on body language, I’m going to try to turn your thinking on its head. If you’re like most of us, you think about body language as follows. I’m pretty much in charge of my body. I direct it, from the control tower in my head. I tell it […]
The voice is an oft-neglected part of body language. I mean the tone of voice, its pitch, and everything else you do with it. Let’s look at the basics. Voices need both resonance and presence. Resonance is the quality of the voice that makes it pleasant to listen to, and it’s created by good breathing […]
‘Make eye contact’ is the simplest piece of advice that coaches in this field can give. It’s so simple — why would you imagine you could get away with not looking at your audience? — that it’s hard to believe people both need and give this advice, for money. But is there anything more to […]
Let’s talk about zones. Not getting in the zone. I’ll blog on that at a later date. No, this time I mean the distances between people. We each have 4 zones of space that we maintain between us. The first zone is the public zone, and it’s 12 feet or more. Stuff that happens in […]