I had the great pleasure of a conversation with Allison Shapira, a fellow speaking coach, the other day, and when two speaking coaches get together, they naturally dish about their pet peeves and the trends they see in public speaking. We’ll get to that in a minute. But first the basics. Allison began her professional life […]
What is charisma? Sooner or later almost everyone I coach asks me that question. And it immediately leads to the next inevitable query: How can I increase my own? Charisma, as it is generally understood, is something you know when you see but you have a hard time putting your finger on or defining. Some celebrities, […]
It’s surprising how often people present in pairs on stage, or set up panels, or group shows of one kind or another. It’s also surprising how often people miss some simple ways to make the experience more engaging and more delightful for the audience and themselves. All too often, everyone just does their own thing […]
One of the interesting by-products of our world becoming more virtual over the past decade is that behavior which would never have been appropriate face-to-face is now leaking back into that world from the virtual one. For speakers this development has a particularly interesting aspect: audiences now feel more entitled to turn negative and to […]
What makes a great speech? Every year around this time in the US we honor Martin Luther King, Jr, for his selfless dedication to improving the civil rights of Americans. Part of the reason we honor him is that he had a way of articulating in memorable language what many Americans were feeling: I have […]
Some time ago, Gunita Bhasin sent me a link to her TEDx talk, given last summer at Southbank International School, asking me for feedback, which I thought was a pretty daring thing to do, since I get called the Simon Cowell of speech coaching by some who have worked with me. Let me get the […]
Readers of this blog will know that I’ve been saying for several years that we’re living in an angry era, but that zeitgeists do change, and that a happier time is on the way. At least, that’s what I hope. Each year I’ve suggested that perhaps this is the year. Well, I’m sorry to join […]
This is the third installment in a three-part series adapted from my recent book, Can You Hear Me” How to Connect with People in a Virtual World. In the first part, I argued that the internet and the mobile phone have fundamentally changed the sales cycle. So, salespeople need to learn new techniques of selling, […]
This is the second installment in a three-part series adapted from my recent book, Can You Hear Me” How to Connect with People in a Virtual World. In the first part, I argued that the internet and the mobile phone have fundamentally changed the sales cycle. Your potential customer is further along the sales journey; […]
The internet and mobile phone together have changed our notions of friendship, family relationships, work connections, and personal ties. And all of that has happened in a couple of decades, but especially the last ten years, thanks mostly to the sudden rise of the mobile phone (since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007). Where […]
