Back in the day when I taught public speaking at Princeton, one of the bits of bad news the students found most unfair was the attractiveness bias. Basically, psychologists have found over and over again that more attractive people have an unfair advantage when it comes to attracting partners, getting hired, getting paid, being perceived […]
This post is second of two on virtual communications. The virtual world offers us two great conveniences; indeed, you can make a reasonable claim that the virtual world depends for its success on these twin pillars: freedom from friction, and freedom from simultaneity. But those freedoms create new problems. How can you solve the problems […]
The virtual world offers us two great conveniences. Indeed, you can make a reasonable claim that the virtual world depends for its success on these twin pillars: freedom from friction, and freedom from simultaneity. What does that mean? Before email, we had to write or type out letters, memos, reports, white papers – the entire […]
I’m developing a series of public speaking principles in the next few blog posts that are a summation of what I’ve learned about this fiendishly difficult art and science over three decades of practice, coaching, learning from others, and research, especially neuroscience. Here are the next seven. 15.A speech is performance art – and science. […]
I’m developing a series of public speaking principles in the next few blog posts that are a summation of what I’ve learned about this fiendishly difficult art and science over three decades of practice, coaching, learning from others, and research, especially neuroscience. Here are the next seven. 8.A good speech is a contract that exchanges […]
Why do we bother with the hard and imprecise work of trying to understand body language? After all, we’re already expert at it, more or less, with our unconscious minds, and those unconscious minds are faster, better, and infinitely more powerful human CPUs than our conscious minds. Why do the hard work of taking this […]
What should speakers wear? I’ve posted on this fiendishly difficult question in the past and it seemed time to do so again, since neuroscience has weighed in on the subject recently. But first, some of the same basic issues remain, with the fresh twists that the ever-changing fashion world always provides. 1.The trend continues toward […]
What’s the key moment in the life of the speaker? Is it the standing ovation? The off-script excitement of a Q and A session? The moment of connection with an audience at the beginning of a talk? All those moments are important, but the most important moment is the moment before you go on. How […]
What is the role of gender in public speaking? It’s an incredibly complex question, and one about which I’ve posted before. Recently, a couple of INSEAD and NYU professors teamed up to illustrate a particularly vexed version of this question: the role of gender in the recent debates and election for the American president. They […]
The first time I saw a video of myself giving a speech, somewhere way back in the late 80s or early 90s, I was shocked, as many people are, by the strange voice coming out of what was apparently me, or perhaps an alien who had temporarily taken possession of my vocal chords. Of course […]