Harvard Business Review Blog

Why You Must Rehearse

June 9, 2011

A few years back, we worked with the CEO of a company on a speech assignment that promised to be both fun and challenging. The CEO had built the company from nothing to dominate its industry. He had achieved a great deal, and was now ready to tell his story to the world. He had spoken to his employees, and a few industry groups, before, but had never ventured outside of this narrow sphere of influence. More

Create an Effective Presentation

March 23, 2011

Nick Morgan, CEO of Public Words, explains five key steps to engage any audience.

Save a Doomed Meeting

February 23, 2011, by Nick Morgan

We've all been in a meeting that was headed for a cliff, feeling powerless to forestall disaster. Perhaps the team leader had made up his mind, or the clique coalesced around a point of view, or maybe it was just the resident loudmouth who wouldn't stop venting. What can you do in those circumstances? With a little forethought and some judicious use of non-verbal jujitsu, even an employee with a humble position in the hierarchy can help prevent bureaucratic Armageddon. Here are three ways to keep sanity in fashion. More

How CEOs Can Improve Speeches

January 31, 2011, by Nick Morgan

President Obama faced the task of giving the annual report to the nation's shareholders in the 2011 State of the Union Address on Tuesday evening. He addressed that task carefully, with his usual aplomb, but with a lack of innovation in structure or delivery that means the speech will soon be forgotten. It's essentially the problem faced by most CEOs of large organizations. How do you report on all the multifarious activities of the firm in the past year without resorting to a laundry list or information dump that will inevitably turn tedious and undercut one of the very goals of the talk: to establish that the state of the organization is strong, purposeful, and headed in the right direction? A laundry list lacks direction. An information dump inevitably ends up seeming desperate, because you send the implicit message that you don't know where to stop. More

Four Presentation Tips from Obama's U.N. Speech

September 24, 2010, by Nick Morgan

In many ways, when President Obama stood up to deliver his address to the United Nations on September 23, he faced challenges similar to a business leader working inside a multi-national corporation. He's addressing a group of rough equals (who nonetheless form a hierarchy), he wants to move an agenda forward, and to do so he has to combine suasion and truth in a delicate mixture. Business leaders can learn four lessons from the way in which Obama approached his task. More

Steve Jobs’s Disastrous iPhone 4 Press Conference

July 19, 2010, by Nick Morgan

I watched with growing dismay and disbelief as Steve Jobs struggled through his press conference last week about the iPhone 4 dropped calls. Jobs has a rightly earned reputation as a remarkable communicator; indeed there has been at least one book written about his presentation style as something worthy of emulation. But his usual elegant combination of enthusiasm and sang-froid deserted him at Friday’s press conference. Jobs was defensive, angry, and ultimately ineffective. It’s a classic example of how not to conduct public relations. More

Two Rules for a Successful Presentation

May 14, 2010, by Nick Morgan

Most presentations go bad because the presenter didn't prepare well enough in two ways. In fact, so important are these two classic errors that I'm going to elevate them to The Two Rules for Preparing a Successful Presentation. More

Three Steps to Make Your Next Speech Your Best

Mar 12, 2010, by Nick Morgan

In my experience of over two decades of coaching executives in their public speaking, I rarely run across one who has both the time and the inclination to do what it takes to deliver a great speech. Most of them are satisfied with average, which is partly why there are so many bad speeches given. The bar is set very low, and most executives are content to clear the bar, just.

What's to be done about this sorry state of rhetorical affairs? Here, I offer three quick steps leaders can take right now to improve their next speech. The steps are conceptually sophisticated but relatively easy to implement, thus fitting the busy executive lifestyle and addressing the natural objections of time and inclination. More

Three Ways to Make Conferences Better

Jun 2, 2009, by Nick Morgan

The meetings and conference business has taken hits from the economy and Joe Biden telling everyone he wants his family to stay off airplanes. But, much like the overall economy, the business is slowly turning around, or at least slowing its decline. So this is a good time to take a moment to consider the conference business in general. What could it do better when it comes roaring back in 2010? Following are my three radical suggestions for improving meetings and conferences. More

How to Debate Without Further Dividing People

May 27, 2009, by Nick Morgan

How do you argue your side of an emotional, contentious issue in a way that doesn't further divide people? President Obama's recent speech, "Protecting Our Security and Our Values," delivered at the National Archives on May 21, 2009, was an example of a well-argued speech that unfortunately will only inflame the debate further.

The speech is a clearly constructed brief on what the Obama Administration has done to keep America safe — and how it has diverged from the previous administration's attempts to do exactly the same thing. However you feel about the politics of the matter, if Obama was hoping to still the debate, here's where he went wrong: More