Do People Text While You Talk? Maybe It’s Not Them, It’s You

Business presenters often complain about the sight of audience members texting and tweeting away while they speak. I choose to see it as a challenge instead of an annoyance. First, let’s be clear: distracted audiences are nothing new. I remember a college professor kicking a student out of class for reading a newspaper as nonchalantly … Read more

In Storytelling, Keep It Simple (Stupid)

3-Part Story Structure

Storytelling is both deceptively simple and deceptively complex. That is, people either underestimate or overestimate its difficulty. As a result, some people get intimidated and don’t believe they can tell a decent story. Others are undeterred, and go around claiming their anecdotes and accounts of their everyday travails are actual stories. So striking the right … Read more

Connect with Your Audience — the Dustin Hoffman Way

When I tell business people they need to bring out their inner actor in order to connect with customers and employees, someone (usually a lawyer) will inevitably ask, “What do you mean you want us to act? You want us to fake it? To pretend?” Absolutely not. That is not what acting is about. Not modern … Read more

6 Keys to Preparing For a Successful Speech

Sunday is Oscar Night and there’s only one thing more predictable than Daniel Day Lewis taking home the Best Actor award: it’s the sight of multiple presenters flubbing their lines, mangling their scripted “ad-libs” and exiting the stage in the wrong direction. And these are professional performers! What chance does an everyday person have to … Read more

Write in the Morning

Write in the morning...before your internal editor - the skeptic, the naysayer - wakes up. Edit in the evening...and unleash your inner jerk.

Last week I urged people to do less quoting and more original thinking. So this is me taking my own advice. I always write best in the morning. I feel like as the day goes on we get steadily beaten down by life’s many petty annoyances and obstacles, and it limits our creativity. The morning is … Read more

Fewer Inspirational Quotes, More Original Thinking, Please

Stop quoting other people. Find inspiration in your own life, wisdom in your own experience. Share that.

The Internet has ruined quotations for me. I love inspirational quotes as much as the next guy. I even collected a bunch of them on the subject of communications and put them in a video. But enough is enough. Some people’s Twitter and Facebook feeds consist of nothing but famous quotations, often pasted over stirring … Read more