Dean Brenner

(Originally posted on April 9, 2012) I came across something  worth sharing with you, that I think will help you refine your leadership vocabulary. If you want to be a good leader and set a good example for your team, the most important six words you can utter are “I admit I made a mistake.” […]

Originally posted on Sept 3, 2013 Asking people if they “get nervous” when they have to stand up and speak is almost not worth asking. For most of us, the answer is a resounding “yes.” As we all come back from summer holidays and get straight back into the post-Labor Day sprint, many of you […]

In our coaching and training, we end up discussing the interview process all the time. Many of our clients interview regularly for promotions within their company. And almost all of our clients have to conduct interviews with others, for positions they are trying to fill on their own teams. Part of our coaching process is […]

According to some sources, more than 30 million business presentations are created each day. And you know what? Most of them are terrible. We’ve all sat through the proverbial terrible presentation with no purpose, nothing memorable, no clear action items, too many slides, the monotonous drone of the boring presenter. There is a reason business […]

Have you ever listened to someone who speaks really well? Who gets to the point? Who makes the point clearly? Who doesn’t waste your time and makes the message valuable? It is SO nice when that happens, right? It is so refreshing when a presentation or a conference call or an important conversation is efficient […]

If we look at our communication as if it were a meal that our audience will consume, we’ll of course want to prepare a communication “meal” they will enjoy. A meal that will satisfy their hunger for simple, valuable communication. And in order to do that, there are 5 ingredients that must be included in […]

My son Zach has made a few guest appearances in our blog here. He frequently says or does something that makes me see connections between my work, and my conversations with him. Despite his age, he seems to have a knack for saying the simple little things to inspire me. Anyway… he did it again […]

We are learning to deal with details and data, enormous amounts of it. We have spent the last 20+ years making massive improvements to the ways we create it, gather it, store it, share it, and analyze it. But it is only recently that we have realized that all this information and data and details […]

Your audience will only remember a small percentage of what you say. Some studies suggest it will be less than 20%. Fact. Other studies suggest that the average adult attention span is now about 8 seconds. Bummer. So what do you do about it? Focus on all three aspects of the audience experience: 1. Make […]

We all know how it feels to have our time wasted. Have you ever been in a meeting/presentation/conference call that seemed to have no purpose? Or where the speaker could not get to the point? Or where you wondered why you were even there? [Pause for you to nod in agreement…] Have you ever listened […]