Safety in Numbers — Don’t Count On It!
Posted On January 13, 2020 BY Dan Cooney
This post was written by Dan Cooney, Director of Business Development at The Latimer Group. Have you ever been in a meeting with a busy PowerPoint slide beaming on the screen while a confident speaker proudly proclaims, “The numbers speak for themselves!” You look at the slide and wonder, “Do they?” When a speaker makes this […]
This Holiday Season, Give Your Audience the Gift of Simplicity!
Posted On December 11, 2019 BY Dan Cooney
In 1990, psychologist Elizabeth Newton asked her Stanford University students to play a simple game. Half of them were told they would be “tappers,” and their job was to tap the rhythm of one of several universally known songs, like “Happy Birthday.” The other half of the students were asked to be “listeners,” and their […]
Be Human — Machines May Do Everything Else
Posted On October 30, 2019 BY Dan Cooney
Communicating with empathy might be the most important skill you can master. Why so? Because it’s quite possible that machines are going to be dramatically better at almost – almost – everything else, and maybe much sooner than we expect. What we know for sure is that artificial intelligence (AI) is already very much woven […]
First Impressions – How to Leverage and Fight Them
Posted On September 25, 2019 BY Dan Cooney
It takes less than 30 seconds for people to decide what kind of person they think you are. What a quaint idea! In fact, Princeton psychologists Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov have demonstrated that study participants make judgments about a person’s competence and trustworthiness in as little as a tenth of a second. One of the […]
Why We All Say, “I Never Said That!”
Posted On May 28, 2019 BY Dan Cooney
This post was written by Dan Cooney, Director of Business Development at The Latimer Group. We all see things differently. Thanks, Captain Obvious! Yes, it’s a truism, but why is this one so important to you as a communicator? You have to understand the perception gap — the difference between what you said and what […]
Jaws Vs. Glossophobia – Attack of the Podium II
Posted On April 22, 2019 BY Dan Cooney
In my last post, I used Chief Brody’s character from Jaws fame as an example of how our fight or flight system is triggered. Its manifestations run from sudden dry mouth, sweaty palms, flushed neck, butterflies in our stomach, and a brain that sputters like an old Fiat rather than performing like the Porsche 911 […]
Jaws vs. Glossophobia – Attack of the Podium
Posted On April 10, 2019 BY Dan Cooney
Chief Brody’s hands may have started to sweat and shake as he instinctively backs up away from the mortal threat, his mouth goes dry, his neck flushes and his voice wavers. He’s seen the shark, and he thinks that he and Quint and Hooper need a bigger boat to catch the shark. The Chief’s autonomic […]
The Message Makeover Podcast: An Interview with Author Tim Sanders
Posted On March 20, 2019 BY Dan Cooney
I’m so happy to introduce my former Broadcast.com and Yahoo! colleague Tim Sanders to our Latimer Group community. Tim is the author of five books including the New York Times Bestseller, “Love is the Killer App.” He is a top-rated keynote speaker and CEO of Deeper Media. Tim preaches generosity toward others at work. He […]
Capture My Attention Or Lose Me Forever
Posted On February 25, 2019 BY Dan Cooney
The first car stolen or “captured” in the movie “Gone in 60 Seconds” was a 1999 Aston Martin DB7. While Nicholas Cage had an entire minute to capture the car in the movie, in the corporate world, you have just ten seconds to capture your audience’s attention. In my last post, we showed you why capturing attention […]
Why Capturing Your Audience’s Attention Is All-Important
Posted On February 11, 2019 BY Dan Cooney
“Did the speaker first capture the audience’s attention?” This is perhaps the most critical coaching question we ask in our persuasive communications workshops. What’s the big deal? Well, it’s a noisy, “this one goes to eleven” world out there, and it’s only getting noisier. How are you going to be heard in that world? If you can’t capture […]