Persuasion

One of the things that consistently comes up in conversation during coaching and training is the moving target of credibility. How to get it… what to do if you don’t have it… and how much of it is needed. And just like any other “power source” it helps to first understand the sources of credibility, […]

Author’s note: I was reading through our blog archive very early one morning recently, and I came across this post. I wrote this in the fall of 2020 during the depths of the health crisis, and with a controversial election looming. It was timely, for me, and based on the reaction from our audience, for […]

In the 21st century business world, very few things are NOT global in some way, and successful professionals and organizations have no choice but to be thinking about how to reach and connect to a global audience. There are a few things we encourage our clients to do when they are speaking/presenting/meeting with a global […]

Have you ever, um, listened, um, to someone who, um, has a distracting pattern to the way they, um, speak? Or, like, have you ever, like, focused so hard on, like, one aspect of their speech pattern, that you, like, can’t hear anything else? OrHowAboutThePersonWhoSpeaksSoQuicklyThatEveryWordSeemsLikeItIs PartOfThePreviousWordAndTheAudienceCan’tRetainAnythingBecauseThe SpeakerWon’tSlowDown? Seemingly tiny distractions in your speech pattern can become a really big deal in the work place. Because once […]

Originally published with the Forbes Coaches Council, November 2019. Have you ever gone into a presentation or a sales meeting convinced that you were about to deliver a slam dunk, only to come out feeling like you threw brick after brick? Have you ever introduced a new initiative to your team with great confidence that it […]

Welcome to the latest episode of The Message Makeover Podcast. In this episode, Dan and I interview Kellie Meiman Hock on the art of international trade negotiations, and the importance of thinking hard about the person, people or group sitting across the table from you.  Kellie is a Managing Partner at McLarty Associates in Washington, DC, […]

I spend a lot more time thinking about listening now than I used to. Why? I am not really sure. It could be my advancing age. It could be parenthood. It could be experience in my job. It could be the influence of some of the people in my life. Probably, it is a little bit of […]

(Writer’s Note: We write about political issues and events on occasion in this blog, most of the time in the form of commentary on the dysfunction of our national political conversation, and always with a distinct effort to remain as apolitical as possible. This company enters the world as experts in persuasive communication, not in […]

Hello and welcome to 2021! I hope you had a peaceful and happy holiday, and that everyone in your world is healthy. We had a wonderful “stay-cation” in our home, and spent a lot of time reading, playing games, and watching our favorite shows. Honestly, another week of that would be just fine. But its […]

Ask anyone who performs at a high level: athletes, dancers, singers, etc. They all prepare and practice their skills the same way. They break their skill down into smaller “sub-skills,” then practice each one individually, then put them all back together, and their overall skill level has improved. The same is true with communication. “Great […]