February 17, 2009 by admin
Friday morning, February 13th, Jerry spoke to a sold-out Churchill Club event in Palo Alto. Jerry Weissman, “America’s top speaking coach,” offered the 100+ participants insights from his newest book release The Power Presenter. Jerry delivered specific skills that help create an individual, natural speaking style, and reinforced them with archival video clips of famous speakers. For the many people unable to attend due to over-subscription, please continue to check our website for news on Jerry’s upcoming events. You, too, can be a Power Presenter.
February 13, 2009 by Jerry
At just about the same moment Alex Rodriguez was delivering his mea culpa to Pete Gammons on ESPN about steroid use, I was stepping into a sound-proof recording booth in San Francisco with Christopher Springmann. Chris is the host and executive producer of a syndicated radio program called “Body Language [and] Life Love & Health,” and he was about to interview me about The Power Presenter. (The program will be heard on Sirius XM Satellite Radio, CNN, Fox, ESPN, Bloomberg, and Public Radio affiliates. After the broadcast, the audio file will be posted here.) Chris’ first question was, “Mr. Weissman,
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February 12, 2009 by Jerry
On Tuesday, at the kind invitation of Jim Koch, Professor of Management at the Leavey School of Business and Administration at Santa Clara University, I spoke at the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley. My presentation was about my newest publication, The Power Presenter. As support of one of the key techniques in the book, treating presentations as a series of person-to-person conversations, I showed a video clip of Liddy Dole at the 1996 Republican National Convention. Mrs. Dole, in an endorsement of her husband, Senator Bob Dole, departed from the usual dais speech from on high and descended to the
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February 11, 2009 by Jerry
Our new president’s first press conference got two thumbs down from the press. Alessandra Stanley, who regularly reviews television for the New York Times, and Walter Shapiro, who has covered the last eight presidential elections, found the president long-winded. Ms. Stanley wrote, “Mr. Obama’s locutions are steady, fluent and often very long. On Monday night, even his fiercest warnings about the perilous state of the economy were bracketed by professorial disquisitions.” In The New Republic, Shapiro wrote that, with his “lengthy soliloquies…Obama radiated the sense of a leader who has digested too many economic briefings and memorized too many talking
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February 10, 2009 by Jerry
“What keeps you up at night?” along with “What is your greatest weakness?” are perhaps the two most frequently asked questions in business; the first in presentations and the second in interviews. Yet both questions, by their frequent recurrence, are traps for glib answers that could derail the person who provides the answer. Joann Lublin’s excellent career column in the Wall Street Journal offered advice about how to handle the interview FAQ, starting with what not to say. She provided a long list of common glib answers ranging from “I am a perfectionist” to “I am a workaholic;” all of
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February 9, 2009 by Jerry
During his quest for the presidency, Barack Obama was nicknamed “No Drama Obama” for his ability to stay calm and collected through the rigors of what was a very rough and tumble campaign. Not only did he consistently present himself as composed in public, he also mandated that all of his teams inside their headquarters exhibit the same self-control. Last week, Obama got drama. With his economic stimulus package running into heavy Republican opposition, he let his frustration show during an impromptu speech to House Democrats at a retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia. Politico.com devoted three articles to the change of
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February 6, 2009 by Rich
As a producer of corporate events and video, I’ve had the opportunity to observe many corporate executives give presentations over the years. As the title of one of my favorite Clint Eastwood movies says, I’ve seen “the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”! What became quite clear to me early on was how critical good communications skills are in business. You can have the best business proposition, product, services, or skills in the market place, but if you can’t convince your audience of that, you’re sunk. A simple but often overlooked technique can greatly improve your presentation skills. It’s a
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February 5, 2009 by Jerry
The cable news channels, in their drive to feed the insatiable 24/7 monster, fill their screens—surrounding the central news story—with an array of other features displayed in dazzling, but sometimes distracting graphics. The visual inclusions (which often become incursions) include all or some of these elements: time, weather, sports scores, stock reports, captions, program promotion, and logos. One constant element common to all these channels is the crawl, the running banner of news blurbs that streams across the bottom of the screen like a ticker tape. The feature had its origins in the running headlines that wrapped around the historic
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February 4, 2009 by Jerry
Yesterday’s post “A Lesson from Blagojevich” centered on one of the basic ground rules of handling tough questions: you must answer the question. The now-removed Governor of Illinois was asked the same question four times by Larry King, and each time Blagojevich danced away from an answer to positive point: a classic example of political spin. Last night, Barack Obama was interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN about the Tom Daschle affair. The newsman queried the president, “You messed up?” Without a moment’s hesitation, Obama replied, “Yes, I think I made a mistake,” and then immediately added, “I take
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February 3, 2009 by Jerry
As the Illinois Senate considered the impeachment of Rod Blagojevich, the embattled governor went on an extensive media blitz – 17 interviews in 48 hours—to state his case. Given the incriminating tape of a damaging telephone conversation, the odds of his forestalling the inevitable were slim. But whatever chance of redemption Blagojevich had evaporated when he violated one of the basic ground rules of handling tough questions: answer the question. There’s a lesson to be learned for anyone in any situation by examining the answers Blagojevich gave during his appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” You can see the full
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