Blogs
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February 22, 2010 by Jerry
After months of ducking the media over charges of marital infidelity, Tiger Woods finally met the press by delivering a thirteen-and-a-half minute apologetic statement to a hand-picked audience, and he did not take questions. That did not stop the media from picking over the event like the leftover carcass of a Thanksgiving turkey. The commentary ranged from the sarcastic (London’s Telegraph commented: “Tiger Woods had bought a new shirt. But, rather like a schoolboy on his first day of term, it appeared to be at least one collar size too large”) to the sincere, as Alessandra Stanley, the television
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February 17, 2010 by Jerry
The blogosphere, the fiber optic cables, and the airwaves have been buzzing with stories about Sarah Palin who, during a television interview connected with her speech at the conservative Tea Party convention, used crib notes written on her palm. You can see the infamous moment on YouTube. To compound the moment, Ms. Palin, threw a stone at the White House from her glass house during her speech when she said, “This is about the people. And it’s bigger than any king or queen of a tea party. And it’s a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter.”
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February 15, 2010 by Jerry
In the previous blog, you read about how the skill of Marques Colston, the New Orleans Saints leading wide receiver, resonates with the listening aspect of responding to questions in Q and A sessions. Now let’s look at another factor that contributed to the Saints’ Super Bowl victory: preparation. A Wall Street Journal article about the run-up to the big event reported that the New Orleans Saints and their opponents, the Indianapolis Colts, combined, spent 514,000 hours of labor per team. The article, based on a study prepared for Journal by the Boston Consulting Group, explained:   Â
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February 10, 2010 by Jerry
Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on their Super Bowl victory and to Marques Colston, their talented wide receiver. Mr. Colston, who was the Saints’ leading receiver in the game with 7 receptions for 83 yards, is a four-year veteran who helped his team reach the Super Bowl with 70 catches for 1,074 yards over the season. What makes for a successful wide receiver is a statistic called “Yards After Catch,” or its acronym, “YAC.” It refers to a play in which a receiver catches a pass for a gain of yards and then runs for additional yards.
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February 5, 2010 by Jerry
In the previous post, you read about how musicians and athletes practice their art to the point of effortless grace; and that presenters, while not performers, must practice their presentations to the point delivering it with confidence and poise. The practice methodology to achieve that lofty state is Verbalization, the subject of prior blogs, as well as a case study in
February 3, 2010 by Jerry
Three musicians and two athletes share a performance quality that any presenter would do well to emulate. The musicians are jazz pianist Art Tatum, violinist Jascha Heifetz, and dancer Fred Astaire; the two athletes are baseball great Joe DiMaggio and any good trapeze artist. All of them perform their specialties with supreme effortlessness or, in the idiom of trapeze artists, without a net. The lesson for presenters is to stand up in front of a mission critical audience and appear supremely confident in describing their businesses. But this is far easier said than done, because presenters, unlike musicians and
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January 29, 2010 by Jerry
In anticipation of Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address, a conservative website posted a table with 36 phrases they expected him to use. After the speech, we checked the transcript and tallied the results. Clear evidence of the risk of forecasting.
January 27, 2010 by Jerry
As a footnote to Monday’s post about Scott Brown’s upset victory in the Massachusetts senate race and his now-famous statement, “With all due respect. It’s not the Kennedy seat, and it’s not the Democrat’s seat. It’s the People’s seat,” this week, the New York Times reported about an election campaign in Illinois, in which one candidate is deploying Senator Brown’s formula, Representative Mark Steven Kirk, the front-runner in the Republican primary for the Senate seat once held by President Obama, has even taken
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January 25, 2010 by Jerry
Pundits have been analyzing the political factors in last week’s come-from-behind victory by Republican Scott Brown in the special election for Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts senate seat, but the presentation factors—as they invariably do—played an equally important role. Ever since 1960, when John F. Kennedy’s patrician poise stood in sharp contrast to Richard Nixon’s stiff discomfort, candidates have had to pay close attention to their personal images. Scott Brown had a distinct advantage with the image factor, having been named “America’s Sexiest Man,” by Cosmopolitan magazine in 1982 when he was a 22-year old law student. Mr. Brown accommodated the
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January 22, 2010 by Jerry
A recent article in the New York Times reported on a study of several hundred British dairies that found that cows that are addressed by name make more milk—about 6 percent in a given year—than anonymous ones. The rationale: “Named cows are more often treated nicely, and well-treated, calm and happy cows make more milk.” The lesson for presenters is to address members of their audiences directly by name, and to do so several times, throughout any presentation. This means that presenters have to make an effort to acquire the names of the persons they don’t know from the
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