I’m often asked, "When it comes to deciding what story to tell, where do I start?” Powerful stories are those that touch people, that touch people with a personal experience…
Let me introduce you to polysyndeton, a Reinforcing Figure of Speech. It is part of a series on figures of speech and story elements. I share them as the English…
When faced with the choice between waiting in line or leaving, here’s a tip that works most of the time, to start an email conversation with the conference speaker. The…
I attended a conference today. And the executive introducing the keynote speaker repeated his name and title, not 30 seconds after he was just introduced. This reduced his communication effectiveness…
Anxious is a word all too often misused. You’ll hear people, whether in the workplace or socializing, saying, “I’m anxious to meet Julie.” Or “I’m anxious to tell you about…
Recently, I shared my favorite presentation and public speaking exercise, "1-2-5-10 ™" to one of my newer clients, Carl. He is the CEO of a rapidly growing tech company. We…
Are you a Terp? Live in the Wash, DC area? Interesting in networking with fellow Terps and building your storytelling and public speaking skills? I am excited to be partnering…
A few days ago, Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn appeared on CNBC to share the major findings from LinkedIn's recent Skills Gap Analytics initiative. He tweeted and posted on LinkedIn…
James Nathan Miller made an interesting observation some 50 years ago: “Conversation in the U.S. is a competitive exercise in which the first person to draw a breath is declared…
Want a good way of creating drama and adding suspense to your stories? Set near-impossible goals. As an example, imagine you are in the movie theater watching Raiders of the…