You’ve probably heard about how public speaking should be “conversational”—and that’s totally true. Your tone, your attitude, your body language, your choice of words, the way you explain things, all of these elements should be conversational. But the one way in which public speaking shouldn’t be like a conversation is in it’s structure. Why? Because Read More
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Rhythm: You’ve Got It, Now Get in Touch with It! (A “25 x 25 in ’25” Public Speaking Exercise)
Why does rhythm matter? We’ve all had experiences of being in front of a public speaker who had all the right words, and even had compelling ideas, but just couldn’t command our attention. (In the political arena, think of Al Gore, or Mitt Romney.) Why not? Probably because they didn’t have rhythm (or rather, they Read More
What Do We Owe Our Listeners? A Great Audience Experience!
You already know this, but many customer experiences are just plain bad nowadays. Most of us have learned to live with that—or at least, to navigate around it. But when it comes time for us to speak in public, do we actually treat our customers (a/k/a, our listeners, or audience members) the way we wish Read More
On the Hunt for Business Metaphors with Perplexity AI
I recently set out to create a list of common U.S. business metaphors for a client who speaks impeccable English but has never lived here. First stop was Perplexity AI. (Why do I prefer Perplexity? It’s not an embodied Nazi fanboy, like Grok, and so far I haven’t caught it making things up.) I asked Read More
How to Introduce People to Each Other: A “25 x 25 in ’25” Public Speaking Exercise
Ready to jump into practice? Go directly to the exercise. In case you’re not already a fan of this pleasure, there are lots of good reasons to introduce people that you know to each other: When I was growing up, there were a lot of rules around introducing people. (This was before people could easily Read More