Eileen commented on my last blog and included a link to a video of birds moving in sync with each other. This idea of syncing is fascinating to me. I’ve been intrigued with how flocks of birds (and fish, for that matter) seem to have one mind and sometimes have found myself standing stock still More…
Category: Public Speaking Presence
Find the haven of your back body…
The ability to step back, not get caught up in the fray, see the forest for the trees, is key for leaders in all capacities. When the chaos of an emergent crisis grabs everyone’s attention, it is so easy to jump in with both feet. All our attention gets pulled to the details of the More…
Intentional Attention: Insights from the cha cha cha
I took an aerobic dance class yesterday at my fitness center. We were doing the cha cha cha and a series of steps with lots of turns. Long ago as a modern dancer I was trained to “spot” when I turned, that is, to focus on one spot during a turn so that I could More…
More on Obama’s presence
Here’s one final thought on Obama’s presence during his inauguration speech. Think about how you felt while listening to his speech. Then read the text of his speech. Do you get the same feeling? If we go through the various ways we could have taken in his speech, we’d get varying degrees of his presence: More…
Do we need a written script when we deliver a talk?
More thoughts on inauguration presence. I’ve been following the glitch around the presidential oath with some interest. As I understand it, John Roberts didn’t have a written version of the oath with him and was depending on his memory. Clearly, in the pressure of the moment, he didn’t have access to what he must have More…
Inauguration Presence
The epitome of true leadership presence! Presence is about so much more than the words that we speak. Yesterday we had several exquisite examples of real presence. Barak Obama and Elizabeth Alexander were the most compelling for me. Barack Obama: Most people pay attention to his words because they are so riveting. I’m curious about More…
Wake Me When It’s Over!
It’s 9:30 in the morning and you’ve made it to the third presentation of today’s marketing meeting. Sam has a deck of 40 slides that he must cover in 30 minutes. He is pretty much reading word-for-word from the slides, which are mostly bulleted items and dense with words, with an occasional chart or graph thrown in. You have no More…
To Memorize or not to Memorize, that is the question…
Several weeks ago I spent a wonderful three hours savoring the Thomas Gainsborough exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The largest exhibit room was filled with life-size portraits spanning a period of about 20 years of Gainsborough’s work. The audio commentary on this room began with a suggestion to compare the technique used More…
“She made me feel at ease…”
A friend of mine, Stacey, has been a landlord for several years with a number of units to rent. Rentals are in high demand in her neighborhood. When interviewing for new tenants she has a system where she schedules two solid days of interviews a half-hour apart and based on her experience of 10 or More…