Hard work

I’m currently watching yesterday’s episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  His guest was Bill Clinton, who recently delivered an extraordinary speech at the Democratic National Convention.  Clinton is one of the most highly regarded contemporary public speakers and delivers hundreds of speeches every year. When Jon Steward asked Clinton if he could tell that…

Muscle madness

Old Spice: the bodywash that makes my husband stink like a dog in a swamp but that has one of the best advertising departments ever. Here’s one of their latest interactive internet ads.  I’m not even going to try to cleverly tie this to a communication quip.  All I can say is that it made me…

Smile, damn you, smile!

I have and will always maintain that a weapon every speaker should carry around in their arsenal is the ability to fire up a genuine beaming smile on demand. Actually, scratch that statement.  Everyone, speaker or no, should learn how to smile on cue.  And by smile, I mean the sort of eye-crinkling, cheek raising…

Daily Acts

Acting is part of life. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we spent a significant portion of our day in one performance or another. Life demands all of us to be a bit of an actor, and most people are remarkably adept at this. We perform in front of our spouses and friends. We act…