by Peter Meyers
He/she is a skilled listener. In conversations and meetings, I feel he/she cares about my point of view.
He/she can display a range of emotions that are appropriate and helpful for the situation.
He/she begins by gaining rapport with me. He/she starts a conversation or presentation by creating common ground (shared interests with me) before jumping into his/her own agenda.
He/she maintains eye contact while speaking in group or team settings. He/she looks me in the eye when we talk one-on-one.
His/her language and tone are conversational.
He/she uses slides, handouts, or media only to support his/her presentation, and does not let the slides take over.
When speaking, he/she varies the tempo, pitch, and volume to enliven his/her content with dynamics and variety.
< DELIVERY TOTAL SCORE
APPENDIX 2: Ramps and Desserts
Here are some classic examples of ramps and desserts:
1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “The Four Freedoms”
Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, members of the 77th Congress:
I address you, the members of this new Congress, at a moment unprecedented in the history of the union. I use the word “unprecedented” because at no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrthefourfreedoms.htm
2. Bill Cosby, “Address at the NAACP on the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education ”
Ladies and gentlemen, I really have to ask you to seriously consider what you’ve heard, and now this is the end of the evening so to speak. I heard a prize fight manager say to his fellow who was losing badly, “David, listen to me. It’s not what’s he’s doing to you. It’s what you’re not doing.”
Ladies and gentlemen, these people set—they opened the doors, they gave us the right, and today, ladies and gentlemen, in our cities and public schools we have 50% drop out. In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison. No longer is a person embarrassed because they’re pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/billcosbypoundcakespeech.htm
3. Lou Gehrig’s “Farewell to Yankee Fans”
Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.
Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career to associate with them for even one day?
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/gehrig.htm
4. Lyndon B. Johnson, “We Shall Overcome”
I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of Democracy. I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause.
At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many of them were brutally assaulted. One good man—a man of God—was killed.
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/johnson.htm
5. Michelle Obama, “2008 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address”
And as I tuck that little girl in—as I tuck that little girl in and her little sister into bed at night, you see, I—I think about how one day, they’ll have families of their own and how one day, they—and your sons and daughters—will tell their own children about what we did together in this election. They’ll tell them—they’ll tell them how this time, we listened to our hopes instead of our fears; how this time—how this time, we decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming; how this time, in this great country—where a girl from the South Side of Chicago can go to college and law school, and the son of a single mother from Hawaii can go all the way to the White House—that we committed ourselves—we committed ourselves to building the world as it should be.
So tonight, in honor of my father’s memory and my daughters’ future, out of gratitude for those whose triumphs we mark this week and those whose everyday sacrifices have brought us to this moment, let us devote ourselves to finishing their work; let us work together to fulfill their hopes; and let’s stand together to elect Barack Obama President of the United States of America.
http://www.americanhetoric.com/speeches/convention2008/michelleobama2008dnc.htm
6. Steve Jobs’s commencement speech to Stanford in 2005
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called the Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of the Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1422863/posts
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ for Character, Health and Lifelong Achievement (New York: Bantam Books, 1995).
2. “Employees Most Frustrated by Lack of Communication in the Workplace, Opinion Research Corporation Study Finds,” Business Wire, November 7, 2007, accessed at http://www.allbusiness.com/labor-employment/labor-sector-performance-labor-force/5307054-1.html.
3. Denise Thornby, “Beginning the Journey to Skilled Communication,” American Association of Critical-Care Nurses Advanced Critical Care 17, no. 3 (July–September 2006): 266–71.
4. Penny Wells, Glenn A. Greenberg, and John Cusolito, “ Teens Today Study Highlights Poor Communication As One Reason for Wide ‘Reality Gap,’” accessed at http://www.sadd.org/teenstoday/teenstodaypdfs/survey.pdf.
CHAPTER 1: PREPARATION
1. Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: HarperCollins, 1994).
2. Alan Weiss, Million Dollar Consulting: The Professional’s Guide to Growing a Practice (Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 98.
CHAPTER 2: ARCHITECTURE
1. Patricia Fripp, “15 Tips for Webinars: How to Add Impact When You Present Online,” Fripp THE Executive Speech Coach, September 8, 2009, http://fripp.blogs.com/presentations/2009/01/index.html.
2. Roger Ailes and Jon Kraushar, You Are the Message: Getting What You Want by Being Who You Are (New York: Doubleday, 1995).
CHAPTER 3: TECHNIQUES
1. Daniel L. Schacter, The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).
2. Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (New York: Random House, 2007).
3. Keith Johnstone, Impro for Storytellers (New York: Routledge, 1999).
4. Dan Roam, The Back of the Napkin (New York: Portfolio Inc., 2008). “Picture This,” American Management Association, April 10, 2008, accessed at http://www.amanet.org/training/articles/Picture-This.as
px.
5. Many popular expressions are actually metaphors:
“I’m dead tired.”
“She’s the apple of my eye.”
“He wore me down.”
“I’m heartbroken.”
“Strong as an ox.”
“Hunka hunka burnin’ love.”
“An old flame.”
“Boiling mad.”
“A feverish pace.”
“Heated debate.”
“A warm reception.”
“They were kindling a new romance.”
Some famous metaphors include:
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances . ”
—William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7, from The
Complete Works of William Shakespeare, first published in 1864.
“My friend, the swift mule, fleet wild ass of the mountain, panther of the wilderness,
after we joined together and went up into the mountain,
fought the Bull of Heaven and killed it,
and overwhelmed Humbaba, who lived in the Cedar Forest,
now what is this sleep that has seized you?”
—The Epic of Gilgamesh, trans., N.K. Sanders (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1960).
“. rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.”
—Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” in Drew D. Hansen, The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Speech that Inspired a Nation (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 177.
“. sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.”
—Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” in Hansen, The Dream, p. 177.
“rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace” versus “gathering clouds and raging storms”
—Barack Obama’s inaugural address. Complete transcript available at The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-obama.html.
“. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well—a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.”
—George W. Bush’s second inaugural address. Available at National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyld=4460172.
Less famous metaphors can be seen as well:
“The winds were ocean waves, thrashing against the trees limbs. The gales remained thereafter, only ceasing when the sun went down. Their waves clashed brilliantly with the water beneath, bringing foam and dying leaves to the shore.”
“The teacher descended upon the exams, sank his talons into their pages, ripped the answers to shreds, and then, perching in his chair, began to digest.”
—Writesville, http://www.writesville.com/writesville/2006/01/examples_of_met.html.
6. George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” in The Complete Works of George Orwell, http://www.george-orwell.org/Politics_and_the_English_Language/0.html.
7. Thanks to writer/researcher Rob Baedeker, who contributed to this section.
8. Maike Looß, “Types of Learning?: A Pedagogic Hypothesis Put to the Test.” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/42/13/34926352.pdf.
9. Mitsugi Saotome, The Principles of Aikido, Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1989; and Rick Higgs, “Aikido, Satyagraha and Nonviolence,” East Bay Aikido, http://www.eastbayaikido.com/articles/higgssatyagraha.html.
10. George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate: The Essential Guide for Progressives (Vermont: Chelsea Green, 2004).
PART TWO: DELIVERY
* * *
1. A new behavioral study, commissioned by Lloyds TSB Insurance, reveals that the average attention span is now just five minutes and seven seconds, compared to more than twelve minutes a decade ago. “‘Five-minute-memory’ Costs Brits £1.6 Billion,” Lloyds TSB Insurance, November 27, 2008, http://www.insurance.lloydstsb.com/personal/general/mediacentre/homehazards_pr.asp.
CHAPTER 4: VOICE
1. Jack Welch, JACK: Straight from the Gut, with John A. Byrne, (New York: Warner Business Books, 2003).
2. George Yule, The Study of Language, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
CHAPTER 6: FACE AND EYES
1. Ross W. Buck, Virginia J. Savin, Robert E. Miller, William F. Caul, “Communication of Affect Through Facial Expressions in Humans,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 23, no. 3 (September 1972): 362–71.
2. Tom Scheve, “How Many Muscles Does It Take to Smile?” How Stuff Works, http://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/happiness/muscles-smile.html.
3. Rick Waters, “Is This Man Lying?” The TCU Magazine (Winter 2008), http://www.magarchive.tcu.edu/articles/2005-01-AC2.asp.
4. Erin Takoner, MS, “Look Me in the Eyes—From Eye Contact to ‘Fear Blindness,’” December 23, 2008, http://brainblogger.com/2008/12/23/look-me-in-the-eyes-from-eye-contact-to-fear-blindness/.
PART THREE: STATE
* * *
1. We have drawn heavily on the work of Anthony Robbins, the world’s great expert on state and how to control it. For more about Anthony Robbins’s methods and teachings, see his works listed in the bibliography.
CHAPTER 7: BODY
1. John H. Riskind and Carolyn C. Gotay, “Physical Posture: Could It Have Regulatory or Feedback Effects on Motivation and Emotion?” Motivation and Emotion 6, no. 3 (1982): 273–98.
2. Ibid.
3. Constantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (New York: Routledge, 1989).
4. Michael Lewis, a psychology professor at Cardiff University, published a study in the March 2009 issue of Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology showing that Botox may lighten people’s moods by literally preventing them from frowning. Lewis favors the theory that facial muscles influence brain activity directly, and points to earlier research that suggests such a neurological link.
5. Modern forms of therapy use this facial-feedback loop to create instant results. Laughter therapy, for one, works by consciously engaging the smiling muscles to release endorphins.
CHAPTER 8: THE MIND’S EYE
1. As detailed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in their groundbreaking work Reframing: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Transformation of Meaning (Moab, UT: Real People Press, 1982).
CHAPTER 9: BELIEFS
1. Tamara L. Watson and Bart L. Krekelberg, “The Relationship Between Saccadic Suppression and Perceptual Stability,” Current Biology 19, no. 12 (June 23, 2009): 1040–43.
2. Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2008).
CHAPTER 10: COURAGEOUS CONVERSATIONS
1. George Kohlrieser, Hostage at the Table: How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others, and Raise Performance (San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass, 2006).
2. Diane Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); “Engineering Ethics: The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster,” Department of Philosophy and Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, http://ethics.tamu.edu/ethics/shuttle/shuttle1.htm (accessed October 26, 2009); and Kurt Hoover and Wallace T. Fowler, “Studies in Ethics, Safety, and Liability for Engineers: Space Shuttle Challenger,” The University of Texas at Austin and Texas Space Grant Consortium, http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/general/ethics/shuttle.html (accessed October 26, 2009).
3. Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (New York, Penguin Books, 1991).
4. Ibid. This principle, again, is drawn from
Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes, and it’s an important one.
CHAPTER 11: CRISIS COMMUNICATION
1. Winston Churchill, first speech as prime minister to House of Commons, May 13, 1940:
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, “come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”
CHAPTER 12: USING TECHNOLOGY
1. Technology market research firm The Radicati Group estimates the number of e-mails sent per day (in 2008) to be around 210 billion. 183 billion messages per day means more than 2 million e-mails are sent every second; about 70 to 72 percent of them might be spam and viruses. The genuine e-mails are sent by about 1.3 billion users. “You’ve Got Mail—A Ton of It,” Miami Herald, August 9, 2008.