Nick Morgan's Blog, page 44

What the Candidates Didn’t Say Thursday Night

I watched the Democratic debate on Thursday night in a resolutely non-political way:  with the sound turned off.  The point was to watch the candidates’ body language to see how they showed up.  I did turn on the sound briefly for each candidate’s final pitch, in order to check their voices, since vocal quality is […]

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What is your digital footprint?

Public speakers today, like many another knowledge worker, live and die by the amount of attention they can win in the virtual world.  It’s a sweepstakes with constantly changing odds, a lottery with regularly morphing rules, a game of chance with always-evolving modes of play.  Should you be on Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or […]

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The World Champion Speaker

Every year Toastmasters runs a contest for the best 5 – 7-minute speech in the world.  Something like 30,000 people compete from all over, and the level of competition is very high.  This year’s winner, Aaron Beverly, gave a speech entitled “An Unbelievable Story,” and he combines humor and seriousness in graceful mixture, delivers the […]

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When Do Facts Beat Stories?

Speakers make or break their speeches – and careers – based on the strength of their stories and their command of the facts in the area of their expertise. Most often, those speeches are best understood as acts of persuasion. A motivational speech is an act of persuasion, obviously:  the speaker tries to get the […]

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What Is a Keynote Speech?

What is a keynote speech?  That’s not a trick question.  I ask because keynote speeches take so many forms it seems worth it to ponder the nature of the genre for a few minutes to see if we can find something essential in all those variations. Let’s dispense with some of the easy misconceptions first.  […]

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A Speaker’s Daily Affirmation

For your summertime reading, here are a list of ways to think about becoming your best self as a speaker. To be repeated every morning over your coffee or other morning ritual. My aim is to share my message in a spirit of selflessness. As soon as you take as much of the ego as […]

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How to Ace the Q and A

I’ve seen many speakers give a great speech only to lose the audience through fumbles during the Q and A.  The speaker gets derailed because he can’t answer a question, or she can’t get a questioner to stop talking, or he gets into a shouting match with the questioner, or – the list of ways […]

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Takeaways from Round Two of the Democratic Debates

We’ve endured the second round of Democratic presidential debates, this time hosted by CNN.  By now, the folly of the format is clear:  too many candidates chasing too few chances to speak and CNN’s media personalities pursuing drama at the expense of depth.  Lots of heat and not much light, as the old phrase has […]

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Thinking of Becoming a Professional Speaker? Here’s What They Don’t Tell You

There’s a lot of glamour in the keynote speaking world – from a distance.  You jet into town, stay in a suite at the nice resort where the conference is being held, do your 45-minute keynote, and jet back home.  And for that you get paid a princely sum.  What could be better? If you’re […]

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What Is Hot Right Now in Public Speaking?

What are the current hot topics in public speaking?  I hear from and reach out to clients, speaker friends who used to be clients, speaker bureaus, meeting planners, managers, and fellow coaches all the time, and so I get a sense of what’s trending in the speaking world.  Now, understand that this ongoing unofficial survey […]

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