Kevin E. O'Connor's Blog

How To Create a Lasting Impression In Business

From trade shows to hallway presentations to poster sessions, showcasing your services or products in a limited amount of time presents a challenge. You may be thinking: What do I bring? What will grab the eye and the ear of the potential buyer? Can the buyer make the leap from what they know to what [...]

Presenting or Connecting: Implementing Change in Your Customer Contact

In Orlando, during Kevin O’Connor’s “Larry King Live” interview with Ling she stressed the importance of leadership in addition to serving our customers, clients, and stakeholder…leadership and value will always get us ‘more.’ In your work with your customers this week consider ramping up your influence and  presentation skills just a bit more. Try some [...]

Strategize Your Business Meetings

I was in Orlando, Las Vegas, and Montreal this past month and the taxi drivers all had the same news about their businesses: meetings were either not happening or the scheduled ones were cancelled. These taxi drivers are my experts on business and on world affairs. Most speak multiple languages, many are solidly “connected” to [...]

The Courage to be Imperfect

I attended a conference last week and was fortunate to be in a roundtable of 12 professionals discussing teaching, learning, and supervising graduate students. The topic of anxiety came up with words describing all of its normal components; nervousness, feeling unsure, scared, worried, etc. The leader suggested that in his experience anxiety had more [...]

Keep the Audience In Mind

When you consider making a presentation, think first about the audience rather than your content. You know your content, you might not know the audience. What are their pressing concerns, burning questions, essential needs? When you get close enough to them to alert and even answer some of their concerns in the very first few [...]

Expert or Expertise?

There is a difference between seeing yourself as the expert and knowing what your expertise is. It is not only a focus away from you, but it is also a focus on what the student can acquire with you. While our personality and our enthusiasm is an essential element of the learning process, so is [...]

Connection and Inclusion

The first job of the presenter and the first job of the teacher is to engage. Like a good handshake, a warm smile, and a friendly forward move the engagement process for the teacher is a vital part of the introduction to the student, our reassurance for the student, and a companioning walk with the [...]

Ruthless Editing…Insightful Presentations

The famed travel guru, Arthur Frommer, once recommended how to pack for a trip to Europe. He recommended that before we pull out our suitcase, that we lay everything we want to pack on our bed. Then he recommended that we get rid of half of those items. Then get rid of the remaining half. [...]

Invitation + Energy = Finding Your Voice for an Elegant Opportunity

I had the honor of visiting a world-renowned garden last night, The Longwood Gardens outside of Philadelphia. Founded years ago by the DuPont family, this is a massive beautiful collection of plants and flowers, wandering cats, and a staff lovingly devoted to their craft. That night’s topic was the energy that garden educators can and [...]