Alignment

Ignite your power to communicate.

We coach people to make a fundamental shift in the way they understand their own power to communicate.

We help people feel seen and heard so that they can do their best work.

The “Right?” Stuff

A good friend and reader of this blog texted me the following (edited for clarity): “Listening to a talk to get [continuing education credits]… The speaker keeps ending sentences with ‘…right?’ It makes me feel like she either feels insecure about what she’s saying, or she’s using a cheap way to be persuasive. It’s like …

Why Didn’t They Clap?

Audiences are strange animals. With no prior planning or verbal communication, they decide, in an instant, how to respond to what’s going on in front of them. Rarely, there are outliers who laugh when no one else does, or fail to rise for a standing ovation, but for the most part, an audience acts as …

Why We Coach Your Introduction (So Much)

The first few seconds of your speech or presentation are setting the tone for the rest of what you’re going to say. Unfortunately, many speakers rush through the first few sentences, in a hurry to get to the main point of their talk. The beginning of your speech is crucial time for the audience to …

The Time to Pay Attention Is Now

Our bodies and voices are the vectors for our thoughts and messages. When we talk to other people in person, we use our bodies to do it. And generally, we know exactly what to do without really thinking about it—we angle ourselves toward someone we’re interested in talking to, we make eye contact, we modulate …

Constraints Are Good

Typically, I don’t like my clients to present while standing behind a podium. It constricts their ability to connect with the audience, it literally places furniture in front of the speaker, and it limits their movement, making them stiff. However.  I had occasion recently to watch a video one client sent me of a presentation …

Inside-Out or Outside-In?

Typically, our coaching philosophy is what I would call inside-out. Start with the “why” of the communication, and that will influence the “how.” But sometimes outside-in works better. By standing up straighter, you can feel more confident. By making eye contact, you can generate connection. By slowing down, you can gain more control over your …

The Medium is the Message, and the Milkshake

I saw a tweet recently in which the poster expressed concern that many of her students prefer communicating via text to speaking face to face. Many of the responses to her tweet said, in essence, “I am more comfortable texting, so that’s how I do it.” We all have preferences about all kinds of things. …

Let’s Talk About Filler Words

Um. Uh. Ah. These are the classic filler words that pepper almost everyone’s speech from time to time. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I’m not that bothered by filler words. Research has shown that most people use them at least occasionally, and that people listening aren’t put off …

A Great Speaker…

A great speaker acts like they deserve to be there.* In some ways, this encapsulates everything we need to know about the nebulous terms “executive presence,” “confidence,” and “charisma.” When you know you’re going to say something worth hearing, a point of view worth sharing, that knowledge affects everything about how you show up. A …

Bad Habits Are Habits

There’s an unspoken secret that many coaches and teachers have. If your job is to help other people perfect a skill–to coach them–you sometimes secretly wish no one else had ever coached your client before they came to you. (That’s a broad statement: maybe it’s more accurate to say that you wish all their previous …

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