Voice
"The goal is a voice that's resonant, rich and relaxed…Work to lower your voice at the end of a sentence. Ending on an up note will make you sound weak, like you're seeking agreement."
Business Week
"The more staccato you sound, the more you'll be distrusted and the more people will be anxious with you. It's an understandable reaction - which would you rather listen to, an orchestra or a jackhammer."
Los Angeles Times
Increasing impact
"Grant tries to teach executives that they can talk about things that reveal openness but not intimacy."
Investor's Business Daily
"Sharing is revealing, whereas bragging is announcing."
Industry Week
"If you get a person's thinking organized, you immediately see a positive change in his or her speaking behavior."
Computer Decisions
Handling the press
"One of the biggest challenges for executives on television interviews is explaining their issues to an audience that may not be informed on the subject…This isn't a senate hearing; this isn't a legal case. This is television."
Minneapolis CitiBusiness
Handling hostile questions
"Today's audience is very sophisticated…most executives can't lie effectively. To have credible behavior, you have to be honest."
The Christian Science Monitor
Trends
"Executives from major U.S. companies believe presentation performance is having an increased influence on their careers."
Industry Week
"Executives must learn how to handle more detail, make instant impressions on people who have not worked with them, and learn how to communicate highly technical knowledge to managers who have no experience in the technical field."
Training & Development
"Communication is evidently going to be global, so I have no option but to be global as well."
St. Paul Pioneer Press
"There has been a priority, in the past, for specialization. The key man in an organization has tended to be the specialist. But now the key man is becoming the one who can integrate different specialties."
Corporate Report, Minnesota
Video feedback
"When people see themselves for the first time, all they see are the warts - extra weight, bad hair, shifty eyes - and they really don't like the camera at all…When they see the improvement, they fall in love with the camera."
Training
Women's communication
"Many women are overly concerned about being liked and accepted…and their behavior and gestures (raised eyebrows, smiling too much) reflect that concern."
Working Woman
"Can't we get beyond this whining about not being allowed into the boys' club? The issue facing both men and women in corporate America is not sexuality but flexibility in the face of fundamental industrial change."
Business Week
"I am tired of women blaming every failure on their sex. What does being a woman have to do with it? Good public speaking requires training, concentration and practice."
The New York Times Magazine
"As emphasis shifts from self-sacrifice to self-fulfillment, women are struggling to leave their listening posts and assume their place at the speaker's podium."
Minnesota Business Journal
Gestures
"Gestures should relate to the message and not be a mannerism of the speaker. Personal gestures have a tendency to transfer the audience's attention away from the speech and on to the person."
Investor's Business Daily
"Too many coaches prescribe a set of gestures to their clients - they don't observe the individual first. I teach people to use what they have and to build on it."
The Orange County Register
Stage fright
"Those who have 'presentation paranoia' often establish roadblocks for themselves, leading to increased rather than decreased fear."
Restaurant Hospitality
"Grant goes so far as to adviser her clients not to look at professional speakers. 'The job [CEO's and other in-house speakers] is to be themselves."
Successful Meetings
Visual aids
"The more complex the idea, the more a speaker has to translate it into visual form such as a graph or a chart."
Investor's Business Daily
Upward communication
"By focusing on strategy, by presenting your plan in terms of concept rather than detail, by striving for memorable language and imagery, and by conveying self-confidence, you will make great strides in telling senior management what they want to hear."
Information WEEK
Business casual
"Does this style shift represent a move toward greater balance between personal and corporate goals, or is it a mask that attempts to cover up the increased pressure to operate without increased authority to deliver increased results in an increasingly ambiguous environment? More freedom or more illusion?"
Fortune
Politicians
"Politicians…are less willing than business people to take risks in public speaking."
Minneapolis Star Tribune
"The only chance politicians have to leave an impression with voters is often through the sound of their voice."
Minnesota's Journal of Law & Politics
Technical communication
"Grant advises engineers to sidestep the morass of detail into which they often fall."
Fortune
"One of the most important things I do is convince technical people that they are not boring."
Infosystems
"We try to get them to understand that the goal is not simplification, it is increased levels of generalization - that instead of going down in detail, you want to go up in concept."
MIS Week
Executive Speaking
"As a corporate speech coach I, too, observed waves of metaphors flowing through presentation after presentation. This transistion to 'headwind' is encouraging after so many years of the 'perfect storm.' At least there's movement."
Wall Street Journal
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