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Your Audience is Watching – Will They Know Your Purpose?

As an avid theater-goer, I generally find myself lost in the text of the play, a lyric from a song, or attempting to untangle the crisscrossed plot lines… all in order to make sense of the story and thereby be able to draw a conclusion about what “it” all means. This reflective, almost meditative, state […]

Does it matter if Bryan Adams doesn’t understand prepositions?

Editor’s Note: here’s a guest post from our friend Brian Samrick of Cisco. Brian is a talented communicator and a gifted practitioner of the Oratium principles and process. In this post (which originally appeared on Brian’s LinkedIn page), Brian shares some great thoughts on the use of correct (and incorrect) grammar in your communication. By Brian […]

How a Jury Duty Summons Helped Me to Become More Audience-Centric

  Your Audience Has a Problem  Recently I was called to jury duty. We all know how we’re supposed to feel about jury duty: serving our country, playing a vital role, etc. Of such suppositions cognitive dissonance is made. There’s a reason it’s called jury “duty.” In the realm of community service volunteering opportunities, you […]

Making Your Message Stick: Tim Pollard Article on Forbes.com

In addition to our informative (and humorous) blogs, we also want to share with our readers some of Tim Pollard’s other writings.  Tim is a regular contributor to the Forbes Coaches Council, and recently wrote about the power of making messages and conversations “sticky” or memorable through the lens of the O.J. Simpson Trial.  You can read […]

Avoiding the Trap that Can Kill Your Communication

  As I write, it’s January 2nd, and I have a shipping box full of Christmas presents sitting in my living room in Washington, D.C. They are not mine. They are for my nieces and nephews in Oregon. I spent a lot of time getting them right – the perfect gift for each person, lovingly […]

How to Succeed at the Conference Social

Have you ever given a presentation and thought afterward, “Well…that could have been better…”? We’ve all been there. You thought you had it figured out, you had a plan and you played the tape beforehand in your mind. It all seemed good – until it wasn’t. We teach our clients that true mastery of presentations […]

What I Learned Learning to Tie My Shoes at 41

A couple years ago I saw an article about a 3-minute TED talk, “How to tie your shoes.” I was pretty sure I knew how to tie my shoes. Nope. You’ll want to check out the talk to see what we are all doing wrong. Here’s what happened when I did, and I’ll bet you’ll […]

When is Tea like Sex?

OK…if you’re English, as I am, tea is the driving force behind everything – important before and after every major event, which answers the question in the title. But that’s not quite what I’m getting at here. As many of you know, whenever we teach the Oratium class, we stress the importance of engaging the […]

Distracted Loving and Sticky Language

Saturday morning in the hammock, in the breeze…I was reading the most recent Psychology Today and came across an article titled “Love Interruptus” – about how devices like your smartphone are damaging the quality of your relationships, particularly close, deeply personal partnerships. I found it broadly fascinating because I was already aware of how poorly human […]

How Bad Presentations are Like Flying East: Finding and Losing a Precious Commodity – Time

Sunsets are usually quick. From the time the bottom of the sun hits the horizon, it is just a couple minutes until it is gone. But for me today, that transition took 45 minutes. I also found 3 extra hours in my day today. They cost a bit, and I’ll have to give them back […]

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