Persuade with presence

Leadership is communication. Sometimes that communication is one-to-one, and sometimes it’s one-to-many. Depending how many, “communication” can begin to feel a lot like “public speaking.” Wait a minute… Is leadership synonymous with public speaking?

The Campfire Method® requires presenters to examine four elements before selling an idea: audience, story, environment and self. All of these elements matter, but in reality, the last element – self – might be the most important, and also hardest to tackle, since it’s likely you’re not used to doing it, particularly in a business…

If you find yourself presenting often, you’re not alone. Microsoft estimates 30 million presentations are created every day. THIRTY. MILLION. If that many are created each day, how many will ultimately be delivered within your organization?

When you’re delivering a presentation, you might be tempted to look down at your notes or stare at the back wall. However, if you want your idea to stick, we recommend you look into one very specific place during your presentation: the eyes of your audience members.

Sarah Kimes is Senior Associate Vice President and Brand Strategist at CallisonRTKL, a global architecture, planning and design practice. She leads the brand services team at the Dallas, TX office, and her goal is to connect the built environment to people in a way that’s meaningful. How does Sarah create these meaningful connections? She uses…

Funny thing about self esteem: It’s often at its highest when we need it least. The inverse seems true as well: When opportunity knocks, many of us (who aren’t proud to admit it) have been known to pretend we’re not home. This reaction, even though we attach our professional value to the content we share,…

Since our beginnings, we humans have defined our individual value by what we share with others. It’s as important a step in self-actualization as any other: Acknowledgement from an audience (of one or many) for providing information perceived as valuable. Does this mean we’re selfish? Hell yes. And we should be proud of it, too.…

We live in a world of distractions. Studies show the average person spends more than five hours a day on mobile devices, and there are more than 2.7 billion smartphone users across the globe. In addition to the proliferation of digital technology, we now also live in a world full of artificial intelligence — a…