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Feeling Frozen?
THaW the Freeze: A Pocket Guide to Staying Human When Leadership Gets Icy It’s the moment every leader dreads. You step into a routine check-in, confident you can handle any curveball, and then, SLAM. Someone lobs a thorny question about layoffs, a system failure, or a headline you have yet to read. Your pulse spikes.…
Read MoreThe Bored Room
The presentation is Monday. You know your story. Inside and out. You’ve rehearsed your delivery. You’re like a jungle cat. Feeling unstoppable. You have a keen understanding of your audience and are prepared to deliver a powerful talk along the lines of empathy. Your idea will change the world. Easy, tiger. Where will this meeting…
Read MoreThe Case for a Culture of Storytelling
This week’s newsletter is brought to you by two staggering statistics: 1️⃣ 95% of employees don’t understand their company’s strategy (HBR)2️⃣ Employees are 30% less accepting of change than they were in 2016 (Gartner) Surprised by these? Probably not. If you’re a leader in business today, you’ve more than likely found yourself on the receiving…
Read MoreStop Guessing. Start Archetyping.
A Shortcut to Empathy One of the fastest ways to connect with your audience is to stop guessing what they care about and start seeing them for who they really are. Enter the archetype. First popularized by psychologist Carl Jung, archetypes are universal, recurring patterns of behavior that live in the collective unconscious. When used…
Read MoreHow a CMO Reclaimed her Team’s Trust with Storytelling
Sarah was a newly minted CMO at a national restaurant chain. She was sharp, ambitious, and upwardly mobile, but she was already in trouble. Her team was burning out. Every quarter, they were tasked with producing the board materials: an exhausting parade of slides, talk tracks, and pre-reads on top of their already demanding day…
Read MoreOne Hundred Twenty Two Percent
11th Hour Slide Design by Committee? Two weeks ago, Microsoft introduced us to the concept of the “Infinite Workday” in a jarring data dump on work-life balance (or the lack thereof). That concept alone is frightening enough, but buried in the report is an even more alarming statistic: 📈 PowerPoint edits spike 122% in the…
Read MoreBe Like Freddie.
What Can We Learn from Queen’s Legendary Frontman? Freddie Mercury took the stage with a swagger that teased the revolution he knew was coming, even if few others did at the time. In the early 1970s, Queen had carved out a sound that blended hard rock with complex harmonies and theatrical arrangement, which no one…
Read MoreDelete one slide today.
You already know the one. 🙏🏻 Maybe it’s the one that says “THANKS.”When did we start treating gratitude as an afterthought in presentations? It’s an alarming and ubiquitous trend to slap a “thank you” slide at the end of decks. Why would we wait until the end to thank our audiences? If they haven’t felt…
Read MorePeer Pressure? Just Say No to Slides.
It can happen to anyone. It’s Friday morning. You’re sitting in your office enjoying a hot cup of coffee, lining up the day’s important tasks. “Hey,” your coworker (or supervisor) interrupts. “You know how the investors are coming in for that meeting on Monday? You think you could throw together a few slides about that…
Read MoreThe Ketchup Popsicle and the Woman in White Gloves
Imagine me, at 17 years old, pulling in to the parking lot at work: a local Tex-Mex restaurant. I leap out of my Chevy Blazer (complete with subwoofer, of course), frantically tying my apron around my waist as I dash into the daily team meeting. (The meeting started at 10:00 am. I slept ’til 9:53.)…
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