Body Language and Leadership Effectiveness – How to Achieve ‘Executive Presence’
From CommPro, written by Dr. Nick Morgan, Author: Most of us think of charisma, or executive presence, as something mysterious and elusive that certain executives are born with or are trained to achieve in some executive school we haven’t been invited to. We all know we need that mysterious quality when we’re in front of […]
The End of the Ad World as We Knew It
By Ken Auletta, excerpted in Nieman Reports: While covering the media business for The New Yorker for more than 25 years, Ken Auletta has profiled many of the most important leaders of the Information Age and reported on the disruption roiling the industry. Among his books are “Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way” […]
The Audience in the Mind’s Eye: How Journalists Imagine Their Readers
By James G. Robinson, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review: A central irony of the newsroom is that while many journalists’ decisions are made with readers in mind, the audiences for their work often remain unfocused, imagined abstractions, built on long-held assumptions, newsroom folklore, and imperfect inference. This is not particular to journalism. Writing, like […]
Why “Winging It” is Not an Option for Your News Interview
By Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications Very few people are naturally gifted at doing an interview. Our knee-jerk reaction is to just answer a reporter’s questions – or to clam up and hide behind “no comment” because that’s what we’ve seen on TV time and time again. If all you do is answer questions, you have […]
Wayfair Learns the Cost of Doing Business Can Include a Damaged Reputation and Loss of Employee Faith
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications The recent employee protest at home-goods retailer Wayfair involving furniture sales to a company that will outfit a new migrant detention center in Texas has generated national media attention. It also prompted a discussion with one of our clients who is about to embark on a vulnerability audit with us […]
An Independence Day Salute to Our Founding Fathers of Fake News
By Thom Fladung/Hennes Communications This 4th of July, amid the fireworks, hot dogs and parades, let’s remember another grand American tradition: making stuff up. Or, as John Adams noted with delight in his diary in 1769, he’d spent the evening in “a curious employment. Cooking up Paragraphs, Articles, Occurrences etc. – working the political Engine!” […]
Tactical and Operational Threat Assessment
By Bruce Hennes, CEO, Hennes Communications The scribbled threat on the bathroom mirror. The cryptic email. The whispered voicemail. The strange guy with the backpack. The employee who’s going to be fired next week…will he or she do something harmful to themselves or others? More often than not, we get calls from potential clients seeking […]
How to Get Every Email Returned
From Trish Hall, writing for the New York Times: We’re all writers now. We fling words out into the universe through text, email, Facebook and more. Even people who hate writing have to do it, because you need to text your husband back, write your boss a condolence note and do better on Tinder than […]
How Best to Convey “Executive Presence” Non-Verbally
By Dan Hill, from Sensory Logic: From U.S. presidents to NFL quarterbacks, I’ve studied their signature facial expressions—looking for the patterns that indicate success. Maybe you weren’t the first choice for the C-suite corner office you now have, but surely you weren’t the 199th overall pick for the job (like the New England Patriot’s Tom Brady). […]
6 Questions on the Power — and Limits — of Litigation Communications
The majority of work referred to Hennes Communications comes from attorneys, who are often “first responders” when bad things happen to good companies and organizations. Subsequently, we’re often retained by the attorney or law firm in order to help assist them in preparation for trial. It’s called “litigation communications” and here’s a great piece on […]