Corporate Attorneys & The Court of Public Opinion
[By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications] “The house could be burned down before you even smell smoke.” In 2009, The Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics set out to study how the court of public opinion can shape legal controversies. The sources were the people on the front lines – responses gathered from a questionnaire sent […]
Body Language: Telling Your Team How You Really Feel
From one of our favorite columnists, Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D: Do you know that your team is constantly evaluating your emotions through cues in your body language – and that they can do so in a fraction of a second? At the Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging at the University of Glasgow, researchers found that it […]
Q&A: NPR’s Audie Cornish on the Intimacy of Interviewing
From Poynter: A great interview is one of the journalist’s most powerful tools. It can be informative, entertaining, thoughtful. Here, an interview with NPR’s Audie Cornish Jesse Thorn: You have worked at NPR for like 95 percent of your professional career. Is there an NPR way of doing things, do you think? Audie Cornish: There definitely is. And, […]
Leaders Need Flexible Body Language
From Dr. Carol Kinsey Goman: Before the meeting began, Adam had assumed a “power pose,” standing with hands on hips and feet wide apart, for two full minutes, to get all the advertised benefits of doing so. And it worked. He could almost feel his stress level lowering and his self-confidence rising. By the time […]
BBC Interview Goes Awry & Viral
[By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications] The blogosphere lit up with smiles this past Friday after a toddler photobombed Robert Kelly’s Skype interview with the BBC from his home in S. Korea. Kelly, a political-science professor, was discussing the South Korea impeachment scandal from his home office with a door closed behind him. As the questioning […]
So, Um, How Do You, Like, Stop Using Filler Words?
From The New York Times: So, how do you, like, um, stop using verbal fillers that can make you sound, you know, nervous or not so smart? Is there a name for this? Communications experts describe “um,” “aah,” “you know” and similar expressions as discourse markers, interjections or verbal pauses. They often occur when we […]
Trump’s Body Language During His Inaugural Address
From our colleague, Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D: On January 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump took the oath of office as the 45th President of the United States. While audiences listened intently to his inaugural address, some of us were more focused on what his body was saying. I exchanged initial observations with Patrick A. Stewart, […]
Body Language At The Trump And Obama Meeting
[From Carol Kinsey Goman, writing for CommPro:] It was a meeting that was obviously highly stressful for both men. We’ll never know what was discussed when President Barack Obama and President-Elect Donald Trump were alone, but at their joint press conference their words were cordial and respectful. (Photo source: Twitter) So was their body language – […]
How to Project Power
From The New York Times Magazine: ‘‘Keep your limbs away from your body,’’ says Deborah H Gruenfeld, a social psychologist who teaches at Stanford University. Some research shows that people posed in expansive postures feel more powerful, exhibit higher testosterone levels and have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol — all characteristics of high-ranking […]
Body Language at the Second Presidential Debate
From The Washington Post: It’s not our faces that tend to offer the strongest clues about what we are feeling, but rather our bodies. In fact, the more intense the emotion, the more difficult the human face becomes to read and the more telling and accurate body language seems to become. That’s what a team of […]