Seminar on “How to Conquer Rambling and Emphasize Your Point in Just Three Sentences!”

I am still exhilarated by the extremely favorable audience response to my above seminar presented ten days ago at the Toastmasters District 56 Spring Conference held at the South Shore Harbor Resort in League City, about 30 miles south of Houston. Even though several of the attendees did not have a copy of the handout (the audience size far exceeded the District’s expectations), exactly 85% of those who turned in evaluations rated it “excellent.”

I developed this seminar around the year 2000, after months of frantic research inspired by some shocking episodes on the “Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser” television show. In two editions of that preeminent program that were just a few weeks apart, I saw the main guests--both of whom were among corporate America’s most prominent CEOs--ramble and thus cut a sorry figure. During the past dozen years, “how to conquer rambling” has consistently been one of the two most popular topics in my repertoire of short, stand-alone seminars. In 2008, it drew an audience of 600 project managers at the PMI Global Congress—North America held in Denver.

Feel free to call me at 281-463-2500 if you’d like to explore the idea of having me present it at one of your upcoming events.

© Copyright 2013  V. J. Singal

Men Diminishing Women in the Workplace, Albeit Unwittingly

To graphically illustrate the unwitting diminution of women that occurs in the workplace, even by men who are supposedly sophisticated and urbane, I narrated the following story to my audience at last week’s Toastmasters District 56 Fall Conference in Houston, just as I did a few weeks earlier to employees of Shell and the USDA, among others. [Incidentally, this is just one of the many recent cases I can readily recount that help rebut those who contend that such diminution of women’s communications is a thing of the past and that the topic is passé.]

A couple of years ago, around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC's “This Week with George Stephanopoulos," interviewed a panel comprising four members of the 9-11 Commission--former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, Attorney Richard Ben-Veniste, former Navy Secretary John Lehman, and Commission Chairman Thomas Kean. There were five rounds of questions, hence a total of 20 questions, and this is how Mr. Stephanopoulos addressed the panelists each time he asked a question: For each of the five questions put to Gorelick, she was addressed simply as “Jamie”; Ben-Veniste was addressed “Richard Ben-Veniste” all five times; the other two men were addressed as “Secretary Lehman” and “Commissioner Kean” respectively each time they were asked a question. I was aghast and indignant at seeing even George Stephanopoulos, widely regarded as one of our more suave and polished TV hosts, succumb to how we men are “hardwired.”

The express purpose of my sharing the above story with audiences is to raise men’s consciousness on this issue. The screw-up by Mr. Stephanopoulos, along with a couple of other real-life examples which specifically illustrate how men are losing job/ sales opportunities thanks to such invidious, albeit unconscious, behavior, have become staples of some of my communication modules. In a future blog, I will be discussing simple tactics and strategies that can be employed to preempt or nullify such situations.

Upcoming Presentation that is Open to the Public: “Simple Verbal and Nonverbal Skills for Creating a Highly Favorable First Impression”

This coming Saturday, November 21, I will be presenting two sessions on “Simple Verbal and Nonverbal Skills for Creating a Highly Favorable First Impression” at the Toastmasters District 56 Fall Conference to be held at Unity Church’s Grace Hall, 2929 Unity Drive, Houston, TX 77057. [For location, click on: http://www.d56fallconference.com ] The two sessions, each 45-mintues long, will begin at 11:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. respectively. Non-Toastmasters are welcome to attend either session.

This topic, one of the newest in my repertoire, has previously been presented at, among others, the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, Shell Oil, the Kellogg School of Management, Project Management Institute’s Austin Chapter (http://www.verbalenergy.com/evaluations_austin.html) and some job fairs. Among the modules on my agenda: the theory of matching contrasts for men’s attire; the visceral attraction of dental enamel; answering a “why” question; men diminishing women unwittingly; the ability to initiate and sustain an engaging conversation with anyone; enunciation/pronunciation for foreign-born professionals; the power of a single word that is out-of-the-ordinary and strong, vivid, or evocative.