Dan tells a story about Clare Booth Luce, the playwright, journalist, and Republican Member of Congress. In 1962, Luce met with President Kennedy, who was, at the time, pursuing an ambitious agenda domestically and overseas. She worried about his diffuse priorities. "A great man," she advised him, "is one sentence." President Lincoln's sentence was obvious: "He preserved the union and freed the slaves." So was FDR's: "He lifted us out of a great depression and helped us win a world war." What, Luce challenged the young, impatient president, was to be his sentence?

From a think piece on Dan Pink's Drive in the Harvard Business Review. Bill Taylor takes Pink's findings about personal motivation and applies them to business. I wonder how many Toastmaster clubs could also state their purpose in one sentence. And I'm talking about the purpose of the twenty people or so who belong to the club, not the universal club mission.

One of my all-time favorite sitcoms is/was the Cosby Show.  I'm a child of the 80's, so I grew up on the parenting of Cliff and Claire Huxtable. 

While there were 200 episodes, a few moments stick out in my mind: Cliff getting pelted with snowballs on the front stoop, Cliff and Theo learning economics with monopoly money where having a girlfriend takes all of Theo's remaining money [first episode], and of course, the Gordon Gartrell shirt.  I often find myself thinking of one particular episode where Vanessa introduces the family to her new boyfriend, Dabnis Brickey, who happens to be significantly older than her.  Not only that, but for the first time Vanessa divulges they've been engaged for six months.  You can watch the introduction here.  While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, Vanessa doesn't do that great of a job with the presentation of Dabnis, thus Cliff proclaims to Dabnis, "We just don't like you."

Watch this video to see how Cliff explains why the presentation is so important.  Click here to watch it on Youtube [embedding was disabled], but make sure you come back!.  If you want to go directly to the quote, fast forward to 1:15.

Jon Thomas draws an important lesson for speaking from an old episode of the Cosby show. While his concern is with preparation and rehearsal, I think you can also learn the importance of a good introduction from this clip.

Just how does one become a better public speaker? I mean let’s be serious here, you do want to get better, don’t you? Pretty much any book that you read on the subject or class that you attend in order to build up your skills will tell you the same time — if you really want to get better, then you’ve got to take the time to watch the pros at work. Great, just where do you find such pros and how can you get admitted to their speeches to watch them at work? Good news — I’m going to tell you how (and it’s free!) …

The Accidental Communicator shares a useful but easily overlooked tip and references some related posts that look interesting as well. Shared on Twitter by @JaniceTomich.

Meetings get a bad rap in business today and for good reason—very little gets accomplished in them. I can recall a Dilbert cartoon in which several people sat around a table while the meeting organizer said, "There is no specific agenda for this meeting. As usual, we'll just make unrelated emotional statements about things which bother us…

I've attended way too many bad meetings, and I first got excited about making the better when I read about meetings at Intel in an early Fast Company. Now How magazine points to Business Week and an article about meetings at Google. Maybe someday.

Do you listen and watch your recorded speeches? It can be a real challenge to do this, in part because all your assets and flaws are revealed in a recording.

A colleague and I recently started an online radio show. Of course, with any new technology there will be technical glitches that need to be smoothed out. Our first show aired in late December, and did have some glitches. Yet, I was eager to hear the recorded show, and I did that soon after the air time. Through the wonders of technology, we speakers can broadcast on a free radio network, and gain additional Stage Time. Then our shows are recorded and available on a website, which is convenient for listeners and a marketing tool for us. What a wonderful learning lab, too.

When I coach speakers I advise all to record their talks. It is the ultimate teacher. My verdict on show #1 was that content needs to be enhanced, and my voice sounded remarkably clear and strong. Here is the link to our show.

Haven't thought about this in a long time. Recording the outgoing message on voice mail gives a perfect opportunity to listen to yourself. I learned to listen to these to develop vocal qualities long ago from Mary-Ellen Drummond.