This video resulted from a recent masterclass I gave in Public Speaking where Anna Baker was one of the participants. Not long into the class she said that she had been toiling for weeks on a major presentation to three hundred people that was looming in some ten days’ time. […]
As will be obvious to anyone reading this, the website has had a massive overhaul to bring it humming beautifully into something like an acceptable modern form. This is my first posting on the new site. I am doing it to check that I can master the simplest WordPress buttons […]
Some of you may be wondering how to improve your written work. It’s either too long or too dense or not persuasive or just somehow too clunky and unengaging. Help is at hand. You can sign up with my new Guardian Masterclass for @guardianclasses: Professional Writing with Impact Course description […]
A few days ago I posted this piece from Diplomatic Courier about the hopeless public speaking performance by the French and German Foreign Ministers in Sarajevo in 1997 (emphasis added): Where did the two countries’ diplomats organizing this event get things wrong? Basically, neither the Ministers’ respective offices nor their […]
Here is my latest piece for PunditWire on the subject of Slippery Slopes. With added Quagmires and Boiled Frogs: Shock! The German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has floated the idea that the rise of so-called ‘Eurosceptic’ political parties in Europe could lead to WAR. He argued this week that the […]
I have opened a new writing flank with the fine US diplomatic publication Diplomatic Courier. Here is my first piece. It tells the tragic tale of the Franco-German speech disaster in Sarajevo in 1997, beginning as it mesans to continue: All happy speeches are alike. All unhappy speeches are different […]
I am locked in battle with the Royal Bank of Scotland over a footling issue with a credit-card. They sent me a card dated Jan 2014 that expires in Feb 2014. Shocking! Their Customer Service people have sent a long letter apologising for the letter and offering some small compensation […]
Over at the Ambassador Partnership we are busy developing our corporate diplomacy Technique portfolio. The broad offering is now something like this: Impact and Influencing • Key Principles of Impact and Influencing • Active Networking • Active Influencing Presentation Skills • Core Presentation Skills • Public Speaking with Impact • […]
A Polish friend draws my attention to this speech by FCO Minister of State David Lidington. It’s all about the European Union, delivered to a senior French audience earlier this week. Read the whole thing. To me as a speechwriting technician there’s something oddly ‘thin’ about it. It ticks the […]
Dear All, Sorry to have dropped from the Blogosphere. Too much going on in the world and in the Crawf household, and not enough to say. I had an interesting few days giving a Negotiation Skills masterclass at the IAEA in Vienna, then a shorter one-day version of the same […]
