Joel Schwartzberg

Communication is key. Effective communication is essential to standing out at work and excelling in your career. But when it comes to making a convincing point in a meeting, crafting the perfect email, or nailing a presentation, there's a lot to navigate. What kind of language do you use with a varied audience? Which channel is best for which message? How much do body language and Zoom backgrounds matter? And what should you not say? Writing, Presenting, and Communicating with Confidence is filled with practical advice from HBR experts that can help you answer questions such as: How can I prepare for the most difficult conversations? What can I do to improve my writing? What strategies can I use to overcome my anxiety about public speaking? How can I boost my presence and influence through persuasive communication? Writing, speaking, and communicating with confidence can be intimidating. This book gives you the tools to stand out and deliver your message more successfully. Rise faster with quick reads, real-life stories, and expert advice. The HBR Work Smart Series features the topics that matter to you most in your early career, including being yourself at work, collaborating with (sometimes difficult) colleagues and bosses, managing your mental health, and weighing major job decisions. Each title includes chapter recaps and links to video, audio, and more. The HBR Work Smart Series books are your practical guides to stepping into your professional life and moving forward with confidence.

Communication is key. Effective communication is essential to standing out at work and excelling in your career. But when it comes to making a convincing point in a meeting, crafting the perfect email, or nailing a presentation, there's a lot to navigate. What kind of language do you use with a varied audience? Which channel is best for which message? How much do body language and Zoom backgrounds matter? And what should you not say? Writing, Presenting, and Communicating with Confidence is filled with practical advice from HBR experts that can help you answer questions such as: How can I prepare for the most difficult conversations? What can I do to improve my writing? What strategies can I use to overcome my anxiety about public speaking? How can I boost my presence and influence through persuasive communication? Writing, speaking, and communicating with confidence can be intimidating. This book gives you the tools to stand out and deliver your message more successfully. Rise faster with quick reads, real-life stories, and expert advice. The HBR Work Smart Series features the topics that matter to you most in your early career, including being yourself at work, collaborating with (sometimes difficult) colleagues and bosses, managing your mental health, and weighing major job decisions. Each title includes chapter recaps and links to video, audio, and more. The HBR Work Smart Series books are your practical guides to stepping into your professional life and moving forward with confidence.

The impression you make as a leader has the power to build, enhance, or sabotage your authority and your ideas--discover how to convey the essence of leadership in your every interaction. Leadership is emotional, not just transactional. But most books about leadership overlook the value of the impression you make as a leader. How do leaders sound? What do leaders say and not say? How do leaders tell stories, send emails, run meetings (especially virtual meetings), give speeches, conduct interviews, and even listen to others? While you are undoubtedly empathic, optimistic, visionary, responsive, authentic, supportive, creative, and of course humble, it's not enough to just be that way. You have to be able to communicate these qualities. Drawing on his experiences as a leadership coach, as well as his personal experience holding senior positions at Time Inc., Audible, PBS, MTV, and the ASPCA, Joel Schwartzberg offers tips and takeaway on topics like going from merely informing to genuinely inspiring, understanding the three kinds of persuasion, making the best use of the strategic pause, and many more. Understanding your leadership impression is vitally important: it is the first piece of evidence on which you and your ideas will be judged and your best chance to lay a foundation of confidence, competence, and commitment.

In Joel's Schwartzberg's ten-plus years as a strategic communications trainer, the biggest obstacle he's come across--one that connects directly to nervousness, stammering, rambling, and epic fail--is that most speakers and writers don't have a point. They typically have just a title, a theme, a topic, an idea, an assertion, a catchphrase, or even something much less. A point is something more. It's a contention you can propose, argue, defend, illustrate, and prove. A point offers a position of potential value. -Global warming is real- is not a point. -Scientific evidence shows that global warming is a real, human-generated problem that will have a devastating environmental and financial impact- is a point. When we have a point, our influence snaps into place. We communicate belief, conviction, and urgency. This book shows you how to identify your point, leverage it, stick to it, and sell it and how to train others to identify and successfully make their own points.

Every time you communicate, you're trying to do something, change something, or move someone to action. You're trying to make a point. But the only way to make a point is to have a point. And the surprising truth is, very few communicators know their points or even understand what a point is, rendering them pointless. Communications expert Joel Schwartzberg says a point is not just a topic, an idea, or a theme. A real point is a proposition of value. It's a contention you can propose, argue, illustrate, and prove. In this concise and practical book, you'll learn to identify your point, strengthen it, stick to it, and sell it. Whether you want to improve your impact in speeches, staff meetings, pitches, emails, PowerPoint presentations, or any other communication setting, Schwartzberg's novel approach teaches you how to go from simply sharing a thought to making a difference. Which would you rather do?