Tag public speaking

Anecdote, Story and Speech: What Every Leader Should Know

What makes a story a story is transformation

A phone call from a crying teenager, a residency training director who didn't ask a single clarifying question, and six words that changed how one physician has led ever since. This post opens with the story, then takes it apart. Drawing on a distinction learned in a storytelling class — an anecdote is something that happened, a story is something that happened and changed someone, a speech adds a call to action — it argues that physicians aren't bad storytellers. They were trained out of the middle term. The case presentation is built to strip away transformation. Leadership requires putting it back. Includes the line between using a story to illuminate your ask and using it to smuggle one, plus a two-sentence exercise for finding your own.

One Year of Writing and the Question I Keep Coming Back To

write every week

I wrote my first post on Voice That Moves one year ago. Except for a short break this summer, I have published a post every Sunday. This anniversary post highlights eight posts from the past year – on the communication gap between doctors and business executives, the discipline of hope, healthcare's strange economics, the truth about office politics, lessons from a national speaking competition, physician well-being and agency, the evidence behind servant leadership, and leading peers without formal authority. One question underlies my writing: how do you help those trained to heal learn to lead? There’s no tidy answer here…just a year spent working on it one post at a time.

Leading Peers: How to Influence People Who Don’t Report to You

Leadership is about influence, not about authority

When I became chief resident 25 years ago, the title came with a $1,000 a year increase in stipend and authority over the call schedule — yet I still spent the year asking peers for favors. That paradox opens a hard truth about medicine: authority rarely works, even when you have it. Every physician is independently licensed, and replacing an unhappy one costs a fortune. So leaders at every level run on influence, not authority. Drawing on a spring-break scheduling standoff between two psychiatrists I once supervised, we see how to move people who don't have to move — asking before telling, letting facts speak, reframing the stakes, and let them find their way. And when influence fails? Protect the relationship and try a different key.

Why Your Speech Must Reveal Something About You

Whatever your message, someone has said it before. And someone will say it again. But when you say it with your story — your thoughts, your memories, your joy, your pain — that's when it becomes unforgettable. The final installment of this series covers the last two lessons: show yourself, and have fun. Together, they explain why ChatGPT can write a speech about your topic but can't write your speech, and why both showing yourself and having fun are indispensable to becoming a voice that moves.

Why You Can’t Practice Your Speech Without Saying It Aloud

Someone told me they practiced their speech while walking their dog. "Do you say it out loud?" I asked. "No," they said. That's not practicing — that's thinking. Part 3 of the series about lessons I learned from my Toastmasters contest last year covers two lessons about preparation: practice aloud to find the words make you stumble, and rehearse with real people to find out if your message actually lands.

How Saying Less Can Make You More Persuasive

Would you pay four people to do a job one person could do better? So why do we do that with words? Part 2 of this series covers two tightly linked lessons: make every word earn its place, and tell the truth without being boring. Together, they explain why cutting 44% of the words from one paragraph made it hit harder — and why a CMO's no-brainer proposal to imrove care took a whole year to make happen.

Your Speech Has Only One Job – Serve The Audience

Last year, a 7-minute speech took me to the semifinals of the World Championship of Public Speaking. Along the way, I learned seven lessons about communication that apply far beyond any contest stage. The first and most important: your only obligation when you speak is to the people listening. Not to your ego, your thoroughness, or your desire to be complete. This is Part 1 of a four-part series.