In his farewell address on January 11, 1989, President Ronald Reagan spoke about his nickname. “And in all of that time I won a nickname, ‘The Great Communicator.’ But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things.”
He said the ideas “came from the heart of a great nation.”
On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart, and all seven astronauts died. The technical cause was a piece of insulating foam, about 1.7 pounds, that broke off the external tank.
The investigation board released its report on August 26, 2003. It wrote that “the Board was surprised to receive similar presentation slides from NASA officials in place of technical reports.” It called “the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers” an illustration of “the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA.”
On February 27, 1860, Abraham Lincoln spoke at Cooper Union in New York. The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery says the speech “convinced his audience that he was not a country bumpkin but a serious constitutional thinker.” Before the speech, Lincoln sat for the photographer Mathew Brady. According to the Gallery, Brady remembered that he drew Lincoln’s collar up high to improve his appearance.
Harper’s Weekly turned the photograph into a full-page woodcut. Later artists smoothed Lincoln’s hair and refined his features. Lincoln is reported to have said: “Brady and the Cooper Institute made me President.” The wording varies between sources, and one says only that he “reputedly” said it.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit gives lawyers a guide called “Requirements and Suggestions for Typography in Briefs and Other Papers.” Its judges hear six cases on most argument days and nine on others. The papers “add up to about 1,000 pages per argument session.”
The guide compares lawyers with other professionals. “A business consultant seeking to persuade a client prepares a detailed, full-color presentation using the best available tools.” It adds: “Law is no different.” Good typography “won’t make your arguments better, but it will ensure that judges grasp and retain your points with less struggle.”
In 2014 Sylvia Ann Hewlett published a book called Executive Presence: The Missing Link Between Merit and Success. It describes executive presence as “a dynamic, cohesive mix of appearance, communication, and gravitas.” The book draws in part on a survey of 268 senior executives.
Of those executives, 67 percent named gravitas as the most important of the three. Communication came second with 28 percent. Appearance came last with 5 percent.
In 1993 two Harvard psychologists, Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, published a study called “Half a Minute.” Nine undergraduates watched three 10-second clips of each of 13 college teachers, “with the audio turned down completely.” They rated each teacher on traits such as “confident,” “competent,” “enthusiastic” and “professional.”
Their ratings predicted the evaluations the teachers’ own students gave at the end of the semester. In a later part of the study, even shorter clips still predicted the evaluations.
At Harvard Business School, “half of a student’s grade derives from class participation” in many courses, according to Poets&Quants. Many classes start with a cold call. The professor picks a student, who must present the facts and issues of the case.
A guide to case teaching says that the quality of a comment “relates not only to the content, but also the delivery and timing of comments within the flow of the class discussion.”
In 1967 Richard Nixon appeared on The Mike Douglas Show, and Roger Ailes helped prepare him. “It’s a shame,” Nixon told Ailes, “a man has to use gimmicks like this to get elected.” Ailes replied: “Television is not a gimmick.”
In the 1968 campaign Ailes produced live televised discussions for Nixon, with a studio audience. He handled the set, the lighting, the makeup and the camera positions. In November 1968 he said: “This is the beginning of a whole new concept. This is it. This is the way they’ll be elected forevermore.” He added: “The next guys up will have to be performers.”
Joe McGinniss’s The Selling of the President 1968, an exposé, became one of the most influential books on American presidential campaigns.
The Common Core State Standards set goals for English in American schools, from kindergarten through grade 12. One group of speaking standards is called “Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas.” In kindergarten, children should “speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly.”
By grades 11 and 12, students should “present information, findings, and supporting evidence” so that “listeners can follow the line of reasoning.” The standard asks that “the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience” and task. Another standard asks for “a command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.”
In 1975 John T. Molloy published Dress for Success, a bestseller that told men what to wear at work. In 1972 Time magazine had reported that he had become “America’s first wardrobe engineer.” The researcher Barry Popik credits the book with spreading the saying “dress for the job you want.”
Molloy based his advice on his own tests. In one, an actor posing as a trainee asked secretaries in a New York office to get information from their files. In a greenish-blue suit and a “chintzy blue polyester tie,” he got 12 of 50 to do it. In an “expensive blue suit” and a “silk polka-dot tie,” he got 42 of 50.