Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Just tell your audience, 'Sit!'


As I've said before, one of the more important qualities of any presentation is tone. It should be appropriate to the material and used in a way that focuses attention on the key points.

But nowhere is tone more important than in training a puppy - like Manny (short for Manicotti) the 6-month old mixed breed our daughter brought from Chicago on her visit home. An obedience school graduate, he's learned a number of commands such as sit, stay, leave it, and drop it. But he responds as much to the sound of your voice as to the words.

Just as for an audience, what really gets Manny's attention is tone.

3 comments:

Bridget O'Malley said...

Tone... or a sock.

Nice blog, Dad. Manny is impressed!

John Ettorre said...

Manicotti happens to be one of my favorite dishes, despite the way ignorant American waitresses inevitably tend to mangle the pronunciation in a way that sounds (to me at least) like prolonged fingernail scratching on a blackboard.

Mike Q said...

I just hope no one thinks Manny is short for Manuel.