Tiger Woods apology was only marginally successful. His personality is contained, so we didn’t expect him to suddenly become a motivational speaker. But reading copy is not the way to make a connection with your audience. Better to be less polished and more authentic then to get every word right. Even his delivery was mechanical. The short, punchy phrases were designed to make him clearly understood and so that he didn’t make a mistake.  This he accomplished. Showing contrition he did not.

Tiger also lost points by delivering used up and general phrases we’ve heard before. Go back to the speeches of John Edwards,  Mark Sanford or Eliot Spitzer. There was little specific about their apology or what they plan to do going forward. They all say how they let down their family, their country and their fans. Wake up! You’re not telling us anything new.

The only real emotion Tiger displayed was defending Elin. But for a study in emotion, pushed just under the surface, take a look at Tiger’s mother watching her son speak. I would have loved to hear what she was thinking. Now that would be memorable.

JD Salinger died January 27. Not only was his book Catcher in the Rye a seminal novel for the Baby Boomers, it resurfaces in succeeding generations because of its clear voice and understanding of the human condition. The tragedy is that Salinger never wrote another full length novel. Instead, he retreated to the New Hampshire woods and lived as a virtual hermit; a ghost. Rumors abound, but his albatross could have been bad reviews, which started coming in after he refused all inquiries for interviews. What a loss, because he was the first major American writer to surface after the generation of Faulkner and Hemingway.

Bad reviews come in many forms; our clients all have a story about when they were embarrassed in front of a class, an assembly, or in church as a young person and still carry the scars. Some confront the challenge and go on to be masterful communicators and speakers, while others retreat and avoid public speaking for the rest of their lives. It is imperative that we develop a metric for assessing our communication skills, and also a trust in our ability to make the assessment, without the influence of others. Fine-tuning listening/awareness skills while presenting takes time, but once you can feel the reaction of the audience in the moment and adjust as needed, you will never again carry the albatross of a bad review about your neck.