Draft:Anett Grant
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Anett Grant is an executive communication coach based in Miami. She founded Executive Speaking in 1979 and has spent four decades coaching chief executives and senior leaders.[1] Her work has been described in Fortune,[2] the Los Angeles Times,[3] the Star Tribune,[1] Industry Week and The Wall Street Journal,[4][5] and she has written on speaking for Fast Company.[6]
Early life and education
[edit]Grant is a native of Montreal.[1] She moved to the Twin Cities in 1973 to study at the University of Minnesota.[1] She earned a Master of Fine Arts in theater direction there.[1] She worked on stage productions and taught at a community college.[1] A Minnesota Tribune feature on executive media training reported that she had also worked as a freelance writer for national magazines and as a news-writing intern for a television station.[7] Fortune described her in 1986 as a former theater critic.[2]
Career
[edit]A corporate recruiter suggested that her theater background could apply to business training. Grant attended a speech-coaching seminar in New York City. She then started Executive Speaking in 1979.[1] In the firm's first year, her one-day seminars and special coaching had served 250 Twin Cities managers and executives, according to a Star Tribune feature by staff writer Linda McDonnell.[8] "At the beginning they talk to themselves," Grant, then 30, told the paper. "By the end of the day they're concerned that you understand."[8]
In October 1985, BusinessWeek published a letter to the editor from Grant under the byline "President, Executive Speaking Inc., Minneapolis."[9] In its February 17, 1986 "People to Watch" column, Fortune profiled Grant, then 35: a former theater critic running a Minneapolis firm that taught engineers and other technical specialists to communicate with non-technical audiences.[2] The column described a method in which speakers return to the central point of their presentations and link subsidiary ideas to it. It described her work at such firms as Honeywell, United Technologies and General Dynamics.[2] In a February 1989 article on the voice at work, the Los Angeles Times quoted Grant as one of four speech experts, describing a coach who combines movement exercises with voice training.[3] In 1991, Industry Week reported a survey by the firm: 68 percent of executives at major U.S. companies believed presentation performance was having an increased influence on their careers, and 63 percent found more decisions being made as an immediate result.[4] In February 1992, The New York Times published her five-sentence letter to the editor under the headline "Speak For Yourself."[10]
Grant said she had stopped group seminars about 20 years earlier because participants would come and go with their cellphones.[1] In 2015 the firm built a custom studio with new equipment and software it developed itself, and it reopened group training in 2016 as the Leadership Speaking Bootcamp 360.[1] The two-day sessions use an 85-inch video screen and peer feedback through iPads; Grant said participants rank each other's style and message.[1] The Star Tribune reported more than 280 participants in the two-day program, from companies in 34 states and overseas, including 3M, Abbott Laboratories, Aetna, ConAgra Foods, General Mills, U.S. Bancorp and Toro.[1] Grant also does pro bono coaching with charities, the Star Tribune reported.[1]
In a November 2018 article about chief executives' public performances, The Wall Street Journal quoted Grant as a Minneapolis-based executive coach. In the article, Grant said many chief executives overestimate their ability to communicate when they are not looking at a script. "The feedback from their team is 'you're doing a good job,'" she said. "But the public is trying to figure out 'what is he hiding?'"[5] The article cited research she published in 2014 on the gap between perceived and actual speaking ability.[5] Grant has been a contributor to Fast Company, whose author page describes her as CEO of Executive Speaking and the author of multiple e-books on speaking, and says the firm has served leaders from 61 of the Fortune 100.[6] A 2015 piece of hers for the magazine, "5 Steps to Speaking From the Heart," advised opening with a story from one's own life.[11]
Approach
[edit]Fortune spotted the structure in 1986: a speaker keeps the central point of a presentation at the center and attaches subsidiary ideas to it, rather than wading through technical detail.[2] The Los Angeles Times added the physical dimension in 1989: voice training paired with movement exercises.[3] The Star Tribune's 2016 profile added the group dimension, where participants rank one another's style and message.[1]
Her published research approaches the same problem from the other side: what speakers believe about their own communication, tested against what they demonstrate.[12]
Research
[edit]Grant co-authored, with Amanda Taylor, two peer-reviewed articles on executive communication.[13][12] Crossref lists Taylor's affiliation as the University of Minnesota and Grant's as Executive Speaking.[12] The 2015 study, published online in December 2014, asked whether chief executives demonstrate the communication strengths and weaknesses they think they have.[12] It analyzed videotaped interviews with executives at the start of coaching for factors of delivery, content, audience and character. The interviews were coded for rhetorical formats, delivery stress, disfluencies and timing. The study found that executives who identified themselves as having both delivery and content strengths or weaknesses differed significantly from the others.[12]
- Grant, Anett D., and Amanda Taylor. "Communication essentials for female executives to develop leadership presence: Getting beyond the barriers of understating accomplishment." Business Horizons 57, no. 1 (January 2014): 73–83. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2013.09.003
- Grant, Anett D., and Amanda Taylor. "It's More Than Just Talk: Patterns of CEO Impromptu Communication." Business and Professional Communication Quarterly 78, no. 1 (March 2015): 55–73. doi:10.1177/2329490614563568
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 St. Anthony, Neal (November 12, 2016). "Founder Anett Grant of Executive Speaking teaches with new tools". Star Tribune.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Kupfer, Andrew (February 17, 1986). "People to Watch". Fortune – via Internet Archive.
- 1 2 3 Doheny, Kathleen (February 2, 1989). "Changing Your Voice Can Make You a Winner, Say the Experts". Los Angeles Times.
- 1 2 "Extra Substance, Hold the Fat". Industry Week (Memos column). August 19, 1991.
- 1 2 3 Stoll, John D. (November 17, 2018). "The CEO's Guide to Prime-Time Survival: No Hard Swallows". The Wall Street Journal.
- 1 2 "Anett Grant, Author at Fast Company". Fast Company. Retrieved September 22, 2026.
- ↑ Gage, Amy (c. 1985). "Meet the Press or Beat the Press?". Minnesota Tribune.
- 1 2 McDonnell, Linda (c. 1980). "Speech Coach Helps Put Spark Into Business Presentations". Minneapolis Star Tribune.
- ↑ Grant, Anett D. (October 28, 1985). "Women Managers: The Issue Isn't Sexuality". BusinessWeek (Letter to the editor).
- ↑ Grant, Anett D. (February 23, 1992). "Speak For Yourself". The New York Times Magazine (Letter to the editor). p. Section 6, Page 14.
- ↑ Grant, Anett (April 1, 2015). "5 Steps to Speaking From the Heart". Fast Company.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Grant, Anett D.; Taylor, Amanda (March 2015). "It's More Than Just Talk: Patterns of CEO Impromptu Communication". Business and Professional Communication Quarterly. 78 (1): 55–73. doi:10.1177/2329490614563568.
- ↑ Grant, Anett D.; Taylor, Amanda (January 2014). "Communication essentials for female executives to develop leadership presence: Getting beyond the barriers of understating accomplishment". Business Horizons. 57 (1): 73–83. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2013.09.003.
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