The Quantified Communications blog.

In the week and a half since Clinton and Trump last went head to head, both candidates have become more deeply embroiled in their various scandals. Stories of Trump’s sexual misconduct and of Clinton’s cozy relationship with Wall Street drowned out any policy-oriented discussion the parties (and the voters) would have liked to hear.

We were honored to be asked to write a guest post for The Daily Muse, on how to disagree with co-workers without winding up in the kind of fight that will not only ruin your day, but may put your job on the line. 

In the wake of the increasingly personal insults and accusations Clinton and Trump have been hurling at one another, and a particularly scandalous week for the GOP candidate, last night’s debate promised to be even more dramatic than the last. In their first moments on stage, the candidates set the tone definitively for what would come, nodding icy hellos rather than shaking hands. And, sure enough, Clinton and Trump both spent the next 90 minutes mounting one attack after another.

"Words matter when you run for president and they really matter when you are president." - Hillary Clinton

Last night’s debate — the first official showdown between presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — was, as the GOP candidate would say, a huge event. Weeks prior to the debate, ABC news reported that 74 percent of Americans were expected to tune in. For context, only 40 percent of U.S. households watched Obama face off against Romney in 2012.

In the days leading up to the debate, pundits and pollsters posed wide-ranging predictions of how the candidates would perform onstage. The only certainty, it seemed, was that anything could happen.

One of the advantages of QC’s global communication database is that it allows us to look for aggregate trends in communication styles. For example, we use our proprietary language analytics platform to measure close to 1,000 earnings calls every quarter. And every quarter, we see a similar pattern:

At Quantified Communications, we can’t emphasize practice enough — no matter how big or small the presentation. Last month, we stepped back from public speaking and went in search of a broader perspective. We wanted to find out how top players in other performance-driven fields approach practice, so we reached out to a pro baseball player, a famous country musician, a TED speaker, and a presidential advisor.

At Quantified Communications, we can’t emphasize practice enough — no matter how big or small the presentation. Last month, we stepped back from public speaking and went in search of a broader perspective. We wanted to find out how top players in other performance-driven fields approach practice, so we reached out to a pro baseball player, a famous country musician, a TED speaker, and a presidential advisor.

Wall Street waited with bated breath for Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s speech at the Kansas City Fed’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole this morning.

You’ve probably heard the joke: A guy’s lost in New York and he stops an old musician on the street to ask him how to get to Carnegie Hall. Hardly looking up, the musician replies, “Practice.”

Think about a typical morning at work. Coffee in hand, you greet your colleagues as you head to your office, where the first thing you do is read through emails, replying to anything urgent. You think through your to-do list for the day, then send off a few more emails delegating certain tasks and requesting resources or help with other initiatives. You type out a quick IM to one coworker to set up a meeting about a project you’re working on together. Then you pick up the phone to check in with another coworker on the status of some research he was supposed to send you last week. Suddenly it’s 11:00 and time for the weekly department meeting.