Winning Strategies for Power Presentations: Jerry Weissman Delivers Lessons from the World’s Best Presenters

58. Listening and Laughing with Johnny Carson

Late Night Lessons for Presenters

In Presentations in Action, you read how Johnny Carson, the legendary late night television star, serves as a role model for two critical factors in presentations: listening and the danger of humor. Those lessons were reinforced by the release of a compilation of selections of Mr. Carson’s television programs called, Tonight: 4 Decades of The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.

The collection was reviewed by the television critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, David Wiegand, who described Mr. Carson’s listening skills perfectly:

It wasn’t so much that Carson was a good interviewer—it was that he was a superb listener, giddier when one of his guests got off a good ...