Frederick Talbott

FREDERICK TALBOTT serves as a consultant, trainer, coach, writer, and convention speaker focusing on leadership communications; positive leadership; persuasion, influence, and motivation; sales management communication; creativity; the power and process of foresight and strategic visioning; dynamic transformational thinking, applying problem finding, analysis, and solving and opportunity identification and development; conflict resolution (negotiation, conciliation, and mediation applications); news media relations; crisis communications; dynamic professional communications coaching; team building and leadership (including team reunification and peacekeeping); communications law and ethics; humor in the workplace; strategic thinking; time and change management; and client-focused convention and meeting speeches featuring a blend of applied wisdom, storytelling, and humor. He also specializes in powerhouse advertising copy and campaign development. And plays a powerhouse blues harmonica.

He created The Talbott Method, a process that teaches participants how to overcome speech anxiety (stage fright) and convert the resulting energy into dynamic advocacy. Corporate, government, association, and educational clients have included IBM, Goldman Sachs, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USF Holland, Bank Administration Institute, Bristol-Myers Squibb, TAP Pharmaceuticals, New York Life Insurance, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), Bell Atlantic, BellSouth (now AT&T), the State Government Affairs Council, and others. He is a powerful and positive convention and meeting speaker, executive and management trainer, and counselor; a master speech and advocacy coach; an award-winning journalist; a public relations and crisis communications specialist; attorney; mediator; consultant; humorist; author; and songwriter.

Fred is the author of Shakespeare on Leadership, Churchill on Courage, and his recent business humor book JJ’s Business Bullets. He is a veteran investigative journalist whose work was heralded as innovative, objective, and often bold and courageous. As a humorist, he contributed material to NBC’s Saturday Night Live (“Weekend Update”), Jeff MacNelly’s “Shoe” cartoon, and by request taught humor writing to the White House speechwriting team in the summer of 1991. From 1993-2009 he taught leadership communications to more than 3,000 students from 84 nations at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. He led the journalism sequence, management communications, and standup comedy programs at Old Dominion University from 1983-1993. He is the first MBA professor in the nation to require every student to perform a standup comedy routine. Fred’s teaching has been featured in The New York Times, Training, Training & Development, Entrepreneur, and on CNBC’s Power Lunch. His public relations advice has been featured on page 1 of The Wall Street Journal. He was honored with major Vanderbilt University awards for his promotion of opportunities for persons with disabilities, affirmative action, and the advancement of diversity initiatives. He was named the university’s outstanding faculty member by the Vanderbilt football team in 2007.

During 1998 and 1999 Fred helped more than 800 American and overseas banks eliminate public fear of the Year 2000, or Y2K, challenge and turn the event into a positive customer relations and marketing success.

Fred holds a J.D. and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of South Carolina and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Florida Southern College. He is a member of the South Carolina Bar and has earned mediation certification in South Carolina and Tennessee. Now residing in Naples, FL, he is completing various book and screenwriting projects.

E-mail: fredtalbott@gmail.net