Your best people are not quiet. They are in the wrong kind of room.
Three talks on one distinction: attention is either contested — won against competing claims — or granted, handed over before you speak. Which one a room runs on decides who contributes in it, who your hiring selects for, and what an audience is actually worth. Fees are stated below, and you can read the entire argument, free and in full, before deciding.
What you can check before you book me
I do not have a showreel. Rather than ask you to take a talk on faith, here is the unusual thing I can offer instead: all of it is already published, and the exercise the first talk opens with takes you sixty seconds right now.
- Run the opening exercise — sixty seconds, on yourself. It is what the room does in the first two minutes of the consumer talk.
- The complete argument — seven papers, about 24,000 words, published free. If the thinking does not hold up, you will know before you book rather than after.
- The methodology and the measurements — published open, with the definitions free to adopt.
- The Meeting Test — the business talk’s floor audit, as a two-minute instrument. Run it on a meeting you sit in.
The three talks
One talk per audience, delivered repeatedly and sharpened by reps, rather than a new deck per booking. Each runs twenty to sixty minutes and adapts to a keynote, a session, or a conference slot.
The consumer and education talk
Shy, or in the Wrong Room?
The introvert/extrovert binary is the wrong axis. The variable that actually decides whether someone is electric or invisible is not how much attention is in the room — it is whether that attention had to be won or was handed over. Much of what gets called shyness may be a room mismatch wearing a personality label. Opens with a sixty-second exercise the whole room does at once.
What the audience leaves withEveryone leaves able to name the two kinds of room they move through, and with one specific change to make in the one they perform worst in.
Alumni clubs · libraries · schools and universities · general conferences · podcasts
The business talk
The Two Rooms: Why Your Best People Go Silent in Your Meetings.
Every meeting runs on a contested floor or a granted one, and almost nobody chooses which. The talk audits a room live: who gets the floor, who has to win it, and what the difference costs in the hours the organisation is already paying for. It ends on the sentence managers repeat afterwards — that a team can be systematically muting its own majority and read it as those people having nothing to say.
What the audience leaves withManagers leave with the floor audit for their own recurring meetings, and one meeting they intend to redesign on Monday.
HR and L&D · leadership groups · manager communities · sales kickoffs · faculties
The ideas talk
Taken or Given: Attention as the Next Currency.
Attention is becoming the scarce asset, and the thing nobody has defined is how it behaves as value. Contested attention is a commodity — abundant, fungible, cheapening. Granted attention behaves like equity. The talk runs that distinction through platforms, rented audiences, and the design of AI systems that are repeating the engagement economy’s error with more autonomy and less friction to catch it.
What the audience leaves withA vocabulary the audience keeps: rented versus direct conferral, trust as a balance sheet, and why session time is an anti-metric for anything that acts on your behalf.
Universities · ideas festivals · tech and creator-economy events · product and design conferences
Formats and fees
Stated rather than hidden, because you are budgeting and a round-trip email to find out a number wastes your afternoon.
Twenty to sixty minutes, remote or in person. The fee depends on format and travel, not on audience size. For associations, non-profits, libraries and schools I often waive it entirely if the date works — ask rather than assuming you cannot afford it.
Ninety minutes, remote. Your team’s attention map, one real meeting redesigned live, one commitment per person. Founding: $1,500 flat for the first three workshops. Then $1,500 up to 12 people, $2,000 up to 25. In person is quoted with travel. Four rails hold throughout: no type is better than another, everyone is scored at work only, disclosure is voluntary, and nothing feeds a review or a file — the sponsor signs to that in writing.
Ninety minutes on conferral as a design constraint for AI products, built on the published methodology and its ten-criterion scorecard. For teams building recommenders, agents or agent platforms. Unpriced here because what it covers depends on what you are building.
Availability. Booking now, through 2027. Remote anywhere in the world; in person with travel quoted separately. Taken or Given publishes on 12 January 2027, and I am glad to build a talk around a launch, a conference theme, or an internal offsite rather than delivering it off the shelf.
Recording and internal reuse are fine by default — ask and it is almost certainly yes.
Ask about a date
Tell me roughly what you need and you will have an answer within two business days, including whether I am the wrong person for it — which I will say plainly if it is true.
- The date, or the window you are working in
- Who is in the room, and roughly how many
- Remote or in person, and where
- Which of the three talks fits, if one does
- Whether you are an association, non-profit, library or school — it changes the fee
or email clint@grantedattention.com
Your email client should now be open with the enquiry pre-filled — send it, and you will hear back within two business days. If nothing opened, email clint@grantedattention.com directly.