What a week to look and study corporate voice!  There still were bits and pieces of positive and negative corporate voice coming from Stephen Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who grabbed a brewsky before sliding  down the disaster slide saying “Adios” to his career.  The public still can’t quite decide if he’s a hero or not and the press can’t quite decide whether its coverage should be positive or negative.

Then there was another Stephen–this one named Strasburg who after coming off the DL list had the worst start of his short but spectacular rookie season allowing a career-high six earned runs in a career-low 4 1/3 innings watched his Washington Nationals lose to the Florida Marlins,  8-2.    Strasburg answered the critics saying, “Being on the DL, and then coming back, and maybe expecting maybe a little too much out of myself–kind of got in my head a little bit out there.”  Yup, those high expectations from everyone can do that to a rookie pitcher, but Strasburg’s corporate voice stayed steady, even those his pitches didn’t.

Speaking of baseball, there was Francisco Rodriguez, K-Rod, as he has fondly been nicknamed by his fans, who was not greeted fondly when he returned to the mound Saturday night, who just  hours earlier was trying to neutralize his corporate voice by apologizing to teammates and fans for a fight at Citi Field that resulted in his arrest and a two-day suspension.

And lastly for this column, there were negative corporate voices from the PGA Tour, which prides itself on integrity,  when Golf Channel’s Jim Gray and Ryder Cup U.S. Captain Corey Pavin, got into a loud discussion that spilled over into the next day with name calling regarding the exact quote –and its meaning–from Pavin regarding whether Tiger Woods would be a Captain’s Choice for the upcoming Ryder Cup if he did not make the first page Leader Board  in the PGA Championship.  I don’t think this corporate voice discussion is out of the news yet.

More examples of how important it is to keep your corporate voice in check, to always be aware of it, to understand how it plays into the hands of those covering you and those listening and watching you, too.