The Premier Blog For Quickly Improving Your Public Speaking, Presentation & Communication Skills
A few years back I found myself in a situation where I had allowed myself to get roped into delivering a presentation to a university class. I was going to be talking about what I had learned during my IT career – a somewhat painful and introspective topic. My excitement level was at zero. I … Read more
Last week I had the opportunity to give the perfect speech. Now, you might be offended by this statement and are probably wondering just how I could become so full of myself, so perhaps I should explain myself. I had spoken in this venue four times before, I had been invited to speak again because … Read more
As a communicator, you’ve got a lot to say. Getting up in front of an audience is one way to get your message across, but it’s not the only way. We’ve talked a lot about slides, handouts, and summary sheets, but there is one even more powerful tool that you have at your disposal – … Read more
Ok, so it’s time to talk about an ugly little secret that nobody who does presentations really like to talk about. What’s the secret? Most of the time what we tell our audience goes in one ear and out the other. It just doesn’t stick. In fact, if you are presenting training or a new … Read more
We would all like our next presentation to be our best. However, when we’ve got lots and lots of data to present, we can all too easily overwhelm our audience. What’s a presenter to do? It turns out that the good folks over at IBM have come up with a way to help us out … Read more
So we stand up, walk to the front of the room, and start our presentation. All too often, we seem to think that we are the only conversation going on in the room at any given time. It turns out that we’re wrong – there’s a whole lot of nonverbal stuff going on between us … Read more
Remember when your Mom said that looks don’t matter? She may have been right then; however, now is now and the better you look, the more impact your presentation will have. Whether you realize it or not, you are always being judged by your audience. What you need is some advice to make sure that … Read more
So why should anyone take the time to attend your presentation? Unless you are Paris Hilton (hi Paris!) or former President Clinton, you probably don’t have enough star power alone to pull people to your presentation. So what’s a presenter to do? These days with everyone being overworked and so stressed for time, the one … Read more
Some presentations are designed to simply motivate your audience. Some are designed to educate them. It’s this second batch that is tricky to do. It’s probably not that your presentations are lacking in educational material, but rather it’s the way that you are delivering it that really matters. You need to find a way to … Read more
When we deliver a presentation, we need to make the best use of all of the tools that we have at our disposal. These tools include things such as hand gestures, using pauses, and vocal variety. All too often we forget that we have one more tool for us to use: our personal style. Life … Read more