The Premier Blog For Quickly Improving Your Public Speaking, Presentation & Communication Skills
drjim Today’s audiences are a jaded bunch. In fact, a Gallup Poll shows that just 16% of us have a favorable opinion of business executives. With all of the Wall Street failures and auto maker bailouts that are currently going on, this number will probably keep going down. What’s a presenter to do in order to … Read more
Previously we had discussed the fact that any presentation that you give is really sort of like a one person show – if you know how to act, then you’ll be more effective. The challenge, of course, is that very few of us have been trained to be an actor. Additionally, we tend to think … Read more
When you are asked to deliver a presentation, one way of looking at this request is that you are actually being asked to put on a one-person show. No matter if you are presenting at a college graduation or are simply reviewing last quarter’s sales figures, you are an actor who is there to put … Read more
We can spend all the time in the world talking about how to prepare better presentations, capture and hold your audience’s attention, create great PowerPoint slides, etc. and it will all be for naught if we forget to talk about one very important thing: your voice. I don’t know about you guys, but I really … Read more
Tis the season for college graduations and I was recently asked to deliver a keynote speech as part of an engineering graduation ceremony. The interesting thing about this speaking opportunity was that I was basically starting from ground zero – I didn’t have an engineering keynote speech in my bag of tricks. This meant that … Read more
I’m sure that none of you would ever screw-up and make a verbal blunder during a presentation, right? There is an AT&T ad running right now that captures this concept – a guy has just told an office about an upcoming merger when he really was supposed to have not mentioned it (mayhem ensues). When … Read more
Not everyone dreams of becoming a paid presenter; however, as we labor over a speech we have all had that thought that started something like “I am NOT being paid enough for all that I do”. Considering how many people are terrified of public speaking, if you can do it and do it well, why … Read more
So why do you care about how good of a presenter you are? Hey, if you’ve been able to keep from bursting into flames when you address a staff meeting, a department, or even bigger gatherings then haven’t you really done enough? For many people, the answer to this question is “yes”. And they just … Read more
So who among us ever really looks forward to sitting through a technical presentation? Collectively we’ve all sat through so many of these things that we almost defensively shut down before the speaker even has a chance to get started. So when it’s our turn to talk about things that contain lots of financial details, … Read more
It’s just a little bit off-topic, but Meridith Levinson over at CIO.com just interviewed me as a part of an article that she wrote titled Self-Promotion at Work: 8 Tips for Shy People. In these times of economic uncertainty, these tips might be just what the Doctor ordered for your career. Check the article out … Read more