Speaking tips blog
Communication matters. What are you saying?
PowerPoint Templates: Great Idea or Pain in the Mouse?
PowerPoint templates can be a great help or they can create a challenge. As I write this, I’m on my way to speak at a national conference. Great opportunity to do a lot of good for a good cause. It checks a lot of boxes for why I do what I do. But checking boxes is...
How to Become a World-Class Speaker
Being a world-class speaker takes a lot of work. But regardless of whether you’re on the big stage or in the small conference room, the elements that make great communication don’t change. Last month I had the privilege to work with world-class speakers at the...
The Twelve Days of Speaking
As we careen towards the holidays and New Year, I am forced by a teenage daughter to listen to Christmas music at every turn. I am able to deny her until Thanksgiving (she uses headphones until then), but ‘Tis the Season as they say and now her smiling face cannot be...
What I learned from speaking through an interpreter
What I learned from speaking through an interpreter. Last month I had the privilege to travel to Eastern Europe – Kiev, Ukraine to be exact (and no, I was not on government business and no one there seemed to care about the US political brouhaha). I spoke ten times...
7 Types of Public Speakers
Public speakers have many names. I was recently invited to speak at a conference. Like I normally do, I had a discovery call with the client to understand the audience and uncover connect points and common language, and to make sure that we were creating outcomes and...
Four Tactics that Engage Your Audience Better than Verbal Polls
Engage your audience without using verbal polls How many of you use verbal polls in your presentations? OK, that was a set-up. In our workshops, one of the most popular ways for people to get started (we’re usually prompting them with a topic they have not prepared)...
Using Notes in Public Speaking–Three Tips
Using notes in public speaking seems simple, but using them well sets good speakers apart. There are three changes you can make to your notes that will make you a better presenter. It’s August, and that means back-to-school time. The stores are already prepared. ...
Become an expert in your field
To become an expert in your field, you must have an attitude of excellence. I’ve just finished a few seasons of life that are the kind that cause you to reflect, reminisce, and regret. First, we moved. The house that was Home for 15 years is someone else’s now; a...
Public Speaking Don’ts: What NOT to Say
In a series of Public Speaking Don'ts, I wrote last month’s article, The Graduation Speech No One Wants to Hear. I got a number of notes (which I love getting!) giving me first-person accounts of various graduations. “The student speaker was amazing!” “The invited...
The Graduation Speech No One Wants to Hear
The Top Ten Tips for giving a graduation speech people will talk about for years to come.
How does Culture affect communication?
How does Culture affect communication? Last fall I was privileged to travel for clients to far-away lands: South Africa, Egypt, and the Philippines, with a travel layover in Paris thrown in as a bonus. As an infrequent international traveler (although that seems to be...
Four Steps to Become Great at Anything
There are four steps to becoming great at anything. This includes learning how to drive. It’s my second (and last!) experience training a teen driver. Driver #2 has a different outlook, a few challenges (a few months off due to a surgery which equated to less...
