One of the easiest traps to fall into as a speaker is the misuse of pronouns. We were taught in grade school that pronouns make communication easier by shortening references to characters in a story. They can be viewed as pro-nouns, used by elite communicators. But in...
Visual aids for speech and presentations are used by most presenters. Last month we talked about PowerPoint Templates and how they were wonderful at keeping things consistent – provided the template was well-formed. This month, I’d like to challenge anyone who fires...
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...
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. 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...
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...
