Lovely post from Rhett Laubach at ‘Authencicity Rules’ on ways to ‘build a bridge’ between a speaker and an audience. Authenticity Rules: Top 6 Tools to Engage Literally Any Audience. How to ‘get the audience involved’ is worth a category on its own in any blog, and is the second most asked question on presentation skills…
Lee Westwood, world No2 ranked golfer, made a great example of how to bring a dull stat to life yesterday and make it mean something. Speaking at a press-conference, when asked about his fitness regime, lee responded with this- “Coming to this heat I just felt I needed to lose some weight and have been…
The full quotation is: “They who honour me, I will honour. They who despise me I will disdain.” It was used, memorably, in the film ‘Chariots of Fire’ to illustrate the conviction and motivation of the hero; and his good grace in the fiercest of competition. It’s a snippet from the Bible, obviously, and though I’m not a…
I was a guest speaker at ‘Inside & Out’ yesterday. It was a networking event for London-based banks as a part of their diversity efforts. Its intention is simple. To recruit brilliant people, who happen to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans-gender into the banking industry. Why? Because they want great people, whatever their sexuality….
You are most often the final ingredient that makes a good presentation on paper go well in the real world. Meet people (even if you know them) as they come into the room, shake hands, have a brief chat with them to help show your confidence and ‘break the ice’. Show enthusiasm for the subject….
It’s your instrument and most people don’t really know how to use it. Rehearse in the place where you’ll make your speech if you can, it makes a full dress rehearsal and readies you for the real thing. If you can’t use the venue, use somewhere like it. Project to people at the back of…
Andrew Marr, of the BBC, is becoming one of the hardest to watch ‘car crash’ presenters in the UK. He’s finely poised between horribly self-conscious and excruciatingly self-loving and I can only watch him with my hands over my eyes, through the gaps in my trembling fingers. It’s not him as a person that I object to,…
There’s a word for it. It’s called ‘a tell’. It’s when a speaker ‘tells’ the audience about something without saying anything. There are congruent tells, where the subtle message reinforces the real one, like smiling sincerely and saying ‘I’m really happy to be here’; and such congruence makes for a powerful message. Then there’s the…
Who could have said this without irony? They’d have to be in Management Consulting or HR wouldn’t they? “Having finished my deck of (presumably PowerPoint) slides I shall now ping you over to Paul who will, no doubt be granular in providing you with the long-tail solutions in implementing the TOM by the TIMs through…