When you’re nervous about an upcoming presentation, it can cause stress on your body and mind which will impact on your ability to communicate your message effectively. In this article I outline a simple exercise to help combat the symptoms and instil a sense of calm; it can be done anywhere at any time you feel a little scattered, apprehensive or anxious.
What's the best piece of advice you've received about public speaking? In this article I share the two words that changed EVERYTHING for me about how I prepare and deliver presentations.
Long ago I lost count of the number of people who have said to me “I HATE public speaking!” But what if I told you that you could learn to love public speaking?
If you fear or loath public speaking and avoid it at all costs, you may be missing out on opportunities to promote your business, progress your career or share a few words about a special person at an important occasion such as a wedding or a funeral.
Having the right speakers and break out session facilitators is crucial to the success of an event. Therefore, if you’re in charge of planning, it’s important to put time, effort (and money) into finding the right speakers who will engage and inspire your audience and ensure your event is talked about for years to come. In this post I share my top tips to help you book the ideal speaker.
As presenters we are in the privileged position of being able to share our knowledge, experience, and passion with an audience. However, with this privilege comes responsibility – a responsibility to ourselves to ensure we don’t kill our credibility, but more importantly, a responsibility to our audience to ensure that our message is relevant and interesting to listen to. It is vital that you avoid these 11 mistakes that will make your audience cringe...
Have you ever considered adding public speaking into your marketing mix? Many people shudder at the thought of standing up and speaking in front of an audience but giving a talk is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to promote your business. Find out my top five tips to help you to take advantage of this marketing opportunity...
Dolly Parton demonstrated her incredible ability to engage a 180,000 strong crowd during her popular performance at Glastonbury. The more I watched the more I realised that her techniques could be implemented in many public speaking situations. So read on to find out what Dolly Parton can teach you about public speaking.
During a three day conference in London I had the opportunity to watch and listen to some incredibly charismatic and engaging presenters. Amongst them all, however, there was one presenter that stood out for all the wrong reasons and she has inspired this post. Find out what this speaker did to kill her credibility and caused me to walk out of her presentation...
If you’ve been reading my posts for a while you might have gathered that I love the theatre and in particular the lessons we can learn from the theatre to enhance our public speaking. Whether you like it or not, each time you speak in public it is a performance. Here are some of the areas of performance that presenters sometimes overlook...
This week I had the opportunity to attend a workshop with the Toastmasters International 2014 World Champion of Public Speaking, Dananjaya Hettiarachchi (‘Dan’ for short). He shared various tips on preparation, content and delivery and a few secrets about how he beat 33,000 other speakers from 120 countries to win the world title. Here is an overview...
