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 a busy professional, you may think you don’t have the time to improve your public speaking skills, but just a few adjustments can greatly improve the way you are received. Check out my final conversation in this series, where I spoke with award-winning speaker Lee Warren who shared fantastic ideas that are easy to understand, easy to implement and will easily transform the way you present.
What can you learn about presenting from Sesame Street? What are the best techniques to build confidence? And why should you disregard most public speaking advice? Answers to all of these questions and more can be learned in my latest conversation with the amazing Pegine Echevarria, best-selling author, award-winning business woman and one of the world’s top leadership motivational speakers.
In this post I’ve written about three of the sessions at the Professional Speaking Association’s ‘Refresh!’ online conference. I have included the main takeaway messages as well as my observations on what the speakers did well so that you can consider using some of the techniques to enhance your own presentations.
TED talks have changed the speaking landscape and I was honoured and privileged to be one of the speaker coaches once again for the Glasgow TEDx event at the SEC Armadillo. In a day that showcased 16 speakers some of them were more memorable than others, so in this post I look at some of the talks that stood out and examine the reasons why. Read on to find out how you can use the techniques to make your own communication more powerful.
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...
One of the biggest buzzwords in business at the moment is ‘storytelling’. And for good reason. Stories make us think, and more importantly they make us feel. And they help us remember ideas and concepts far more effectively than facts and figures. I was privileged to have the opportunity recently to see well known Scottish businessman, Bob Keiller, delivering a Business Storytelling workshop and in this post I share his tips.
What does your voice say about you? Whether you like it or not, people will make judgements about you based on your voice. They’ll make assumptions about where you’re from, how well educated you are or how confident you are. Regardless of the words you speak, your voice will impact on how engaging a speech or presentation is for your audience and how well your message is received.
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.
On Thursday 18 February, the TEDx University of Edinburgh (TEDxUoE) 2016 Conference was held in Edinburgh’s Central Hall for an audience of around five hundred people. I was delighted to have the opportunity to coach 10 of the 12 speakers for this event and was incredibly proud of the way each of them delivered a clear, concise and engaging talk. So, from my perspective as an audience member, this post covers public speaking lessons inspired by each of their talks.
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...
