On June 20th in the Wall Street Journal, in response to the media coverage of Tim Russert’s untimely death, Peggy Noonan wrote in her Declarations column, “When somebody dies we tell his story and try to define and isolate what… Read More »Public Speaking and the Importance of Character: A Life’s Lesson
I just finished working with a client who had to prepare and deliver an after dinner talk to clients in a museum. Her firm planned to take the clients on a private tour of the museum, feed them dinner, and… Read More »Public Speaking Skills: After Dinner Speaking
Webinars seem to be a promising, cost-effective way of building relationships with prospects, but they’re hard to do well. As a medium for communicating with groups, they have their own quirks and require a lot of preparation. Here are a… Read More »Communication Skills Training: How to Give Good Webinars
Effective speaking has many enemies. A partial list would include a speaker’s lack of experience, stage fright, lack of training, no clear point, too much information, and finally, no clear flow, or structure. We could go on. But the items… Read More »Public Speaking Training: The Dreaded just-after-lunch Slot on the Program
What should you do when the lights are so bright that you can’t see your audience? 1. Make sure you know where the audience is and look in that general direction with focus and confidence. The audience won’t know that… Read More »Presentation Tips: Blinded by the Light
Dividing the Dais Sharing a podium is a frequent method for by-passing yet another dry presentation and (we hope) generating heat and light between two or more people seated on stage engaging in friendly verbal exchanges. In my experience, each speaker prepares and delivers… Read More »Business Communication: Sharing the Podium