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Presenting traps to avoid – Trap no. 3 Being difficult to work with
February 21st, 2012
A great way to build your reputation, career and business is by presenting. Conference organisers have to deal with a lot of presenters and they prefer to deal with ones who are easy to get along with, don’t make lots of demands and do a good job. If you are demanding and behave as though you deserve all the conference organiser’s attention, you will have to do a very outstanding job to ensure they ask …
Leave a commentBe present
February 16th, 2012
When you present, you need to BE PRESENT! A blinding flash of the obvious I hear you say! So why don’t speakers demonstrate this? It’s not as easy as it sounds to concentrate, marshal all your faculties, focus on what you’re saying, read the signals on the faces of your listeners, and when they drift off, pull them back into the moment. I often remind myself that audiences could be somewhere else, but they’re not …
Leave a commentPresenting traps to avoid – Trap no. 2 Being Disorganised
February 14th, 2012
“One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries.” A.A. Milne There are lots of little traps that speakers and presenters can fall into when they lack experience. A.A. Milne is right when he says disorganisation can produce surprising discoveries. But whilst the surprising discoveries can be interesting they can also mean we never get booked to deliver a business presentation again! Something we often underestimate when we present …
Leave a commentHow to test how ‘warmed up’ your voice is…
February 9th, 2012
Are you a subject matter expert? Do you know your area of expertise inside out? When you communicate are you sure that you are showcasing your professional expertise in the most appropriate way? Or is it possible a few simple body language and voice mishaps are undermining your credibility? I’m sure you already know that body language plays a critical part in the communication we engage in each and every day. All it takes is …
Leave a commentWhat does it take to be a great public speaker?
February 7th, 2012
I believe everyone can be an exceptional presenter. It’s just a matter of knowing what to do and doing it! So I’ve created this excellent checklist that you can go through and use to evaluate your ability as a presenter. Give it a try – it will help you work out what you need to improve (and take it from me all these things are so easy to improve). It will also show you what …
Leave a commentPresenting traps to avoid – Trap no. 1 Looking at your watch
February 2nd, 2012
There are a number of traps that inexperienced presenters can fall into when they first begin presenting. Any one of these traps can make your presentation look less professional than it otherwise would. I’ve just presented at a conference where I noticed something interesting. The presenter looked at their watch mid way through their presentation and I wondered whether it mattered or not. Trap: Looking at your watch Although you do need to keep track …
Leave a commentFiller words
January 31st, 2012
There are a number of ‘filler’ words that most presenters use when they don’t know what to say, or to ‘fill the quiet space’ that would be better served with a pause and a deep breath. Some of these words are ‘um’, ‘ahh’, ‘and’ and ‘so’. It’s not a great idea to use these sorts of filler words. As an alternative, remember to pause and breathe with confidence. Pause is Powerful!
Leave a commentMiracles are just that – miracles!
January 26th, 2012
You don’t derive your desired state in your business or career by sitting on your behind waiting for a miracle! If it’s success you seek, be sure you have thought about 3 important things: What do you have to offer? In other words, what is your unique selling proposition? How will you market your offer for best results? Which networks to you need to cultivate to accelerate business opportunities? Once you know which networks or …
Leave a commentInfluencing Skills are critical in everyday life
January 24th, 2012
From our school life, to uni and then even in our home life, influencing skills are critical in every day life. And we are influencing the people we come into daily contact with: our friends, family, colleagues, bosses, customers and suppliers. Just think about it. Our days are filled with negotiating, finding compromise, updating, advising, mediating, and for many of us even selling. And the value we derive from each of these interactions will be …
Leave a commentIs it wrong to exaggerate?
January 19th, 2012
Humour is a wonderful way to engage your audience and hook their attention. But how can you use humour in business? How do you do that? Well one way to create humour is to either expand or reduce the details of a situation. We call this exaggeration. You know how cartoonists do this don’t you? They give Julia Gillard a huge pointy nose like a crazy bird. And they often made John Howard’s eye-brows look …
Leave a commentOver 800 respondents to the survey
January 17th, 2012
When people think about entertaining, engaging presenters/public speakers, mostly television presenters come to mind. From a survey of over 800 respondents from the corporate world, personalities like Rove McManus, Hugh Jackman, Andrew Denton and Paul McDermott are frequently mentioned. You’ve got 5 minutes if you’re lucky! Audience members typically give presenters less than 5 minutes to prove themselves before switching off. When asked about workplace presenters they had seen in the last 12 months; Only …
Leave a commentIt doesn’t matter how good your message is if no one is listening
January 12th, 2012
An engineer in one of my recent training programs said to the group (and to me), “but I’m an engineer, I don’t have to be interesting!” Ahhh! Are you serious? This is a classic misconception! This engineer is not the first person in a program of mine who thinks that his superior intelligence, his technically robust subject matter and his overloaded PowerPoint slides are enough to WOW an audience. Surely the people who present the …
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