“Thank you very much. Any questions?” That is how a great many presentations end, and it is one of the reasons so few of them are remembered. Everything you thought about for weeks, prepared carefully and delivered reasonably well, is handed over in six words to whoever puts their hand up first. Your audience[…]
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publicspeaking tag
How to End a Presentation So They Remember It
Communication Skills, Presentation Skills, Public Speaking Jun 13, 2015
First Impressions: Why Your Audience Decides Before You Speak
Presentation Skills, Public Speaking May 17, 2015
How long do you think you have before your audience starts forming an impression of you? Five seconds? Ten? Longer? Researchers at Princeton found that just a tenth of a second is enough. After seeing a stranger’s face for that brief moment, people formed judgments about trustworthiness, competence, and likeability that barely changed, even when[…]
Presentation Body Language: 5 Simple Tips
Presentation Skills, Presentation Tips, Public Speaking May 01, 2015
A close friend of mine recently met his son for the first time in twenty-six years; the last time they’d seen each other, the boy was two years old. When they finally met, the similarities in their body language were astonishing: identical gestures, identical expressions, identical movements, so alike that you would have assumed[…]
Public Speaking Voice: The Seven Things You Can Control
Communication Skills, Presentation Skills, Public Speaking Apr 23, 2015
Nearly everyone who has heard a recording of their own voice has the same reaction, and it’s not a flattering one. There is a reason for that, and it’s worth knowing. When you speak, you hear yourself twice: once through the air, as everybody else does, and once through the bones of your own skull.[…]
Presentation Visualisation: You’re Already Doing It
Advice, Presentation Skills, Public Speaking Mar 19, 2015
If someone is dreading a presentation, ask them what they think might happen, and they can usually tell you in great detail. Not in vague terms. They know exactly which slide it happens on, which question they can’t answer, and roughly who asks it. They can describe the silence that follows, the walk back[…]
Why the Best Presentations Are Built on Stories
Advice, Presentation Skills, Public Speaking, Storytelling Mar 13, 2015
Turning a presentation into a meaningful story is one of the greatest challenges any presenter faces. Yet it’s also the most important. A story is how human beings make sense of the world. It’s how we learn, remember, and connect. Long before we had slides, charts, or meeting rooms, we had stories, and they remain[…]
