Wanna know the super-secret magical ingredient that can make or break your presentation? It’s energy. Without it, your speech is doomed. With it, you may be able to compensate for a talk that’s light on insight. It took me a while to figure out what energy is. I remember a rehearsal for my very first … Read more
I spoke at a big conference this week of PR professionals and was frankly appalled at the poor presentation skills of some of the presenters. These are, after all, communications pros! I realized many speakers were picked on the basis of their substantive expertise and credentials. And that is not enough. It just isn’t. I … Read more
There’s been some interesting debate on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere about the Clint Eastwood speech, which I labeled a debacle. Some people feel it was successful. It was an authentic moment with Clint being Clint and the crowd inside the hall ate it up. I wouldn’t disagree with any of that. It did seem to … Read more
Last night’s Clint Eastwood debacle at the Republican convention points to an imperative for anyone planning a conference or convention: control your message, control your speakers. It’s a difficult job and the convention planners and Romney’s staff either didn’t take it seriously or tried and failed. And it wasn’t just Eastwood that was a problem. … Read more
It’s easy to forget in our lawyered up society that some lessons are timeless and based on basic rules of fairness. Like the matter of intellectual property and what is and is not “free” on the Internet. I was reminded of this during a visit to a reconstructed Mandan Indian village in North Dakota. (Yes, … Read more
One of the hardest things in public speaking is maintaining your focus — keeping your mind free of unnecessary distractions. I was helping out with some speaker training for a group of young engineers the other day and observed one participant after another losing their train of thought and grasping for words — that familiar … Read more
It was three minutes to the hour and 260-plus people from around the country were waiting online for me to begin a webinar. And after an hour of wrestling with technology, I still wasn’t close to being logged in. My pulse was probably at about 160 beats per minute. The presenter’s nightmare, right? Only it … Read more
Like Jerry Seinfeld, I grew up watching old Abbott & Costello re-runs on TV. Here he deconstructs the classic “Who’s on First?” routine to demonstrate why it’s so funny. But the lessons he draws are just as useful for anyone giving a presentation or speech: 1. Edit to the bone Seinfeld notes that “all the … Read more
It seems one of the greatest anxieties people have about public speaking is coming up with something funny to say in the introduction. But here’s a crazy secret the comedy professionals won’t tell you: you don’t have to be a funny person to be funny. (And you don’t even have to be funny, of course. … Read more
When it comes to public speaking, nobody put it better than Jerry Seinfeld: According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than … Read more