One of your key aims in Public Speaking is to make your speech connect emotionally with the audience regardless of the setting. This especially includes business presentations. Too often a business presenter falls into the trap of believing that their speech need only contain statistics to move the minds of their audience. In reality the [...]

The fear of Public speaking, in a large number of cases, I believe can be attributed to a lack of clarity. What do you mean Mark? Let me explain… I find that the people who haven’t done enough preparation are the ones who get the most nerves - fearing they will get found out! Understandable, [...]

A poorly run Q&A session can leave an unfortunate impression on what would otherwise have been a great presentation. The audience will walk away from your presentation remembering what they have seen and heard last. Knowing this we can ensure that as seakers we have control of the last impression by having some closing remarks [...]

Browsing the videos on YouTube you find countless examples of great speakers and some not so great speakers. It provides us a visual library that we can all learn from – if we take the time.  Recently I was browsing and stumbled across a video of Steve Balmer, the CEO of Microsoft. From the video [...]

On the shelves of the bookstores in Sydney airport yesterday I came across a book titled “Revenge of the Ruddbot”. An analysis of the time the Kevin Rudd spent as Prime Minister. Whilst I’m not going to enter into a political debate here, we will take a brief look at Kevin Rudd the speaker [...]

Twitter was the social networking phenomenon of last year. It’s a site that allows you to share your thoughts and feelings with the world by “tweeting” your answer to this simple question - what are you doing now? The only limitation you have is that your answer or “tweet” must be 140 characters or less. [...]

Happy New Year and welcome to 2010. The New Year is a great time to start afresh. We can leave behind the things that didn’t work out in the past that is 2009, and start the New Year with a fresh set of ambitions and dreams. What are your dreams and aspirations for 2010?
Do [...]

Generally I try to encourage clients to stay away from using notes while they give a speech. I find they become the object of the speakers’ affection - they spend their entire speech looking at a couple of pieces of paper rather than the people who’ve come to watch and listen to them. However some [...]

Let me start out by stating that PowerPoint is not the greatest speech writing tool ever invented. Although I can forgive anyone who’s mistakenly believed it was. Let’s face it; most speakers are PowerPoint dependent – reading every word from each slide of their presentation.  If we’re lucky they might adlib a few sentences, but [...]

The last few minutes before you stand up to share your presentation can seem like only a few seconds if you’re nervous and apprehensive about speaking in public. While the audience files into the room and settles in their seats most speakers I’ve seen will find themselves a private corner and go into a period [...]