In this interview with stand-up comedian David Whitney we talked about...:
Fear of public speaking
Preparation before getting in front of an audience
Storytelling
How to find the funny if you are a very serious person
Rehearsal
How to read the audience in the moment
Dealing with a difficult audience
What to do before going on stage
Public speaking lessons for business professionals
and much more...
In this interview with Keynote and Conference Business Speaker Lee Warren we talked about...:
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If you’d like to learn more about how to create and deliver business presentations that get engagement or the sale, come and say hi at one of our next events in London: http://ideasonstageuk.eventbrite.com
If you want to be able to create and deliver great presentations, you need to make sure you meet 5 key success criteria. Remember the word SCORE:
In this video I unpack the Presentation SCORE method.
There are three key arts of presenting:
Which of the three do you think is the most important one?
You might have a great story to share with your audience, but if you use poor slides that don’t support and reinforce your message, your audience is not going to understand and remember.
Voice coach Jimmy Cannon shares some great tips for business professionals who want to improve and control their voice for public speaking and presentations (and singing).
Here are the links I mentioned in the interview:
Upcoming FREE events: http://ideasonstageuk.eventbrite.com
Additional free resources to help you improve your presentations (report, webinar, presentation skills assessment tool): http://bit.ly/presentation-valuebundle
If you were to summarize the objective of a presentation in one word, what would that be?
Here are the 3 key ingredients you need in order to make great business presentations. If you think it’s just about PowerPoint, you’ve missed the point.
As Mark Twain said, there are only two types of speakers: those who get nervous and those who are liars.
In this interview with Olivia James, Performance Anxiety and Trauma Consultant, we talked about public speaking anxiety.
Listen to the podcast to learn:
✔ What makes people nervous when speaking in public
✔ How to deal with it
✔ Practical advice to reduce your nerves
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Here are the links I mentioned in the interview:
Upcoming FREE events: http://ideasonstageuk.eventbrite.com
Additional free resources to help you improve your presentations (report, webinar, presentation skills assessment tool): http://bit.ly/presentation-valuebundle
How can you make sure your audience gives you a round of applause once you finish your presentation? There's a simple technique which works all the time.
Ehsan Ghavimi is a High-Performance Life Coach and TEDx Speaker. He helps young professionals achieve extraordinary results in their lives, work and relationships.
Ehsan was afraid of speaking in front of an audience until he went to an improvisation workshop that changed his life. He always felt like he had something to say but didn’t know how to say it. Improvisation helped him find his voice.
Ehsan went on to become an Improvisation and Public Speaking Coach, and this led him to become a High-Performance Life Coach. He has performed at the world’s biggest arts festival, the Edinburgh Fringe, and told his story on the TEDx stage.
In this interview we talked about communication, storytelling, improvisation, presentations, standup comedy and everything in between.
Gina Barnett is a great communication consultant who is also a speaker coach for the Main Stage TED Conference. And she also wrote an interesting book on communication, body language and presence: Play the Part.
Most business professionals assume that their presentation is over when the presentation is over. It’s not. Q&A is an integral part of your presentation, so make sure you get it right.
What are the three essential aspects to consider in order to create high-quality presentations?
Have you ever thought about which kind of background works best for your slides? Light, dark, black, white?
Using icons in presentations is an excellent way to transform boring slides full of text into beautiful and effective visual aids that support and amplify your messages. Here are a couple of things to consider.
When the creation of a presentation involves designing slides, you often have a graphic designer who takes care of the visuals and somebody else who is instead responsible for the content. In these cases, who is in charge?
I had the pleasure to be interviewed by Steve Parker from Uxbridge FM. We talked about how to give effective presentations.
Learning is the creation of a relationship between two things: what we already know and what we don’t know. And what's the best way to create that relationship?
One of the most common mistakes people make when rehearsing a presentation (if they rehearse at all) is that they don’t do it under similar conditions they will face during the actual presentation.
In this book, David Nihill introduced seven tips he learned as a stand-up comedian in order for business people to become better speakers and, why not, even a little more funny.
Too many emotions, too many stories and too many design elements might be perceived as fluff by a technical audience. What’s the solution then for presenting to technical people?
Is it better to use serif or sans-serif fonts in your slides? Which one is best for your presentations?
We often hear about the power of the pause when it comes to public speaking. But have you ever thought about how powerful a pause can be even before starting to talk?
Presenting is like driving – you don't normally drive for hours without knowing where to go. Likewise, you can't begin preparing a presentation without knowing where to go.
Here’s a tip for those who work in tech companies and have to sell technical products or services or communicate the company vision to people who don’t have the same technical knowledge.
In 2004 Reid Hoffman – co-founder of LinkedIn – needed $10 million so he started pitching his business idea to investors. Here's how he did it.
One of the best ways to create effective slides from a visual perspective is to include only one idea per slide. One idea per slide, that’s it.
How can you communicate anything to anyone? In particular, how can you communicate science (or technical or complex topics) to a general audience? Let's answer this question by looking at how Neil deGrasse Tyson does it.
If the goal is to get to people who don’t know your topic, the only possible language is concrete language.
The first fifteen seconds of a presentation: why they are important and how to make the most of them.
According to Warren Buffett, being able to communicate, to speak in public and to make effective presentations is the most important skill you can develop.
As Mark Twain said, “There are two types of speakers: Those who get nervous and those who are liars.”
There are a few things you should never say during a presentation, but there’s one in particular you should avoid at all costs.
On this episode I’m going to discuss about a bad habit that I often see when it comes to preparing presentations. That is, starting with PowerPoint.
Most presentations are created coming from a big misunderstanding. What is it and how can we clarify it?
"You’ll never be able to reach people’s heads before touching their heart—and the single best way to touch people’s hearts is to tell stories." —Carmine Gallo
Question: in order to make a great presentation, do you have to rehearse several times before the big day?
Smiles are powerful because they are universal: in all cultures people smile to express joy and satisfaction. If there is one thing we can do to improve the impact of our presentations, it’s to smile a little more.
If you want to end strong, plan your presentation with the end in mind. The conclusion is not just the last chronological piece of the topics you covered during a presentation—it is the main theme. Starting with the end in mind means that your conclusion—what the audience has to remember—comes first.
Starting strong is important because it only takes a few seconds for people to decide whether or not to follow you
How can you present your ideas in a way that will be remembered? There are three elements to consider.
You can have the greatest idea in the world and the slides of the century but if you can’t communicate your ideas, it doesn’t matter. And it’s negligent, because you deny the world of something of great value.
The New York subway map is geographically complete, accurate and detailed while the map of the London tube is based on fiction. Which one works best and why?
A PowerPoint slide contains on average 40 words. With such an average the reason why most presentations are boring is quite obvious.
An animation is useful only if it helps your listeners better understand your message. If it doesn't, it becomes a distraction. When in doubt, leave it out.
Your audience will remember you if you give a great presentation, not because you’ve included a repetitive element on each slide.
How to create visual presentations AND a hand-out for more details without spending too much time.
“Slides are slides. Documents are documents. They aren't the same thing […] Much death-by-PowerPoint suffering could be eliminated if presenters clearly separated the two in their own minds before they even started planning their talks.”—Garr Reynolds
We often focus too much on the data itself and too little on the message behind the data
In order to create a great presentation, it’s important to understand how to design a great slide.
White space is not wasted space. It is what more than anything else determines the functionality of a presentation.
Signal-to-noise ratio is one of the fundamental principles of design, which is also relevant in the context of presentations.
Paying attention to the design of a presentation is essential not only because it makes a presentation nicer, but also more functional. Effective design helps your audience better understand your message.
Here's why most presentations go against what science tells us about what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to communication.
Why do some ideas survive and others die? Chip and Dan Heath have given us the answer in a book that is essential for improving communication skills (Made To Stick).
A presentation is a mix of art and science. Although the creation of a presentation is a creative activity, creativity alone isn’t enough—it has to go hand in hand with an understanding of what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to visual communication.
People can't read and listen at the same time. Why? The written text is processed in the same part of the brain that processes the spoken text.
Have you ever wondered how soon an audience should be able to understand the message behind a slide?
Turn your laptop off, take pen and paper and plan your presentation in an analogue way.