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12 Articles Found

The Power of Message and Delivery: Crafting Impactful Presentations and Interviews

What is the relative importance of presentation and interview content -- the words spoken -- versus the way the information is presented -- such as tone of voice and nonverbal cues? This article closely examines this question, separating fact from fiction.


The Fundamentals of Public Speaking: Purposeful Hand Gestures

Big purposeful gestures help you stand out and are immediately memorable It has been five years since we posted the article, "Fundamentals of Public Speaking: Using Nonverbal Cues," so it is overdue for us to drill a little deeper into the idea of purposeful hand gestures. In that article, we encouraged presenters to use their hands to reinforce their ideas. In the same way that a picture can help to quickly explain what otherwise might be an overly complex idea, meaningful gestures can serve as visual aids to help the audience understand and remember important points in a story. We are careful to describe these gestures as purposeful to distinguish them from gestures that lack purpose. Since public speaking inherently puts us outside our usual comfort zone, many speakers lapse into self-destructive bad habits that make them feel a bit …


Align How You Communicate with How You Want to be Interpreted

Preparation and Practice Ensure Your Public Speaking Performance is Powerful! Every aspect of a presentation should be planned and rehearsed. We call this preparation and practice -- two of the "3 Ps". The third "P" is performance, the realization you can't just sleepwalk through a presentation -- you must unlock your inner performer. Preparation starts with knowing as much as you can about the audience, which leads to the development of messages that are built around the audience's interests. If your presentation is going to educate, engage and mobilize your audience, it has to focus primarily on the wants and needs of your audience. If it's about you, you're sunk. Preparation for a presentation stretches beyond defining what you will say and includes how you will say it. This should start with asking if you want the information interpreted positively. …


PR Reality Check: Is Trump Killing Media Training?

Is the candidate re-writing the rules or simply a celebrity getting special treatment? For weeks we have been trying to understand the implications -- if there are any -- of the phenomenon of Donald Trump's success to date in his pursuit of the Republican nomination. As has been well documented, Mr. Trump has violated many of the fundamental rules of public speaking and media interactions, yet he has established and held onto a solid base of support.  Some aspecs of his communications strategy seem pretty straightforward and are rooted in polling that suggests a portion of voters find conventional political behavior repulsive: He espouses a hatred for many journalists, which excites those who distrust the media and believe bias unfairly colors the way news is presented. A September 2015 Gallup poll found that only four in 10 Americans say they …


How to Make Messages Memorable

Want to be unforgettable? Start by dumping all but three or four key messages. An inconvenient truth that constrains the success of every spokesperson is the limited ability of the audience to remember. Humans do a lot of things well, and one of them is taking in urgently needed information about threats and opportunities. In order to take in and process that information, our brain is wired to immediately forget information that either isn’t clearly understood or isn’t perceived as important. Your audience isn't aware of this, but they are constantly assessing everything you tell them. If it isn't perceived as important, they are unlikely to remember what you want them to remember. If it takes work for them to understand, they are wired to let the information drift away. First, some background. Working memory, or short-term memory, is everything …


How to Fix Four Common Public Speaking Mistakes

In our public speaking workshops, I will often tell participants that I don’t want them to be fake or act like the presenter they wish they were. Audiences want authenticity. They want the real you. But they also want to feel your impact. They want all of you.


John F. Kennedy's Legacy as Communicator-in-Chief

Remembering JFK's Masterful Dealings with the Media On this 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, there will inevitably be a lot of reflection as well as a fair amount of curiosity. I suspect that those under 35 years old were more influenced by the Oliver Stone movie than by family stories and recollections, as I was. Having grown up in the late 60s and 70s in a politically active house full of democrats in western Connecticut, I remember stories about my mom having a chance to shake JFK's hand as well as discussions about JFK's uncanny ability to manage the media and his public image. We had the Vaughn Meader album, "The First Family," which lampooned JFK's press dealings and my older brother had it memorized. Of course, at the time, President Kennedy's uncanny ability was seen in stark contrast …


Breaking Bad Habits to Improve Public Speaking

We recently returned from conducting a couple days of Media Interview Skills Training on the West Coast for one of our aerospace clients and wanted to share some insights that were discussed. One thing we've noticed during the past couple years is a tendency particularly among younger women to inflect up at the end of their sentences. They say powerful things but end them on the upswing. It makes every sentence sound like a question. It saps them of credibility and authority, making them appear eternally uncertain.  I love meaningful voice inflection. As a young broadcaster, I loved watching Bill Kurtis on the local CBS affiliate in Chicago. He was a master of using pacing and inflection to build drama and pull a viewer into a story. But if your inflection goes up? At the end of every phrase? It …


Fundamentals of Public Speaking: Using Nonverbal Cues

I just completed two days of presentation skills training with a large government agency and wanted to briefly share some thoughts about body language and nonverbal communications that came up repeatedly. First, it is essential that presenters think about and prepare for what they want to do with their body during a presentation. We tend to spend most of our time planning for WHAT we are going to say, but completely neglect HOW we are going to say it. The way you stand, your facial expression, your ability to make eye contact and what you do with your hands can each amplify or distract from the potential impact of your presentation. The way you stand. The most powerful way to stand is feet about should width apart, shoulders square and hands at your sides. Try standing that way. Do you …


A Speech that Shapes Our Lives Nearly 50 Years Later: "I Have a Dream"

No single speech during the 20th Century shaped the lives of 21st Century Americans as did the "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28, 1963. It is great to be able to share it with you -- both the video of the speech and the text below.   In our Presentation Skills Training session, we often examine aspects of this speech and extract lessons for all presenters. Two very simple things that every speaker can do include: Using repetition. Dr. King repeats key phrases such as “100 years later…” This can help to establish a theme, making clear to the audience those elements of the presentation that are important. Later, repetition is used with the phrases, “I have a dream,” and “Let freedom ring,” both of which are central to the story being told. Creating pictures with words. By using opposites, as he’s …