Humour is a great tool to use in public speaking and if you can be naturally funny while staying on point, you can really engage and connect with the audience. Funny man John Cleese said “If I can get you to laugh, you like me more, which makes you more open to my ideas. And, if I can get you …
One of the rules that I lay out before each of my public speaking workshops is that “today there are no mistakes – just lessons”. And of course what I mean is that no matter what happens when you stand up in front of the group to speak, it is not a mistake, rather it is a learning experience, a …
Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, lists habit number 5 as “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”. He places a lot of emphasis on empathic listening and deep listening, without judging, analysing, problem solving or putting your point of view forward. Stephen later goes on to describe the importance of presenting your …
Michael Grinder, one of the gurus of body language and non verbal communication talks about different things that people do in their non verbal communication that will make them appear approachable or credible. Clearly at different stages of a speech you will want to be approachable. But at other stages, you will certainly want to be more credible. So knowing …
When you undertake speaking, training or presenting, your voice is your number one tool. It is the instrument that you use to get your message across and like any other profession or task, it is import that you maintain and treat that equipment properly. Here are a couple of tips to keep you voice in peek condition Warm up. You …
There are lots of words and phrases that we use when speaking that are simply not required and frankly can become quite distracting. The classics of course are the uhm’s and the ah’s. These are sometimes extended by adding “and uhm or so ah”. Other filler words included actually, obviously, you know, etc etc, like and OK then. When you …
