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Public Speaking Skills

Discussions on the art and science of public speaking.

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Published in Public Speaking Skills

  • Article

    Why Less Is More

    A full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal sells for well over $100,000. If you were spending that kind of money, would you devote the vast majority of that real estate to empty space? Why do you suppose that so many advertising agencies create ads that do just that: small images of the product surrounded by open field...

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  • Article

    Eliminating Question Marks

    Your job as presentation designer is to create an interactive document that 1) supports the ideas, concepts, or arguments you need to put forth, and 2) keys the audience to what you’re going to talk about just before you fulfill your role in the process, which is to deliver the presentation . And that’s the rub: the p...

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  • Article

    Animation — Designing on the Fly

    Why Animate? To begin, by animation we simply mean to control the way and order in which an object appears on the screen. PowerPoint blesses us with 144 different ways to “introduce” text or graphics, almost all of which are major detractors from the presentation itself. A few of these “special effects” work to enhanc...

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  • Article

    The Eulogy or the Box

    “If I ever stop getting nervous before a performance, it’s time for me to quit.”— Garth Brooks Mark Twain is often quoted as saying, “There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars.” But, why do people become afraid when speaking in public? We as humans all have fears and insecurities...

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  • Article

    Signal Your Passion

    Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter for President Reagan and current columnist for the Wall Street Journal, has a favorite saying about presentation audiences : “They won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care!” Regardless of how compelling you believe your message to be, your audience won’t become e...

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  • Article

    Defending Your Slides

    How many times have you found yourself the victim of a sales call? If 'victim' is too strong a word, then how about 'hostage'? Or maybe merely 'prisoner'? If you've ever been forced to sit through a sales presentation that has you asking yourself, above all, "when will this end?" — then you know what I'm talking about...

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  • Article

    The Death of Bullet Points

    When was the last time you went to a presentation and came away impressed by the slides? It is, of course, fashionable these days to speak negatively about PowerPoint, and how most on-screen presentations put audiences to “death” with an onslaught of one bullet-pointed paragraph of words after another. It is also true...

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  • Article

    Passion and the Pause

    Recently I was invited to San Jose for two days to train and assess over 30 speakers at a conference of high-tech companies eager to hear what predictions these presenters had about the future of the industry. My overarching assessment of the group of five who presented to the entire assembly: unlike any other organiz...

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  • Article

    Energizing Your Presentation

    Have you ever been to a boring presentation? Most of us have, and most of them are boring because there is no life or passion in what the speaker is saying. People remember more of what they see and hear as opposed to what they read. But to be really memorable, we need to add some life to what we present. So how can w...

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  • Article

    NLP: Voodoo Performance Improvement

    Ever been nervous, anxious, or downright fearful when having to speak to a group? Try this: Imagine everyone in the group is looking at you with smiling adoration. Feel that they can't wait to hear the next thing you're going to say. See them nodding approvingly and occasionally glancing at each other, astonished at t...

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