You probably don’t think there’s much of a comparison between you and Mickey Mouse.
Yet this cultural icon has many lessons for you to improve your effectiveness as a speaker.
In this article, we examine eight key speaking insights that speakers can learn from Disneyland and the entire Disney entertainment empire.
Have you ever thought about the relationship between time and public speaking?
On the surface, you engage your audience second by second, stringing together words into sentences that, over the duration of your presentation, may last minutes or perhaps hours.
Yet, the impact of your speaking experiences may last days, weeks, months, or even years — for you and for those in your audiences.
In this article, we examine time scales ranging from a tenth of a second to hundreds of years, and consider how each of these scales is relevant to you as a speaker.
What if I told you that you could attend a series of workshops given by seven presentation experts?
What if I told you that you could do so without getting on a plane, a bus, or even a bicycle?
What if told it was free?
I’m pleased to invite you to attend a free online webinar series focussed on improving your skills as a presenter.
The speakers include several experts which have been featured before on Six Minutes:
Other speakers include Cliff Atkinson, Bruce Gabrielle, Simon Morton, and… me!
Webinars are scheduled every Wednesday. They start on September 7th, and continue through October 26th. (I’m presenting on October 19th.) Sessions will be recorded and available for playback if you can’t make every one… but you must be registered to get access.
I attended several of the sessions in last year’s Outstanding Presentations Workshop, and I learned a great deal. I highly recommend investing just an hour each week in this informative series.
Read more about the Outstanding Presentations Workshop on the website and register today!
Six Minutes is back.
Well, almost. After an extended absence due to a busy spring and summer, career shifts, medical journeys, and many other things, Six Minutes will be returning to publish regular articles again soon. We’ve got a number of articles going through final review, and we’ll be publishing them in the days and weeks to come.
In the meantime, you may wish to explore our article archive with hundreds of public speaking articles written over the past four years.
Thank you to all of you who have contacted Six Minutes during the publishing hiatus. It was humbling to hear that Six Minutes continues to be a helpful resource to so many speakers around the world. I regret that I haven’t been able to respond to everyone, but I’ll hopefully be able to make amends in the weeks and months to come.
The act of speaking in public and the process of improving one’s speaking skills are wrought with conflicting emotions, exhilarating highs, and frustrating lows.
There are times when applause makes you think you’re the greatest speaker in the world, and there are times when the silence of the audience makes you want to crawl into a hole.
In short, the mental game for speaking in public is a jumble of thoughts, experiences, and emotions.
In this article, we apply the wisdom of the Six Thinking Hats to provide a framework for sorting out this jumble and gaining useful perspectives which can help us improve.
This afternoon, I watched Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech again. (You can find the full speech text and video, along with an extensive Six Minutes speech analysis here.)
I was reminded of the tremendous power speeches can wield. One cannot watch Dr. King or read his words without stirring emotions, even though the speech was given over 47 years ago.
It’s the time of year for making — and breaking — resolutions.
Whether your resolutions are health-related (exercise more), family-related (spend more quality time together), or career-related (become a more effective speaker), there’s a proven way to set yourself up to succeed — make SMART resolutions.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to Six Minutes readers around the world. I hope this season is peaceful and happy for you, your family, and friends.
It’s been quiet around Six Minutes for a while, but we’ll be resuming regular articles soon.
In the meantime, you may be interested in some holiday resources:
Imagine you are scheduled to deliver a speech in two weeks. At first, you are excited about the opportunity. Very soon, however, a feeling of dread overwhelms you — what will your speech topic be?
Conventional wisdom says to talk about what you know, but conventional wisdom is only partially correct.
This article reveals three questions you must ask before choosing your speech topic, and how the answers lead you to great speech topics for you and your audience.
Six Minutes weekend reviews bring the best public speaking articles to you.
This review features topics including:
Speech introductions are often an afterthought, hastily thrown together at the last second by someone with little knowledge of the speaker, their speech, or the value for the audience.
And yet, speech introductions are critical to the success of a speech.
While a strong speech opening is vital, nothing helps establish a speaker’s credibility more than a carefully-crafted and well-delivered introduction.
This article gives you a series of practical tips for how to introduce a speaker to position them with the best possible chance to succeed.
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