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Runners train for months to prepare themselves for an important race, yet all they’re doing is simple, repetitive exercises. Does that make the exercises unimportant? Of course not!
Along the same lines, below are some simple yet powerful “exercises” for honing your confidence, credibility, and audience connection immediately before your next high-stakes presentation opportunity.
When it comes to presenting, does practice make perfect?
In a word, no.
Practice makes permanent.
Your goal should be to practice perfectly, not just practice. The more you do something, the more comfortable it feels – whether right or wrong.
So, we need to do it right when we practice our presentations.
Knowing a subject doesn’t guarantee success. The ability to articulate the message and connect with audience members is what counts – and perfect practice can make this happen.
Imagine… you’ve just been introduced.
In a few seconds, you’re going to deliver the speech of your life. Your opening hook is crisp. Your closing is powerful. Your stories are polished. Your attire is impeccable. You are confident.
And then the power goes out.
Or someone spills juice on you.
Or music starts blaring from outside the room.
Or the CEO leaves the room.
Or your key prop is missing.
Or a mild earthquake shakes the room.
Or your shirt ripped.
Or your computer freezes.
Or … (insert your worst nightmare here) .
There’s only one thing you can do — only one thing you must do.
If you are an average speaker, you suck.
So do all of your colleagues with average presentation skills.
Let’s see why this is so…
Your speaking ethos is critical to ensure that your audience is present, listening, and open to being persuaded by your ideas.
But, how do you maximize your ethos for a given speech and a given audience? Is ethos fixed before you open your mouth? Is there anything you can do during a speech that makes a difference?
This article shows you practical tactics you can employ to establish and increase your ethos.
Confessions of a Public Speaker is a highly entertaining and insightful insider’s view of public speaking, with value for speakers of all levels.
This article is the latest of a series of public speaking book reviews here on Six Minutes.
Imagine… you are the speaker that people want. They crave your expertise, and they are willing to pay you for it.
A dream? Not if you understand how to brand yourself as an expert, one of the steps to becoming a speaker in demand.
In this article, we tap into the wisdom of five experts from the fields of branding and public speaking. They discuss the importance of personal branding, and they offer advice about specific tools you can use to shape your personal brand.
As you struggle to improve your public speaking skills, you have probably been frustrated.
Frustrated… by nerves that never go away.
Frustrated… by audience questions that trip you up.
Frustrated… by the process of skills improvement which is more evolutionary than revolutionary.
In this article, we learn how to end the frustration by learning to love the process. We draw five speaking lessons from an extremely unlikely source: a motivational hooping video.
Many speakers are guilty of making faulty assumptions about their presentations, and their ability to deliver them well. Sometimes even seasoned speaking professionals like me fall victim to this behavior.
How about you?
In this article, you will learn:
Think of a group of people whose careers or circumstances require them to work well with one another: athletic teams, orchestras, or emergency room workers. If individual members “do their own thing,” the entire group suffers.
When you’re asked to present as part of a panel of experts or a team making a sales pitch, you might think that there is safety in numbers and that you need to prepare less than if you were speaking on your own.
The truth is that, for your audience, a group presentation is only as strong as its weakest presenter. Here’s how to help your team create a strong and unified group presentation.
Some speaking sins, like the occasional “ah” or “um”, will not doom your presentation. With good content, you can earn forgiveness from the audience for those sins.
Other speaking sins are so grave that when you commit them, your speech or presentation is certain to fail. This article reveals the seven deadly sins of public speaking.
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