Wanna know the super-secret magical ingredient that can make or break your presentation? It’s energy. Without it, your speech is doomed. With it, you may be able to compensate for a talk that’s light on insight. It took me a while to figure out what energy...
I spoke at a big conference this week of PR professionals and was frankly appalled at the poor presentation skills of some of the presenters. These are, after all, communications pros! I realized many speakers were picked on the basis of their substantive expertise...
There’s been some interesting debate on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere about the Clint Eastwood speech, which I labeled a debacle. Some people feel it was successful. It was an authentic moment with Clint being Clint and the crowd inside the hall ate it up. I...
Last night’s Clint Eastwood debacle at the Republican convention points to an imperative for anyone planning a conference or convention: control your message, control your speakers. It’s a difficult job and the convention planners and Romney’s staff...
It’s easy to forget in our lawyered up society that some lessons are timeless and based on basic rules of fairness. Like the matter of intellectual property and what is and is not “free” on the Internet. I was reminded of this during a visit to a...
One of the hardest things in public speaking is maintaining your focus — keeping your mind free of unnecessary distractions. I was helping out with some speaker training for a group of young engineers the other day and observed one participant after another...
