Want to improve communication skills for yourself or your team?
Read our Blogs and download our Infographics for helpful tips, techniques, and advice you can put to use today.
A recent workshop participant said, “I don’t want to simplify this slide. The abundance of the data is where the story is.” As his coach, I cannot argue with that. This is exactly why those one-size-fits-all rules about the number of bullets or words on a slide don’t work. Admittedly, sometimes less is more. (And...
read more
A friend and fellow ATD Chicagoland board member sent this article to me, 9 Habits of Highly Effective Speakers, and asked what I thought. If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, here is a snapshot of the nine “habits.” They are authentic. They choose phrases carefully. They keep it short. They rewrite. And they rewrite some...
read more
I remember watching Greg (Turpin’s VP) moderate a panel discussion several years ago. As I observed, I realized that the discussion was one of the best I’d ever attended. It was good, not only because of the insightful panelists (and they were) but also because of how Greg kept the conversation orderly through the use of some...
read more
Last week we talked about “Beth,” a nervous presenter. Beth is a smart, articulate professional, but when it came to presenting, she struggled and became self-conscious. The first hurdle we had to jump was to settle her thoughts so that she could be in control. We did that through active pausing. Beth was amazed at how...
read more
I was working with an extremely nervous presenter in a recent Mastering Your Presentations workshop. She described her presentation experience like this: “My head races and swirls, and then it switches back on itself. I know that words are coming out of my mouth, but I don’t have any control over them. I must sound like...
read more
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 This is the final article in a series focusing on the need to take a fresh look at the visuals you use in your presentations. This article focuses on visuals intended to bring emphasis or emotion to the conversation. This type of visual might be a photograph (a completed project or...
read more
Part 1, Part 2, Part 4 This is the third in a series of four articles about the need to take a fresh look at the visuals you use in your presentations. In this article, I’ll talk about images that you use during your presentations that exist on their own outside of it (things like sales numbers,...
read more
Part 1, Part 3, Part 4 This is the second in a series of four articles about the need to take a fresh look at the visuals you use in your presentations. Here’s the question I posed at the end of the last article. As you know, we define presentations as Orderly Conversations. We need to ask how...
read more
Facilitating a group discussion always brings with it a unique set of challenges. Every group involves different personalities, perspectives, and needs. Facilitators have to work hard to create an environment in which a productive conversation can take place. When the facilitator is also the boss, the process gets even more complicated. The atmosphere in the...
read more
Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 We need a new way to talk about the visual component of business presentations. I didn’t use the term “visual aids” to describe this part of the process for a reason. That term, one that has been around long enough to have been applied to everything from a flip chart to...
read more