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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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Part 1, Part 2 This is the final article about the perils of business presenters following the same path as the elocutionary movement. The great thing about The Ideal Orator is that its approach, from our twenty-first-century perspective, is completely over the top. Anyone reading this book today would recognize its unnatural exaggeration of delivery behaviors, its focus...
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Part 1, Part 3 As I mentioned in the first article on this topic, I stumbled upon an old elocution textbook among a pile of books that were about to be hauled away from my mother’s house. It was published in 1895, at the tail end of the elocutionary movement’s popularity. While the movement began as a...
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Part 2, Part 3 Several years ago, my mother was cleaning out her attic. She was very good at throwing things out, but always hesitated when it came to books. When I visited her during this cleaning phase, she directed me to the latest stack and told me to take what I wanted. Last chance, she...
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