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20-year Milestone for Turpin Communication

Dale Ludwig
August 27, 2012
20-year Milestone for Turpin Communication

This week marks Turpin Communication’s 20th year in business. Although we’ve had 19 anniversaries leading up to this one, most of which have gone by unnoticed, this one feels different. This one feels like it needs to be acknowledged, even if it is only in this blog. So here it is. First, I want to...

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How Can I Help a Nervous Presenter?

Greg Owen-Boger
August 20, 2012
How Can I Help a Nervous Presenter?

Managers often come to us and ask how they can help their team members get a handle on the nervousness they experience when presenting. This isn’t surprising, of course, since this type of nervousness is a real issue for a lot of people. We all experience it differently and to varying degrees, but the reality...

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Encouraging Discussion

Dale Ludwig
July 23, 2012
How to Encourage Discussions That are Healthy And Impactful

This is a follow-up to the blog I wrote a few months ago, They Won’t Speak if You Don’t Listen. In that post, I mentioned that facilitators have two fundamental goals. They need to (1) encourage participation in the conversation and (2) control the discussion once it begins. As I said, facilitators often spend too much...

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Helping Employees Gain Respect by Improving Their Communication

Greg Owen-Boger
May 14, 2012
Helping Employees Gain Respect by Improving Their Communication

As a communication consultant working with presenters, facilitators, and trainers, I have a lot of interesting conversations with business leaders about their employees. The conversations may go something like this: “Greg, I know John is smart. He has great ideas and is always willing to put himself out there, but in meetings, he doesn’t communicate...

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They Won’t Speak if You Don’t Listen

Dale Ludwig
April 16, 2012
managing group presentations

One of the biggest problems facilitators have is very basic: failure to stay in the moment to listen and respond to what people have to say. When we work with facilitators in our workshops, we always say that there are two primary goals in every discussion. (1) Facilitators need to encourage the conversation. They need...

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Engage in the Conversation

Dale Ludwig
March 5, 2012
Engage in conversation during business presentations

As you know, if you’ve ever participated in one of our workshops, we talk a lot about the use of engagement skills, eye contact, and pausing. We say that using these skills to engage listeners in the conversation  reduces nervousness, brings listeners into the conversation, and helps you avoid the hazards of a canned performance....

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Presentation Baggage

Greg Owen-Boger
January 30, 2012
Presentation Baggage Causes Barriers to Learning

Recently I had a lively phone call with a potential client. It was clear that he had done his homework on us and our competitors and had prepared some tough questions for me. Here’s my favorite question: “What’s the biggest barrier you face when working with people in your workshops?” I love this question. My...

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TRUST: It’s Yours to Lose

Greg Owen-Boger
March 4, 2011
How to Maintain Trust When Delivering Business Presentations

Earlier this week, I was coaching a senior executive on a very high-stakes presentation. He told me he wanted to be perceived as trustworthy. Setting trustworthiness as a goal is common among our clients, so there was nothing new about it in this situation. But as the discussion went on, he asked me what he...

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Practicing Your Presentation is NOT the Way to Go

Dale Ludwig
February 10, 2011
do not practice presentation

For the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of writing. My writing project is a book for business presenters. It began as a simple update and expansion of the Reference Guide (the booklet we give participants in our presentation workshops), but the scope of it expanded to the point where I’m now writing...

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