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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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Your success as a business presenter always exists on two levels. On one level, it is determined by whether the stated goal of the presentation is reached. Did the buyer agree to buy, for example. Or, did your team see the need for the new procedure you’re asking them to follow? This type of success...
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“I swear I said that they’d see incremental sales growth,” said Angela as she sat down to review her video with me. Angela was a participant in a recent Mastering Your Presentations workshop. Dale Ludwig was the lead instructor. I was the participants’ video coach. My job is to guide participants through video review, focusing...
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I was working with a presenter the other day who was stuck in what we call no man’s land. No man’s land is a spot about halfway between the laptop and the screen. It doesn’t matter what size the room is or how the equipment is set up; No man’s land is always the spot...
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Earlier this year, Greg Owen-Boger posted a blog entry here called “TRUST: It’s Yours to Lose.” In it, he talked about what a senior executive needed to do to keep the trust of the people in his organization. Greg’s point was about being genuine, transparent, and respecting the needs and views of others. Today I’d like...
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I was on LinkedIn and ran across a discussion that caught my eye. The question that was posed was this: “You prepared a 30-minute presentation, and when you arrived, it was reduced to 20 minutes. What would you do?” This is a common occurrence, of course. Meetings often run long. If you’re at the end of the...
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