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A wise learner once said, “Sometimes you just have to shift gears.” This advice came from a leader participating in a presentation skills workshop with members of his team. The client was in the financial services industry. Their presentations to clients included a LOT of highly complex, technical information. They faced two challenges. First,...
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We learn a lot from the people we work with. Recently, on the last day of a workshop, one of our learners said that the most important thing he took from the class was that “Anyone can be more effective with time.” When he made this comment, he was talking about pausing long enough to...
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The Turpin tagline—Find your focus. Be yourself. Only better.—is really simple, and we’ve been using it for years. But we keep finding new resonance in it. In this post, I’m going to talk about the “be yourself” part. Recently, we were comparing notes and discovered that we’ve each had a few learners who put on...
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For some business presenters, nervousness is a temporary condition. When they’ve moved past the first few minutes, their nerves seem to float away. For other presenters, nervousness is long-lasting and debilitating. It never goes away, even when the presentation is going well. We’ve heard this described as having an out-of-body experience or experiencing an eleven...
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I recently delivered a workshop for eight very nervous presenters. They were a great group and talked very frankly about their worries and concerns about presenting. Their nervousness stemmed from different things. For example, One of the presenters hated being the center of attention, so speaking to groups increased her anxiety. One was a non-native...
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In recent posts, we’ve talked a lot about what to do when you’re the central speaker in a business situation. But there’s another role you take on when you lead a meeting, deliver a presentation, or lead a training session: facilitator. Too often, business communicators think of facilitation as simply a matter of fielding questions...
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Not long ago, we were working with a group of highly technical professionals who had recently moved into a sales role. While these folks are excellent in their technical work, their ability to be persuasive when talking with clients was lacking. One of the topics we discussed was the need to lead with benefits. That...
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You may have heard the adage that people fear public speaking more than death. In their 2012 study,¹ Karen Kangas Dwyer and Marlina M. Davidson proved that this is true. More than sickness, financial problems, or, yes, even death, we really don’t want to get up in front of our peers to speak. Nervous speakers...
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We’ve all been meeting virtually for a long time now, and there is no shortage of articles, videos, webinars, and books on how to do it “right.” Most of those resources focus on the technical stuff. This article will focus on the human side of the equation and what we’ve learned while providing virtual presentation...
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Inclusiveness and Interactivity The first article in this two-part series focused on the planning required for successful team collaboration. It focused on framing meetings to feel relevant, focused, and efficient for participants. This article will look at what meeting facilitators can do to encourage collaboration during the meeting. Successful collaboration serves both the team involved...
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