Many presenters ask us about the best way to get their presentations started. They say that once the conversation gets going, they’re fine. But getting through the opening is always uncomfortable. Getting past the presentation nervousness that builds up before and at the start is a struggle. This is a tough issue for us to...
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For some presenters, preparation is all about collecting data and turning it into PowerPoint slides. There’s more to effective, efficient preparation than that, though. It’s not that you won’t use slides. It’s that by creating slides right off the bat, you may skip steps intended to help you craft your content to meet the needs...
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I’ve written a lot about how important it is for presenters to initiate and manage a genuine conversation with their audiences—how it’s the presenter’s responsibility to focus on making listening and understanding easy for everyone. But what if there is a team involved? What are the challenges unique to that situation? Features of a Successful...
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We are always looking for new ways to improve the impact that we have on our clients, their teams, and the portion of the business that they support. This article is about a recent client request and how we made an on-the-fly adjustment to a workshop, which resulted in a big win for the presenters....
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Some time back, Dale and I were the guest speakers on a webinar. The topic was about how we’ve redefined business presentations as Orderly Conversations. We were talking about the use of eye contact and pausing in order to get yourself engaged in the conversation. When we talk about being engaged as a presenter, we’re talking about...
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As a leader, you expect your employees’ business communication to be effective and efficient. But is it? Too often, it’s not. (I’ve written about the business implications here.) However, it doesn’t have to be that way. To be effective and efficient, business interactions must succeed on two levels. Helping your employees understand this concept is the...
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As a presenter, when you are engaged in the conversation, you are connected to your thoughts and externally focused on the people you are speaking with. If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you know that some presenters are NOT engaged in the process. Not only are their presentations hard to listen...
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In our business presentation workshops, we sometimes do an exercise in which we stretch the length of a pause—way beyond what would ever be comfortable or necessary—in order to show our learners how pausing helps eliminate a variety of presentation habits they want to avoid. We also teach people that in a presentation or meeting...
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You’re a detail-oriented person working in a highly technical position. You probably wonder how much detail you should go into when presenting to managers and leaders. You may even have been asked not to go into information overload again. You’re not alone. This is a topic that comes up a lot in our presentation skills...
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Among many of our learners, there is a persistent belief that the number of slides in one’s presentation is somehow related to the amount of time the presentation will take. While there is some connection when it comes to big differences (a 600 slide deck will probably take longer to present than a 6 slide...
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