Dear Gentle Reader: You Can’t Make this Stuff Up! Imagine that you’re the third scheduled speaker at a graduation ceremony. And as you sit onstage, waiting to deliver your remarks, you suddenly realize that… …the first two speakers are giving THE ACTUAL SPEECH you wrote for this occasion—VERBATIM! Bizarre?? Yes, but It Happened! Specifically, it Read More
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How to Use the Language of Success [Handout]
NOTE: This post is based on How to Say It for Women, by Dr. Phyllis Mindell (1937-2022), who taught and wrote about how women and executives can speak more powerfully at work. Click on each page of this two-page handout to print it or save it to your computer. And also see The 7 Public Speaking Read More
The 7 Public Speaking “Deadly Sins” for Women [Handout]
NOTE: This post is based on the work of Dr. Phyllis Mindell (1937-2022), who taught and wrote about how women and executives can speak more powerfully at work. Click the handout below to print or save it to your computer. (And see also How to Use the Language of Success [Handout.]) Related Posts How to Use Read More
The One Way that Public Speaking ISN’T Conversational
You’ve probably heard about how public speaking should be “conversational”—and that’s totally true. Your tone, your attitude, your body language, your choice of words, the way you explain things, all of these elements should be conversational. But the one way in which public speaking shouldn’t be like a conversation is in it’s structure. Why? Because Read More
Rhythm: You’ve Got It, Now Get in Touch with It! (A “25 x 25 in ’25” Public Speaking Exercise)
Why does rhythm matter? We’ve all had experiences of being in front of a public speaker who had all the right words, and even had compelling ideas, but just couldn’t command our attention. (In the political arena, think of Al Gore, or Mitt Romney.) Why not? Probably because they didn’t have rhythm (or rather, they Read More