It’s no fun to give a talk with rusty public speaking skills—and fortunately, you don’t have to. Even if it’s been weeks (or months!) since you last spoke in public, you can scrape off the rust by polishing these three high-level skills: 1. Start with Your Rusty Physical Skills Public speaking starts with a physical Read More
Practice Makes Perfect
Don’t Break the Streak (Because Little Steps Have a Big Impact)
Long ago, in another life, I took a writing class with author Heather Lewis. Heather was a brilliant novelist and teacher, but the most important thing she taught me wasn’t about literary technique. It was how to build a streak of successes. A Streak Can Be Positive or Negative Often—whether you’re writing a novel (as Read More
Public Speaking Tip 99: For a Successful Presentation, Practice Individual Ideas Throughout Your Day
NOTE: This post builds on the ideas discussed in Public Speaking Tip 98: For a Successful Presentation, Get Your Attitude Together Before You Prepare Your Speech and concludes with Public Speaking Tip 100: For a Successful Presentation, Go for What You Know with Your Audience. A lot of people don’t practice for big presentations because they “don’t have time.” But practicing doesn’t take Read More
Public Speaking Tip 85: Put Down that Editing Pen!
One of the classic public speaking dilemmas is how to balance the time you spend preparing a presentation (i.e., planning, writing, and editing it) versus the time you spend practicing it. This is a tough choice, because you almost never have enough time to devote to either of these activities, let alone both of them. Read More
Public Speaking Tip 84: Learn to Tell Good Business Stories (Part II)
In Public Speaking Tip 83, I covered the basic structure of good business stories (they’re like good regular stories, with a few twists). Now it’s time to create business stories that will work for you. Here’s how: 1. Chose the Business Stories You Want to Tell Notice that I didn’t say “choose perfect business stories,” or “the world’s Read More