My first foray into public speaking was painful to say the least. I was so sure that I was going to fall flat on my face without notes that I did what many people do – I wrote something compelling, and I read it to my audience. What I quickly realized was that this is a recipe for disaster; if they wanted to read what I wrote, they would have done that. When you have something worthwhile to say, then say it, don’t read it. What’s worse is that I was being asked to speak about topics that I was passionate about, and I wanted to pass this on to my audience. What I ended up doing instead was connecting…
Blog posts
The Magic Formula for your Next Talk
I speak because I like the sound of my own voice,” is a phrase that you don’t ever hear. However, a different take on this, “He must love the sound of his own voice,”…
Carl Jung: Yoda’s Great Grandfather
George Lucas brought us Yoda … without him, Yoda wouldn’t exist – he’s the closest thing we have to Yoda’s dad. But Yoda’s lineage can be traced back even farther, and is quite impressive…
How Steve Jobs Hacked the Commencement Speech
Steve Jobs, the “speaker of speakers” was invited to Stanford University to deliver the commencement speech on June 12, 2005. He wanted to tell the graduating students to live boldly and to chase their…
Know the Value of your Audience’s Time
I don’t care who your audience is, or what setting you find yourself in, the following exercise is extremely helpful in the process of grasping the importance of each word you speak. There is…
The Myth of the Memorable Long-Form Speech
It is a fairly well-known fact that TED Talk speakers are limited to 18 minutes. The primary reason for this is that the human brain has trouble focusing on a single topic for more…
Stop Your Yapping! (Shorter is always better.)
How much time should you allot to your guest speaker? Well, that depends on what the purpose of the talk is. If you default to the norm, you’ll give the speaker 30 – 60…
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