Practice Your Presentation Like a Pro
When it comes to public speaking, does practice make perfect? No. Practice makes permanent. Practicing reinforces behavior patterns—right or wrong. A few ill-advised, but common practice methods: ● Repetitively reading a presentation, trying to memorize exact wording. Attempting to memorize the exact wording of your speech not only is very time-consuming, but also can lead to […]
Checklists Reduce Speech Disasters
The meeting planner had a panicked look on her face as she frantically searched through her bag in the hall outside the main conference room I had just finished speaking in. There were 5 minutes left before the next speaker. “Is something wrong?” I asked. “The remote is dead.” The presentation remote had worked fine […]
Engage with Eye Contact (practice with a “fake” audience)
Video from my online course, No Fear Public Speaking PDF of 3 Faces for your “fake” audience (or just draw your own–you only really need eyes to look at). Learn to be a Confident Speaker! Take Diane’s Online Course, No Fear Public Speaking: Look, Sound and Feel Confident!
10 Ways to Create a Confident Mindset for Speaking
Confident Mindset (prints well in color or gray scale) You look confident. You sound confident. You’ve practiced. Beyond that, confidence is mostly a mind-set. Below are 10 ways you can create a successful confident mindset the day you speak: Believe that you have something of value to offer. Imagine giving your audience a gift and visualize […]
Rev and Temi: Transcription Services Review
Want to create content fast? Use a transcription service to turn audio into written documents: Interviews Podcast transcription Speeches Book content Blogs Thought capture Recently, I “debriefed” myself on an important meeting using the native voice recorder on my iPhone, thinking I would use the recording to create a “highlights” document from the 7-minute recording. […]
10 Ways to Make a “Boring” Workshop Topic Exciting
Have you ever wondered how to create engagement for a “dry” or “boring” topic? Recently, at the end of a 90-minute workshop I conducted on “Email Etiquette,” for a staff development day for an online public school (on-site meeting), the principal walked up to me with a big smile on his face, “I wondered how you could make […]
Speaking of . . . Wardrobe Malfunctions
As I sat down in my seat at the conference, I glanced down and noticed that one of my buttons was unbuttoned on the front of my shirt. Not a big deal, right? Well, all I could think of was “how long has that been unbuttoned?” and, “I should have worn a nicer bra!” You […]
Familiarize. Don’t Memorize.
It was the summer of 2009 and I had eight, 45-minute presentations to memorize as a newly hired high school workshop speaker for a local college. The other new speakers and I had been given scripts for each of the presentations, with topics ranging from budgeting to sexual harassment, and had been told to follow […]
Not Just the Facts, Ma’am
“I just want to get the facts, ma’am,” Joe Friday (actor Jack Webb) famously implored when questioning women in the old TV police show, Dragnet. Joe Friday might have just wanted the facts, but your audience wants more. Sure, they want to know your material, but they also want to know you. They want to connect […]
Engage with Passion
My husband and I recently had a photo shoot with our 4 grandchildren. As you can see from the above photo with two of them, this was not the typical posed photo shoot. It was wild, with an overwhelmed 17-month old, who had just arrived with her mother from New York that day, almost-3-year-old twins […]