Strategies to Think on Your Feet We’ve explored impromptu speaking skills and how to respond to unexpected comments or questions. Key tactics include: keeping your comments concise, listening closely to the conversation and to others’ comments, developing a strong worldview, and other strategies. Now let’s look at how to develop a mindset that enables you … Read more
What is Professional Presence? A person has professional presence if they conduct themselves in a confident and professional way. Being “professional” typically means keeping your conversations focused on work, and avoiding personal or potentially sensitive matters. However, professionalism also can mean many different things depending on your work environment and office culture. Some offices are … Read more
Ways to Make a Presentation Interactive If you’re giving a speech or presentation, you want your ideas to make an impact on your audience. But it’s pretty hard to figure out if you are actually making that impact. Audiences usually don’t give us much live feedback. It’s up to us as communicators to create a … Read more
Speaking in a panel discussion is challenging even for advanced presenters. Moderating a panel discussion is significantly more challenging, and requires a much greater amount of work, foresight and preparation. Effective moderation is a skill that can be learned and improved. But above all, remember the critical importance of preparation and clear and frequent communication … Read more
What Does it Mean to be Enthusiastic When Public Speaking? Enthusiasm demonstrates your passion and excitement for the content that you’re presenting. Enthusiasm shows that you believe in your content. You have conviction in what you are saying. Enthusiastic and passionate presenters are more impactful and more persuasive. But there’s a challenge: genuine enthusiasm is … Read more
What is a Call to Action in a Presentation? The call to action or CTA is what you want your audience to do. The call to action typically comes at the end of your presentation. In copywriting, calls to action typically have some very strong action words or verbs. Your call to action should be … Read more
Zoom Meetings Have Unique Challenges On a recent live webinar, we got a question from an attendee: Is there anything we need to do more or less of for video conversations compared to in-person conversations? A lot of the principles of influence and audience connection are universal. These are things like: Identifying major themes that … Read more
How Can You Increase Your Social Intuition? First and foremost, remember that social intuition is something that can only be developed organically. Reading is not enough. You can’t watch videos about it and magically become more socially intuitive. You have to actually get out there into the world, interact with people, try things, succeed, and … Read more
Variety in Communication will Increase Your Influence Let’s explore two major ways for you to become more influential. First, variety in your communication style and second, variety in your knowledge and content. Variety in Communication Style Variety in your communication style means the ability to communicate in different ways. It means you can speak sometimes … Read more
What is the Spotlight Effect? I want you to imagine you’re about to give a presentation and you can’t stop thinking about your bad haircut. Everybody in the audience notices your bad haircut. Your boss is sitting there. He or she is probably saying to themselves, “That is a really terrible haircut. What was that … Read more