Everyone has heard the advice about incorporating stories into a presentation to make your message more " sticky " and easier to understand. These same elements are what you have to work with in your business stories.  The story you create should underscore and amplify the business message you're communicating. So we're all on board there. But if you're not a natural story teller [and I count myself firmly in this camp]...you

If you can relate to this, next time you present, experiment with seeing people. To find out how long it takes, gather together a few friends and deliver your presentation. In a presentation, the presenter adds the formatting by the way they deliver. The most powerful time to have your eyes up is at the Even a newbie at public speaking knows they should make eye contact. But the term eye contact is rather vague.

A new book titled  The Power Presenter: Technique, Style and Strategy from America’s Top Speaking Coach focuses on improving your delivery, what you say and how you say it. Author Jerry Weissman starts with a story of a CEO who gave the same presentation in a two-week period. He was dealing with a problem during the first week and had solved the problem over the weekend before The first week didn’t go well and the second was a winner. What was different?

I've just returned from two trips to Africa where I spoke and ran workshops at the Women in Management and Business  (WimBIZ) conference (Lagos, Nigeria) and the Kenyan Association of Women Business Owners  (KAWBO) conference (Nairobi, Kenya). presentation style, format and approach. The wife of the Governor of Lagos They were both amazing experiences and I thought it would be interesting to make some comparisons between African and U.S. STYLE

Participants in my presentation skills workshops typically cite concerns about not being credible to the audience as one of the key contributors to their presentation nervousness and anxiety. In presentations , we can define credible to mean that your audience will trust you are providing relevant information and you deserve to be listened to because you have sufficient knowledge of the subject matter. This worry gets expressed in a variety of ways: I

Given that speaking in public is consistently voted people’s #1 fear, giving a presentation is outside the ordinary as well.  Power speaking has its physical elements:  voice projection, quick adjustments and responses, embracing gestures, and moving across a stage.  To speak with true power, a person must be mentally ready.  As a speech coach in Pittsburgh, I’m doing what everyone else in Pittsburgh is doing on June 2nd in 2008:  cheering for the Pittsburgh Penguins in their unlikely fight for the Stanley Cup.  Commentators are saying the Pens Game 5 performance

Teenagers are adept at punctuating their conversations with nonverbal signals.   This habit is especially annoying to parents, but it can also be instructive for your next business presentation.  A A classic example involves a teenager at dinner.   The parent asks, “What happened at school today day?”   The teenager shrugs and grunts, “Nothing.”   That one shrug suggests plethora of meaning.   It suggests apathy, lack of engagement, distrust of the parent, a drawing into self….   A shrug suggests. Comedians are adept at suggestive gestures, but so are professional

And when I say written word, I don’t mean Power Points. don’t think Power Points help people think as clearly as they should because you don’t have to put a complete thought in place. Perfect Power Point Presentation" articles and coaches abound. And yet, this phrase is a perfect oxymoron--if a Power Point presentation Quality speaking and writing is not dead or out of favor. In fact, compared with 5 or 10 years ago, communication skills for both speaking and writing are more important than ever.

Copywriters know there is power in brevity.  In the end, a three-minute story often turns out to be more powerful as a six-minute story.  A A professional communicator, I’m in the business of cutting works to gain power. Even so, I was caught short by the power of an exercise on the Smith Magazine website.  For example, Coke–it’s the real thing!  These These are  five memorable words that have carried the brand a long way. 

All that is required to breathe new life into business presentations is knowing what excites an audience. The human beings in an audience are attracted to speeches and presentations that stimulate their senses; that persuade them to take action; and that have a message that sticks over time.   Attraction: When you increase the stimulation of the 5 senses you increase the attraction of your speech or presentation . Go into the layers of the senses below the obvious: Vision-B & W and color photos; videos; abstract designs as well