The Presentations Japan Series

Rushing out the door to get to your talk and arriving in the nick of time is bad, bad, bad.  You have cut it very fine. Breathless, you greet the hosts, who are looking suitably pale as they thought …

In Part One, we looked at the ideas of primacy (the first thing we remember) and recency (the last thing we remember) and what this means for speakers. Now in Part Two we will go deeper with our entr…

Primacy refers to the beginning of something, as it enters our brain. This new entity has a powerful impact on our memory and our concentration.  To muscle itself into our existing brain thought stre…

Bruce Springsteen’s song Glory Days lyric, “Boring stories of Glory days yeah, they’ll pass you by” pops into my head sometimes, when I hear a speaker reminiscing about their glorious past.  I was si…

In the public arena most presentations follow a set formula. I speak, I stop, you ask me questions and then I finish up and leave the venue.  Inside of companies though, there will be different types…

For many people it may seem we are getting into oxymoron territory here.  “Public speaking…enjoyable?  You must be kidding mate”.  Many are called upon to speak and reluctantly they give their talk w…

Experts, pseudo experts, amateurs, believers, sceptics, supporters, enemies make up that sea of faces in front of us when we get up to speak.  We can get some basic data from the organisers about who…

In our High Impact Presentations (HIP) course, we do a number of presentations over two days of training.  What I love about teaching this programme is that you see the results immediately.  If we ar…

Sometimes the organisers of the presentation event ask us if they can distribute our slides before the speech.  They are thinking that this will help the audience to follow what we are saying.  Espec…

Donald Trump has made this technique of “many people say….” famous for dealing with opposing views.  This is not an exercise for or against Trump. Rather, it is just looking at different ways we can …

“How was it?” is a pretty lousy survey question a presenter may ask of acquaintances, friends or their staff immediately after speaking.  Unless they are your sworn enemy or a sadist, they are not go…

Whether we asking to give a talk or asked to present, we need an audience.  The onus is on the meeting hosts to take care of the logistics of the venue and the associated tech needed to carry out the…

A request came to me recently asking me to speak to an audience.  So my first question was, “what would you like me to speak about?”.   The answer was fairly broad.  Actually, that is good and bad.  …

This recent debate is a hot button topic. Let me set the record straight, I am an Australian living in Tokyo, so I have no dog in this American presidential brawl.  I am approaching this topic from t…

You see it.  The presenter publicly self-immolates. They might butcher the start, get lost in the weeds of their content or be put to the sword at the end in the Q&A.  They can’t engage with their au…

It was a strange feeling.  I was back in the Super Safe Classroom after 7 months of teaching solely LIVE On Line.  In the online world, we are engaging our audience every two minutes.  Remember, this…

Speaking is easy, so being clear should be easy too.  Well that sounds good in theory, but there is more hope in play here, than actual technique going on.  Imagining that your usual conversation sty…

I have the opportunity to give a number of presentations each year.  I video them as well, so I can study where I can improve them further.  What I find very interesting though, is that I am a poor m…

Waffle.  This is the enemy of speakers and presenters.  Ums and Ahs are obvious fillers.  We all recognise them when we hear them and we know we have to do a better job to eliminate them.  The more i…

Trapped in a small screen in the corner of the monitor has become everyone’s reality when we have group meetings. I have been holding training sessions online now since March, as well as participatin…