I once broke up a fight at a truck stop diner.
One summer while in college, I waitressed during the graveyard shift at the Truck Stop Cafe in Jefferson, Iowa. One night, around 3 AM, I heard a commotion and spun around to see two guys in a rope-a-dope hold. From the body language of those around them, I could tell one of them had taken a swing at the other. One man was dressed in a softball uniform, no doubt coming to …
Read MoreThursday, June 7th, 2012 Tags: business presentations, Improve Your Presenation
Category: Presentation Structure, Presentation Tips, Technical Presentations 1 Comment
I took a training class of Ken Blankard’s years ago called Situational Leadership. In one exercise, I was set up as a person who was what is term “disillusioned learner” someone with some competency in a task or job, but with low level of confidence. In the role play, managers used different leadership styles to “manage” me. I remember experiencing first hand how good it felt to get very detailed direction when I was in the confused state of …
Read MoreMonday, June 4th, 2012 Tags: business presentations, improve your presentation, presentation skills
Category: Presentation Structure, Presentation Tips, Technical Presentations No Comments
One of the men I admired early in my career was the late Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda. At the time I came to know of him, he was in charge of the Naval Personnel Command.
Among the lessons I learned through his leadership was that you can’t just tell people things one way. Your need to repeat yourself but in different ways to help the information to get through.
I think something similar can be said about presentations, but I’d …
Read MoreThursday, May 24th, 2012 Tags: business presentations, presentation, presentation audience, presentation skills
Category: Audience, Presentation Structure, Technical Presentations No Comments
Yesterday, while pulling up my bank statement online to look at my balance, I noticed a recurring charge to a well known company who used to be huge in the movie rental business but who didn’t keep up with the move to digital. (I’ll let you guess which company it is.)
I know for a fact that I have never ever had a recurring account with said company, and realized someone had stolen my credit card number. Crap.
Upon going back through my statement, I noticed 3 …
Read MoreSaturday, May 12th, 2012 Category: Other Stuff 1 Comment
I used to say, that with presentations, it’s not about perfection…it’s about connection.
And the reason I said that was I believe that for a presenter to make a difference, the speaker has to connect with their audience. I still believe that.
I also believe you don’t need to be a perfect speaker — with perfect gestures and phraseology and vocal variety — to be effective and to make a connection.
Therefore I came to the conclusion that with presentations, it’s not about perfection… it’s about connection.
But now …
Read MoreFriday, May 11th, 2012 Tags: better presentations
Category: Audience, Presentation Tips 1 Comment
I worry sometimes that I’m a one-upper… you know, that person that hears you tell a story, then tries to one-up you with a story of their own.
I don’t like to think of myself as a one-upper, but whenever I listen to a story, my mind instantly goes to work searching for something in my background that is similar to the circumstances that I’m hearing.
If you tell me the story of how you met your spouse, I immediately think of the great story about how my …
Read MoreFriday, May 11th, 2012 Category: Storytelling in Presentations 1 Comment
You’ve seen slides of this ilk before.
The title on the slide said something like the 3 Most Important Points to Remember about XYZ.
That was followed by
1. Here’s the First Point
2. Here’s the Second Point
Then instead of the Third Point, the speaker had a cartoon pasted at the bottom of the slide.
It was a cleaver cartoon and the caption along the bottom made the speaker’s third point with brilliance and humor.
But here was the problem.
The cartoon was at the bottom of the slide. The caption …
Read MoreThursday, April 19th, 2012 Tags: Audiences, business presentations, Hard to read slides, Improve Your Presenation, PowerPoint, PowerPoint Mistakes, PowerPoint Presentations, PowerPoint Slide Tips, PowerPoint Tips, presentation audience, Presentation mistakes, Reading Your Audience, Your Audience
Category: Audience, PowerPoint Slides, Presentation Tips No Comments
Many of you know that I’m an Apple convert. But I have to give props to Microsoft.
Today in Ellen Finkelstein’s newsletter she shared a link to her website where she talks about a series of 15-minute webinars that Microsoft has started. Thanks Ellen for sharing!!
I watched the first of the series called Working with photos in PowerPoint. About 8:30 into the webinar, the presenter actually recommends making the photograph bigger and even expanding it outside of the …
Read MoreTuesday, April 3rd, 2012 Category: PowerPoint Slides, Presentation Tips No Comments
One of the common challenges for conference presenters is that you have so much great content to share and a limited time in which to share it.
Whether you’re speaking for 15 minutes to 2 hours, if you’re struggling to have enough time to cover the important items and still leave time for Q&A, there is one place that you can begin that works like a charm — eliminate the Self-Discovery Monologue.
The Self-Discovery Monologue
I confess. I’ve been guilty of the Self-Discovery Monologue.
It sounds something like …
Read MoreTuesday, March 27th, 2012 Category: Conference Presentations, Presentation Tips No Comments
At the age of 48 years and 11 months, I decided to take up the drums. Yes, under this nerdy exterior lurks the heart of a wannabe, uber-cool, rock-n-roll chick.
My son-in-law Eric is an amazing drummer who played professionally in a number of local Atlanta bands. He offered to give me lessons.
He originally had me pick out a few songs and we decided to start with Eric Clapton’s song Cocaine.
During the first lesson, Eric (the son-in-law, not Mr. Clapton) showed me some basic drum rhythms to …
Read MoreTuesday, March 6th, 2012 Category: Overcoming the Fear of Public Speaking, Presentation Tips 1 Comment
