by Mark Kretschmar
What are you trying to accomplish?
When every communication starts with an answer to the above question, the odds of success are much higher. Think about it. Without an answer to that question, how would you know if the communication was successful or not? This is the difference between “responding” and “reacting.” That flame-mail you sent was a reaction. If you had asked yourself, “What do I want to accomplish with this e-mail?” you likely would have done it differently.
A classic example
I was recently working with a great non-profit with a …
Monday, June 4th, 2018 Tags: call to action, communication, content aligned to motivations, desired outcome, motivation, what are you trying to accomplish
Category: Articles, Communication No Comments 
by Bob Goodyear
When making a presentation, have you ever said something that made the audience laugh? Was it planned? Did it catch you off guard? What did you do? Did you continue speaking as though nothing different had happened? Sometimes handling a laugh is very difficult for a speaker. Let’s talk about this for a moment.
Recently I had the opportunity to listen to a few speeches given in a college business presentation class. The presenters were asked to talk about a personal experience. All of the speeches were good and each …
Read MoreMonday, May 28th, 2018 Tags: audience interaction, audience laughter, humorous speech, pause for laughter
Category: Audience, Audience Interaction No Comments
By Tom Nixon
This original slide was created for a presentation that would suggest ways an insurance sales professional could engage a customer in some friendly small talk. The instructor would simply read the text on the screen to his workshop attendees — a very ineffective way to begin a conversation about the topic.
Let’s see what was done to enhance this slide:
Although the other slide redesigns in the deck are not shown, an overall background and style had been established. The headline typeface and style were chosen to suggest a friendly, casual but …
Read MoreMonday, May 21st, 2018 Tags: enhance PowerPoint slide, ineffective presentation, PowerPoint template, redesign PowerPoint, reduce amount of text, talking points
Category: Graphics in Presentations, PowerPoint Slides, Presentation Tips, Presentation Tools No Comments
By Kelly Vandever
Storytelling as a mentoring tool has been around forever… well, I say that because there’s a Biblical record of the prophet Nathan telling Kind David the story of two men, a rich dude and a poor dude, and about the rich dude took something precious from the poor dude which enraged David… and then Nathan dropped the moral of the story on David, that he was the rich man. The story was the vehicle to demonstrate for David why he was in the wrong… and if you know the …
Read MoreMonday, May 14th, 2018 Tags: emotions in storytelling, mentoring, storytelling, storytelling techniques
Category: Mentoring, Storytelling in Presentations No Comments
By Natalie Gallagher
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t know it well enough.” – Albert Einstein
One of the biggest challenges speakers and writers face, especially those who are experts in their field, is how to make complex information accessible and relatable to the audience. Whenever I address this topic with my clients, the immediate push-back I get is “I don’t want to dumb it down.” I expect this reaction, because most of us are not only attached to our work, we’re attached to being experts in our field.
However, making something …
Read MoreMonday, May 7th, 2018 Tags: accessible, audience engagement, connection, content, speech writing, writing
Category: Audience, Business Presentations, Data and Statistics in Presentations No Comments
I’ve led within large organizations and small. I’ve led in the military, in business, and on nonprofit boards. I received my Masters in management science. I’ve read hundreds of books on the subject and taught leadership to managers from over 200 organizations.
Yet it’s still hard for me to capture in just a few words the essence of leadership.
Rather than go on and on about all the amazing things you could do to be the best leader you can be, we’ll discuss three wacky, unconventional things you can do that …
Read MoreMonday, April 30th, 2018 Tags: leadership tips, team, tips for being a great leader
Category: Leadership No Comments
By Mark Kretschmar
You learned it in college; you may have learned it in high school: Select a topic of interest to the audience for your presentation. This rule isn’t so much “wrong” as it is distracting. Of course you should be speaking of something which interests the audience. Where this rule gets in the way, like most rules, is the implications and ramifications of its assumptions.
When an “interesting topic” becomes the driving force behind your presentation, you feel you have everything you need and you forget the Presentation Prime Directive: Make your …
Read MoreMonday, April 23rd, 2018 Tags: connect with the audience, delivering a speech, speaking topic, storytelling
Category: Audience, Audience Interaction, Presentation Coaching No Comments
By Bob Goodyear
Creating a great audience connection is key to making a great presentation. It’s easy to say but sometimes it’s very hard to do. What does it take to create such a connection? Let me share 3 tips that I’ve learned over the years that have helped me.
Know Your Audience
This is such a key for making a great presentation and connecting with your audience. I’ve written previously about questions you should ask to get to know your audience before you show up to speak. While these questions will …
Monday, April 16th, 2018 Tags: audience interaction, eye-contact, know your audience
Category: Public Speaking as a Leader, Speech & Presentation Coaching No Comments
By Tom Nixon
As you add, edit or review your slides here are 2 quick questions you can ask about each slide to see if it is just right for your presentation:
1. What is the POINT?
Does this slide have a single, clear, easily communicated message for your audience? Is it congruent with the goals of the presentation? Does it simply make sense for where it is and what it is saying?
2. Where is the POWER?
Does this slide deliver its message powerfully and efficiently? Are the graphics unambiguous and professional? Is the wording …
Monday, April 9th, 2018 Tags: clear presentation message, goal of presentation, powerful PowerPoint slides, simple PowerPoint slides
Category: PowerPoint Slides No Comments
By Kelly Vandever
Good News on the Font Front!
Not many people will appreciate good news about fonts…
But if you have to be flexible enough to present your PowerPoint slides on either a PC version of PowerPoint and a Mac version of PowerPoint, I have good news.
With the latest update to PowerPoint for the Mac, Microsoft made it so that fonts that are saved as embedded fonts* in a Windows version of PPT can now come over and be viewed correctly in Mac version of PowerPoint! Yeah! This should help some presenters from …
Read MoreMonday, April 2nd, 2018 Tags: Powerpoint fonts, Powerpoint fonts for Mac and PC
Category: PowerPoint Slides No Comments
