I just finished working with a client who had to prepare and deliver an after dinner talk to clients in a museum. Her firm planned to take the clients on a private tour of the museum, feed them dinner, and… Read More »Public Speaking Skills: After Dinner Speaking
I recently sat down to interview myself on the subject of speaker evaluation forms. Here’s the transcript of the interview. What’s the use of a speaker evaluation form? First of all, I prefer the term assessment to evaluation. It sounds… Read More »Public Speaking Tips: A Really Useful Speaker Evaluation Form
I just returned from an engagement during which I was asked to give partners in a professional service firm 10 minutes to pitch the firm to a brand new prospect, played by another partner sitting across the table. Most partner/presenters… Read More »Presentation Tips: Listener-centric Messaging
What makes smart people dumb? Elizabeth Newton, a psychologist, conducted an experiment on the curse of knowledge while working on her doctorate at Stanford in 1990. She gave one set of people, called “tappers,” a list of commonly known songs… Read More »Communication Skills: Why Mr. Smarty Pants Has His Knickers in a Twist
Like that moment in bowling, when your ball leaves two pins standing far apart, there are times when your audience is divided into two camps. One half is knowledgeable about your area of expertise, while the other half is green. … Read More »Public Speaking: Split Shot Audience
We often think that the placebo effect comes from the belief that a sugar pill is actual medicine, which leads us to the conclusion that if we believe something is good for us, we get a positive physiological response. I… Read More »Interpersonal Skills: the Placebo Effect