It’s not often that a business audience will go negative on you, but it happens. Here’s how to stay in control of your listeners and yourself: 1. Prepare key messages for your talk so you can find your way back to… Read More »How to control negative questioners
In 80 BC, Cicero, the great Roman orator and statesman, set off for the Eastern Mediterranean on something like a cross between a gap year and oratory boot camp—showing, again, how he regarded oratory as a physical more than simply… Read More »The Best Way to Lose an Audience
To make the complex clear, use the hook and eye technique. The hook and eye technique makes the object of the preceding sentence the subject of the following sentence. Don’t worry, it’s simpler than it sounds. Here’s an example: “Rupert… Read More »Use the hook and eye technique
One technique for developing a good talk is to know what you’re trying to say, not just for the whole presentation, but for every slide. And once you’ve done that, you have to know how each slide relates to the… Read More »Build a logical link
A client was asked by his CEO to make his presentations to the company’s Board of Directors more strategic. The client, a charming, personable guy, tended to fill his slides with evidence of all the work his department was doing.… Read More »Make it more strategic
A few years ago, my wife and I took our 3-year-old daughter Georgia shopping for her Halloween costume. She wanted to be a black cat, so we got her a black leotard, white gloves, black velvet cat ears, and a… Read More »Lend Me Your Ears!