I was teaching the best public speaking course ever last month. Early in the program, I asked the class members, "What physically happens to people when they get nervous in front of a group?" One of the first answers was, "They lose eye contact with the audience." My...
How to Collect Feedback on a Presentation
How, exactly do we collect feedback on a presentation? Are there ways to solicit feedback that will help us grow as speakers? The answer is, absolutely, YES! However, the way that you typically ask for feedback may not be the best way to gain confidence as a speaker....
Body Language in Public Speaking
Body language in public speaking is the nonverbal queues that your movements make during communication. Presenters often focus on what they are going to say and their visual aids. However, we often overlook an important part of the speech -- body language. In public...
Three Simple Ways to Create Better PowerPoint Presentations
If you deliver presentations at the office, you'll often look for ways to create better PowerPoint presentations. Let's face it. Most meetings are pretty boring. They are also repetitive. So, if you are a speaker, and you deliver PowerPoint slideshows, they can be a...
Remember Stories from Your Life to Insert into Presentations
This "remember stories from your life" post is part three of a three-part series about how to tell stories in your speech. My audience members will often come up to me after a presentation asking, "How do you remember all your stories?" Actually remembering stories...
The 5 Steps of Storytelling – How to Tell a Great Story
Great speakers know how to tell a great story. This post will give you the five key steps of storytelling that these great speakers know. This is a continuation of the post about how inserting stories into your presentations reduces public speaking fear. In that post,...