#presentation coaching

How to Make it Through Giving an Emotional Talk

I work with a lot of speakers sharing personal stories. Patient stories. Caregiver stories. Stories of triumph. Stories of overcoming impossible odds. Audiences crave these stories— our social media feeds are filled with them. Why do we crave them? They connect us in a deep and human way. But what do you do, as a …

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Speaking of the Royal Wedding: Non-Verbal Communication Reigns

  I wonder what Albert Mehrabian would have thought of the Royal Wedding. Or more importantly, the news reports of the non-verbal behavior sightings at the Royal Wedding. Mehrabian was the researcher that studied how much non-verbals impact our communication. Many people have mused and debated his findings that 93% of our communication is non-verbal. I’ve been …

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Want a better presentation? Begin with the blueprint.

We kicked off the DiscoveryX program at Nationwide Children’s Hospital last week. Now in its third year, this Transforming Talks, a white-label TED-style talk event, was brought to the hospital by Lara McKenzie, PhD. Lara is a Principal Investigator in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. …

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To be a Winner in Public Speaking, Banish Comparison

This article on praise from TED was passed around the Articulation office/treehouse. It was an important reminder for any coach, manager, or even parent, that comparison, even positive comparison, can have negative (unintended) consequences to confidence. It was with this article at the top of my mind that I watched this year’s Women’s Skating finals …

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A Coach’s Look into the Speaker’s Mind

  When we coach cohorts (three to 10 speakers at a time for a specific event), we get a front row seat to the diverse emotions people experience in preparing a talk. I like to coach my clients (those that hire us to work with the speakers) that getting a speaker’s idea, content and story …

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How to Power Up Your Pauses to Move a Crowd

The sound of silence – I’m not comfortable with it. Frankly, I’m still struggling to find my “inside voice.”  Silence, however, is a critical skill for public speaking. Understanding the importance of silence–what I call “oral punctuation”– is a necessary component of effectively sharing ideas. “But, if I pause, the audience may think I don’t …

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We got our own Super Bowl ad!

Since we spentgood time last week coaching really sophisticated research scientists helping them to make their science accessible to important audiences, we were thrilled that Quicken Loans did this ad for the Super Bowl.   We are “that guy” in the background, every day.   Helping really smart folks understand how to translate their complex ideas into simpler …

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