Presentation Skills - No Joking Matter
Presentation Skills training during your professional career should have included a lesson about telling jokes in a presentation. That lesson should have been, "Don't tell jokes!" Unless you are performing as a stand-up comic in a comedy club, your presentation should not start with or include a joke.
Let me give you five reasons why I think you should avoid jokes... Rest of Story
Persuasion And Presentation Obstacles
Fear is so debilitating, and yet it is so prevalent. I would say, in fact, that it is probably the number one obstacle standing in the way of having a solid, positive mental mindset. Yet when its true nature is revealed, we are no longer bound by the mental and emotional limitations it imposes upon us.
What are our most common fears when it comes to public speaking? That people will think... Rest of Story
Romancing the Screen
I recently went through the experience of training a 6 hour program using a provided PowerPoint file of "visual support" – slides filled with text! I simply didn't have the time to make the changes I would have liked to have made – changes that I insist SHOULD BE made to make visual support effective. So, I got to experience the situation a presenter would be in, using visual support that consisted of: - black text on a white screen - whole sentences on the screen that were exactly the same as on the participant's workbook page.
Let me urge you to NEVER DO THIS! The result was... Rest of Story
Are They Snoring in the Back Row
Imagine that you have spent the better part of two weeks working on an important speech you plan to give to your company. You think you have done everything right. You have created a PowerPoint presentation with tons of information and flash animation. You have created handouts of the slides for your audience, so they can follow along. Although you haven’t had time to rehearse the presentation you are not worried, because you have the entire speech typed out. You plan to read it while you blow their socks off with the dynamic PowerPoint slides. Everything should be perfect, right? WRONG!!! ... Rest of Story
