Archive for the ‘Corporate Communication’ Category

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Confidence In Your Message

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007

When it comes to getting people to take the actions you want them to take, confidence in your message is the single most powerful ingredient in your presentation brew. The difference between people who get elected to the US Senate or Governor’s mansions across the country versus those who lose and fade away into oblivion isn’t intelligence, work ethic, looks or even luck.

Often times the single biggest difference is that winners have the ability and the confidence to stare strangers and friends in the face and say, “Will you contribute $3000 to my campaign?”

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Posted in Career Advice, Corporate Communication, sales talk | No Comments »

Room Setup & Planning

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007

There will be times when it is impossible for you to set up a room to your specifications before giving a speech. Recently, I was giving an hour-long speech at a conference in California. The speech began at 4:30 PM and was to end promptly at 5:30.

Normally, I like to get to a room at least one hour in advance of giving a speech or training to set up, preferably 90 minutes in advance. However, in this case, another breakout session was going on in the room that did not end until 4:15 PM. The speakers and other panelists didn’t leave the front of the room until 4:23. Yikes! That left seven minutes to do the following:

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Posted in Corporate Communication, keynote advice | No Comments »

Have You Improved In the Last 30 Years?

Friday, September 7th, 2007

I went to a business conference recently to see a colleague give a major presentation. During the course of the conference I saw speakers of every skill level. Some were dynamic, interesting and had good eye contact. My associate gave a particularly strong speech—one that was memorable for both its content and passionate delivery.

However, most of the speakers were deadly dull. Presenter after present stood up and read speech after speech. One person had all of her notes drop to the floor where they soon become out of order. Anther speaker awkwardly stopped and started a few times. Other speakers failed to get close enough to the microphone; hence the audience couldn’t hear anything they said.

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Posted in Career Advice, Corporate Communication | No Comments »

Media Skills: There’s No Taking Back Words After They Have Left Your Mouth

Thursday, September 6th, 2007

Here is an actual exchange between a journalist and a European business executive that quickly went sour, all because the business executive failed to understand one basic principle of media relations: you have 100% control over what you say, but 0% control over what a reporter writes. You should never try to control a journalist by claiming that you are withdrawing their rights to use your name and quotes. That will only anger the reporter and make you an object of scorn and ridicule. If you don’t want to see something quoted, then don’t say it in the first place.

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Posted in Corporate Communication, media skills | No Comments »

Making The Best Of A Bad Situation

Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

If you work for a big corporation, sooner or later, someone is going to ask you to deliver their PowerPoint Presentation. And he or she will demand that you don’t change a single element of the presentation (and they can get away with it because they are your boss).

Here’s the problem: the slide show you are given is horrible! Each slide is dense with row after row of numbers, bullet points are strewn about generously on each page and complex graphs are squeezed in four to a slide. In short, you are asked to deliver a PowerPoint slide from hell.

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Posted in Corporate Communication, PowerPoint | No Comments »

How Do Your Know If You Need Presentation Training?

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

One of our clients recently wrote me with the following comment in regard to one of my daily articles addressing the importance and relationship of presentation skills to economic success on both a personal level as well as corporate level.

“Hi TJ….what you say is true…but I think the problem is that too many people think they are GREAT presenters and don’t need training….the trick is, how to get them to see that their bad style/content/powerpoints/whatever…is standing between them and greatness in their careers and satisfaction in their lives? It’s absolutely true…but how to get them to get it?”

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Posted in Corporate Communication | No Comments »

The Power of Bad Examples

Friday, August 10th, 2007

“Help TJ! Jim (the leader of our organization) never prepares for his speeches because he is always running a million miles a minute. So he just reads the bullet points right off of his PowerPoint slides. It is a boring disaster. But that’s not the real problem. Now everyone in our organization is doing the same thing. They think they are SUPPOSED to do it this way. We now have a culture where everyone has been infected with the disease of DEATH-BY-READING-POWERPOINT-SLIDES.”
Anonymous Media Training Worldwide Client

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Posted in Corporate Communication, PowerPoint | No Comments »

When To Use Text On PowerPoint Slides

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

Those of you who know me know that I urge speakers NOT to use text on PowerPoint slides, because people don’t like to read when someone else is talking. But here is an interesting exception:

Let’s say you are giving a 60-90 minute presentation at a conference, beginning at 9:00 AM. As a practical matter, you know people are going to be streaming in anywhere from 8:45 to 9:15. You can create a PowerPoint presentation consisting of gigantic quotes from experts, philosophers, or any other relevant people who have said something that relates to the subject you are about to address. The quotes, facts, or statistics can set the mood for your presentation and stimulate thought before you actually begin speaking. To sweeten the production, you can put the PowerPoint program on a timer and sync the presentation to music.

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Posted in Corporate Communication, PowerPoint, keynote advice | No Comments »

Presentation Skills: Pressuring Your Audiences to Perform Better

Thursday, June 28th, 2007

Giving a presentation, any presentation, is a type of performance. But if you, the speaker, also happen to be the boss of your audience, if they happen to be employees who report to you, then this changes the dynamic of the relationship. I’m not suggesting that you beat your employees if they don’t laugh at your jokes or give out a standing ovation.

Here’s what I recommend for bosses who must give weekly or monthly status reports or goal presentations to employees:

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Posted in Corporate Communication, Q & A, Q and A | No Comments »

Is Your Speech Taken Seriously?

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

One of the most effective ways to get your spoken words taken more seriously is to back them up with text. This works for two reasons:

      Most people are too lazy to put their words into text.
      By putting your words in text, you create a way for the ideas in your speech to be accessed at anytime, permanently.

This advice seems glaringly obvious when it comes to a candidate running for US President—of course you have written position papers and speeches to hand out to voters, supporters, and the media. But it is also true for much of the day-to-day communication that average people experience.

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Posted in Corporate Communication, Written Speech | No Comments »

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