2-Minute Tip: Restrict Your Practice Time Two of the biggest sins of public speakers are going overtime and rambling. Both disrespect the audience, When you go 5 minutes over, you’re not just taking 5 minutes. You’re taking 5 minutes from everyone in the room. If there are 20 people in the room, you’ve actually taken 100 minutes in total. To address both these issues, restrict your rehearsal…
2-Minute Tip: Keep Your Shirt Off Breakfast is the most important meal of the day (if you believe “Big Breakfast”). When travelling to give a talk, we may start the day with room service breakfast in a hotel room while we putter about getting ready for the day. That makes it really easy to spill coffee or jelly on your presentation outfit if you get fully dressed…
2-Minute Tip: Keep Tissues Handy Sneezing in the middle of a presentation can be either mildly annoying or quite embarrassing. It all depends on whether or not you have tissues readily accessible during your talk. Tissues are also great for dealing with perspiration while you speak. Dripping on the carpet isn’t a good look for anyone. Everything thing from a cold to allergies to hot…
2-Minute Tip: Play Your Videos Full Screen Including short videos in your presentation can be a great way to illustrate your points. They can be videos you shot of people, stock video, animations, or illustrations. If it’s valuable enough to include, make sure your audience can see it. Play it in full screen. The default for PowerPoint when you embed a video is for it to appear…
2-Minute Tip: Know Your Gear Whether its a projector, TV, laptop, audio hookup, or slide clicker, get to know your gear before you conduct your presentation. Figure out in advance how everything works so you’re not scrambling at the last minute to figure out why something doesn’t work the way you thought it would. If there is a problem making something work, you want to know about…
2-Minute Tip: Party AFTER Your Talk At the Hollywood Foreign Press Golden Globes Award Show, the alcohol flows freely. Many award recipients reach the podium under the influence, and that makes many of the speeches more entertaining. Of course we’re not laughing with the recipients; we’re laughing at them. That’s in stark contrast to the powerful speech delivered by a seemingly sober Oprah Winfrey. Alcohol at evening…
2-Minute Tip: Acknowledge Your Elephants An elephant in the room is a topic no one wants to talk about, but probably everyone should. They include: Equipment failure Fire alarm Falling flowers Folks who walk out Medical emergency Loud neighbors A blown lamp Major news event Major corporate news And more As a speaker, it’s important to acknowledge them in an appropriate manner. If you don’t acknowledge them, the…
Top 10 Public Speaking Tips As we wrap up 2017 and plunge headlong into 2018, we are also approaching the first anniversary of 2-Minute Talk Tips. Let’s take a look back at my favorite public speaking tips of the year. That’s right, it’s time for a clip show. That also makes this a great episode to introduce someone to 2-Minute Talk Tips, or to form the basis of…
2-Minute Tip: Listen Actively Speaking is about more than just giving a speech. It’s about meeting the needs of the event organizer, getting the logistics right, and helping to put everyone at ease. One way to do that is with active listening. When meeting with your event organizer, customer, colleague or SME, there are some things you can do to help everything run smoothly. Look…
2-Minute Tip: Practice in Real Shoes When we have a big presentation on the calendar, we may be tempted to pick up a new outfit and new shoes to feel all shiny and new, and to imbue us with more confidence. And that’s great. It’s also important, though, to practice in that new outfit. If half way through the presentation, you discover those new shoes are…