Each of us perceives the world differently, not only because of differing perceptual styles, but also because of the various circumstances, goals, aspirations, ages and lifestyles we have. These individual experiences create different realities, each of which represents only part of the whole picture.

Recently a friend of mine who runs a retail business asked me to look over an email exchange that he had with one of his suppliers. Tom had produced a marketing campaign that the supplier felt was an attack on his products. Tom wanted me to analyze the interaction and tell him where the supplier had gone wrong in his thinking.

What's interesting is that as soon as I started reading the correspondence, it was clear to me that each of them had a different point of view - and each of them was defending his own position without giving any weight to the other's perspective. And, the really funny thing was, both viewpoints were perfectly valid.

So, who was right and who was wrong?

The answer is that both were right and both were wrong. Both were right about the points of view they were defending, however both were mistaken in thinking that theirs was the only legitimate point of view.

Since we only have access to what we perceive, we tend to defend our perception as the Truth (with a capital T), and overlook the ways other people see the situation. The way we see it is "right" and the way others see it is "wrong." Tom was defending his view of the Big Picture and his inability to see things from the supplier's perspective. This is what caused the miscommunication and conflict to arise.

It can be important to explain your perspective to someone else as a way to reach agreement. But trying to explain your point of view so that they will see things "correctly" rarely, if ever, leads to a positive outcome. Accepting that different views represent different aspects of the truth and that all contribute to a complete understanding is the way out of such "unsolvable" conflicts.

Try asking yourself the following questions when thinking back to the last disagreement you had.

* Who is that person, and how often do disagreements occur?
* As you think back, what was the major point of disagreement?
* Now that you are out of the heat of the moment, where can you find validity in the other's point of view?
* What evidence can you see of how that person might not have been able to understand your point of view?

Stretching your understanding of different points of view is key to improving communication and limiting conflict with others. Limiting conflict with others will give you more time for constructive interaction and decrease the stress in your life.

About the Author:

Gary Jordan, Ph.D., has over 27 years of experience in clinical psychology, behavioral assessment, individual development and coaching. He earned his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology – Berkeley. He's the co-founder of Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd., a consulting firm that specializes in helping people discover their true skills and talents. For more information, visit www.vrft.com.

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Article Contributed by Joseph Sommerville, Ph.D.

In challenging economic times, buyers look for value. The more you provide, the more likely you are to become the provider of choice. Presentations offer excellent opportunities to provide that value at different stages of the business development cycle.

5 Ways to Create More Value in Your Presentations

1. Solve a problem instead of peddling programs.

People know when they're being sold to and it makes them uncomfortable. Prospects invest their time in attending or listening to a presentation because they believe it will benefit them in some way. They don't attend to hear a thinly veiled sales presentation.

Violating those expectations by promising one thing and delivering another constitutes a "bait and switch" that quickly turns prospects off. Prove to them they've made a wise investment by placing your focus on education instead, and you'll find a more receptive audience.

When you can solve a problem or remove some pain, you're positioned as a resource instead of a vendor. The problem you address should resonate with the audience's experience. That means you need to do some audience analysis as you prepare the presentation. Think about:

- What questions does your target market ask most frequently?
- What three challenges do they regularly face in business?
- What are the top mistakes people in similar situations make?

When you have the opportunity to survey the audience in advance, you can customize your message even more and give them solutions that are immediately actionable.

2. Provide value-based marketing materials.

The typical presenter hands out colorful brochures, slick flyers and glossy postcards about himself and the services he offers. These provide no value to the audience. That's why these materials have an extremely short shelf life.

Instead, distribute white papers, special reports, published articles, checklists and tip booklets. These serve as resources the audience will use and keep. They also provide top of mind awareness after the presentation. One of the pieces I circulate includes a four-page resource guide on creating and using visuals. It contains a step-by-step guide to creating effective visuals, examples of different types of charts and an article on how to avoid the most common errors with PowerPoint presentations. I've seen it in client's offices five years after they received it. You add value through these collaterals when the information helps the audience save money, increase their available time or perform a task more efficiently.

3. Get your presentation accredited to count for continuing education units.

Many professional organizations require continuing education to maintain professional designations. Partner with one of them to develop a presentation or course that meets these requirements. It provides value to the members of the organization and increases your demand as a speaker. Conduct some research to determine which courses are mandatory and which are electives. Focus on the former so your course development efforts provide information people must have. Since most organizations require a certain number of professional education hours annually, this can help you develop ongoing repeat business.

4. Offer a complimentary initial consultation for attendees.

If people aren't quite willing to hire you yet, but will take the next step, an initial consultation can serve several useful purposes. First, it provides an added benefit from attending the presentation. You'll be giving audience members another reason to believe they're getting a good return on their investment of time. Second, it provides an opportunity for each of you to explore the other's approach, working style and personality. You can probably determine during that initial conversation whether you can work together productively. Third, it gives prospects the opportunity to "try before they buy." It can increase their comfort level in hiring you and move them further along the sales process. Limit the offer to the first ten
to respond. That way you can set boundaries for yourself and increase the sense of urgency. Don't worry about "giving too much away." Prospects will recognize your generosity and you'll build a relationship of trust.

5. Partner with non-competing professionals that serve your target market to create an educational seminar.

For example, an attorney and an accountant might co-produce a seminar for small business owners on "10 Strategies To Collect Accounts Receivable in Tough Economic Times." A business broker and a banker might organize a seminar on "5 Essentials You Must Know Before You Buy a Business." Such cooperation allows you to share expenses, combine the power of your individual lists and leverage different perspectives on the same topic. You'll need to agree on the desired outcomes and make sure the project is mutually beneficial.

You'll have to invest some time to incorporate these benefits into your presentations. It will require some thoughtful audience analysis, creativity in designing materials and determined follow-through with accrediting agencies and partners. But the return on that investment can be significant. When you add value to your presentations, you pull business in, rather than pushing it on, prospects.

About the Author
With his new book Rainmaking Presentations: How To Grow Your Business by Leveraging Your Expertise, Joseph Sommerville, Ph.D. helps professionals, small business owners and entrepreneurs including accountants, attorneys, engineers, executives, financial planners add influence to their expertise and make more money during challenging economic times. Now, you can download the first chapter for free at http://www.RainMakingPresentations.com

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Many people equate the ability of being funny with the telling of jokes. This is not the case as you do not need to learn to be humorous in order to deliver effectively a joke. But I am going to look at some pointers on specifically how to handle jokes. I'm not going to give you public speaking jokes, but I will help you select ones appropriate for your situation.

Where people fall down with jokes is in their initial selection, their remembering of the joke and their delivery of the punchline.

First of all you have to consider the situation that you're going to be delivery your jokes in. If you're out with friends, in a social environment then, presumably, you will know what types of jokes are appropriate to tell to this particular friend and what aren't.

Get on to your favourite search engine and look for some jokes that might be suitable for your circumstance.

If you are to deliver a presentation in a business situation, then the rules are going to be completely different. Here's a quick snapshot of the subjects that I would avoid:

1.Racial. I think this pretty much goes without saying, but I wanted to be as explicit as I can and not leave any stone unturned.

2.Sexist. Again I think this goes without saying. Using this sort of humour can offend over half your audience. Why that much? Well, anti-women jokes will alienate the women and you may even have married couples present which means you'll alienate some guys too.

3.Disability. Humour that mocks any sort of disability is also a no-no.

4.Sexual in nature. Avoid humour that is sexually explicit that could cause potential embarrassment.

5.Political. This seems innocuous compared to the other topics, but why run the risk of dividing your audience or offending the person who pays you?

6. Religion. You might be a Believer, but what if you speak to a room full of people who aren't? Or vice versa. Mocking any sort of religion is a big no-no. Even the Jedi Faith.

I would also avoid making derogatory comments about the organisation that you're speaking for, unless you don't mind not getting paid.

When using street jokes, it is best if you are able to tell the joke in your own words. That way it will help reduce the possibility of you forgetting it. Go over it several times so you get used to the important elements that will feature in the set-up part of the joke.

Say the joke out loud and change words that you wouldn't normally say. The closer the joke is to your own natural speech rhythm, the easier it will be for you to tell it and the easier it will be for your to remember it.

By editing the joke you are able to get to the punchline a lot quicker. Being succinct in this way is ideal for humour.

This will also help you remember the punchline, which is one of the elements that people can forget. The punchline is very important as it allows you to generate the laughter.

That said, it is not more important than the set-up line. The set-up line is all the information that occurs before the punchline. Without that information to establish the situation and story of the joke, the punchline will fail.

As an example here's a punchline from Gilbert Gottfried:"Is it hot in here, or am I crazy?" Hilarious, right? Not unless you already know the joke. Which means that you need to recall the information provided by the set-up.

Let me put you out of your misery and give you the set-up line: “Last night I was having dinner with Charles Manson, and in the middle of dinner he turned to me and said...” Now you've got the final piece of the jigsaw the humour makes sense.

So select a joke, make sure that it's not going to offend anybody. Practise saying the joke out loud which will allow you to edit it to fit your own way of speaking. Practise saying the joke several times as this will also allow you to remember it.

Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.

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When doing a presentation an easy way to connect with your audience is to use humour. Not only do people like to laugh and be entertained but they will also more easily remember your message. But need to know an effective joke format.

My aim is not to turn you into a comedian I am simply going to present you with some ways to add humour to your speech or presentation.

In the first instance, you want to make sure that your speech as an overall objective. What’s the message that you’re trying to get across? From there you should find at least 3 supporting points that support your main point.

Once you have that down, concentrate on creating your speech first. That’s the most important thing. Create the speech first and then focus on finding the humour afterwards.

Punchlines are different from jokes which tend to be mini, self-contained stories. A punchline can just be your personal reaction to something that you’ve said. Here are two joke formats for you to consider when structuring your speech:

1)

Intro

2nd Funniest joke

Main body of Jokes

Theme

Funniest Joke

The second format is as follows:

2)

Intro

Funniest joke

Other Jokes

Theme

This last one ends on a serious note instead of a laugh. Personally, if I'm doing a humorous speech I'd rather end on a laugh. But that's just my personal taste.

You will still also need to make at least 3 points during your speech. People have come to hear your message and not just be entertained by your sense of humour. So during your main body of jokes section, make points that relate to your overall theme.

What you might consider doing is reducing your actual speech or presentation by about a third or even a half. Keep the core details that are necessary to convey your message to your audience. So what do you replace the edited content with?

Funny jokes, funny stories, maybe you could quote other comedians or witty people as long as you give credit where it's due. There's no sense delivering a line by Dave Chappelle in your presentation and passing it off as your own. There will always be someone who can attribute it to the original author, plus it's illegal and highly unethical.

You can legitimately quote another comedian as such: "as Jerry Seinfeld once said..." you can immediately get your audience into a better state to laugh as they'll remember their favourite Jerry Seinfeld moment.

Then if the line doesn't have everyone rolling in the aisles then you can get out of it by saying, "obviously it's much better when Seinfeld did it". Your listeners will love you all the more then because you will have revealed yourself to be slightly vulnerable.

Ask yourself “what are you trying to convey to your audience?” What's the take home message that you want them to walk away from your speech remembering?

If you can follow some of these tips in your next presentation you'll be well on your way to being remembered for your humorous speeches.

Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.

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The voice is important for a speaker as well as for an actor, is an important part of one's instrument. Just like an actor, a speaker’s body and voice is an instrument. If you think about it as a speaker, or presenter, you are using just yourself whether or not your have slides. So it’s important to know at least one vocal exercise for clear speaking.

Muscles of Articulation

Without getting too bogged down with the science of the muscles of articulation and how the work, I'll just quickly mention that they are as follows:

- the tip of the tongue
- the hard palate
- the soft palate
- the back of the tongue
- the teeth and the lips

Now, there are probably many professional vocal coaches out there who are ready to argue with me on these points and say that I should tell you what the correct categories are, whether they are active or passive articulators. But for the purposes of this post I don't feel it's necessary.

Some Quick Vocal Tips

Speak out loud: I've talked about the benefits of rehearsing your speech or presentation elsewhere in this blog. By speaking the words out loud your mouth gets used to saying the words and as a result you're less likely to stumble over what you're saying because your body has a physical memory.

Avoid dairy: Before you speak or present make sure you keep your dairy intake to a minimum. Dairy products have a tendency to produce excess mucus which can make you snort and constantly feel like you have to clear your throat.

Keep yourself lubricated by drinking plenty of water or herbal tea. Too much caffeinated tea can dehydrate you. If you're drinking plenty of water before you speak remember to use the loo (rest room).

Hum before you speak: By gently humming, your voice gets to go hum and down it's range and gets warmed up. As you hum try to imagine the sound resonating in the front of your mouth around your teeth.

Try humming a slow version of the nursery rhyme "Pop Goes The Weasel". As a quick refresher here's the lyrics as I know them:

"Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel".

A quick search on the internet will help find the tune if you are unfamiliar with it. It's quite a jaunty little jig, but you'll want to slow it right down when you hum your way through it. Don't push yourself, you’re not in a contest. There’s no prize for completing the exercises first. Be gentle.

Use tongue twisters: Tongue twisters are a good way to exercise your articulation muscles. Here're a couple of my favourites:

"Red leather, yellow leather". (repeat 5 times)

"Articulatory agility
is a desirable ability
manipulating with dexterity
the tongue, the palate, and the lips". (repeat 5 times)

"The back of the tongue and the tip of the tongue" (repeat 5 times)

"The tip of the tongue, the teeth, the lips". (repeat 5 times)

If you jump on to your favourite search engine and search for tongue twisters, you can find plenty in whichever language you choose. Just make sure you choose the correct pronunciation.

For instance, I had an American voice teacher at drama school whose pronunciation was different to the English students in the room. We had to make sure that we didn’t end up saying “yella” instead of “yellow”.

So remember that vocal exercises are as important for public speakers as they are for professional actors.

Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.

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One of the simplest ways to learn to be humorous, when public speaking, is to use an introductory joke story. The opening of your presentation should actually comprise of two parts a pre-introduction and then an introduction.

Pre-Introduction Tips

The pre-introduction is for grabbing your audience's attention. The introduction is then for introducing the topic of your speech. So technically, when public speaking, you need to start with your pre-introductory joke story.

Everything has to relate to the overall objective of presentation in order for it to be truly effective. The point of the story has to relate directly or indirectly to your main point.

Are there often stories that you tell at work related to what you do, that are clean and make people laugh? If so then as long as it's succinct then you should absolutely use it.

"But I don't have any funny stories"

Okay, here’s an alternative, use a street joke. You know those jokes that begin something like “two guys walk into a bar...” or “a Grandfather finds a magic watch” or a “Man goes into a store with an Alligator under his arm…” those are known as street jokes. Essentially they are jokes without an author, which people tell in social situations.

Professional Joke-Telling Secrets

The quick down and dirty little secret with these is to find short ones that relate to your content. Make sure that the fantastical element is restricted, so talking animals or objects, anything magical or fantastical needs to be avoided. The audience will feel like they’re being joked, you don’t want that. You want your audience to feel as though you're being conversational.

The next thing you want to do is to adapt that street joke and make it personal to you. So instead of saying “this guy worked in this bar” you would say “I was working in this bar”

Be very careful over the nature of your street joke and the humour you use in your entire presentation. Make sure that no one’s going to be offended. Don’t target nay particular groups. The best person to laugh at is yourself!

Not only that, but you also want to make sure that the street joke that you're going to use is authorless and doesn't belong to a comedian. Don't steal another comedian's material as that's immoral and illegal. Street jokes aren't difficult to find if you set your mind to it.

Once you have delivered your introductory joke story you must then go into your introduction and inform your audience about the nature of your presentation. However, make sure you don’t give too much away. You want them to remain interested enough to stick around for the ending of your presentation.

Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.

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If you are giving a speech or presentation and you want to inject a little humour, it would be fair to say that you have to learn to how to be humorous on purpose. I am going to do a very dangerous thing and assume that you already have a method for creating humorous material. I am doing that as the discussion of creating material and speeches is beyond the scope of this article.

The best thing to do is to create your speech first, then think about the humour. What can happen is that if you try and be funny first, before getting your message clarified, you can creatively run aground. You'll spend more time worrying about how to be humorous rather than focusing on your message.

Be specific about your message, what the point of your speech or presentation is and then write your speech “from the heart; meaning you should write as quickly as you can. At this stage don't think too much about what you're writing, otherwise you'll end up second guessing yourself. The idea being you short-circuit your inner critic, that little doubting voice that we all have.

Once you have the raw material for your speech down, now is the time to “edit from the head”. At this point you can unleash your inner critic to help you. Make sure everything you say and every point that you make reflects the overall point of your speech.

Now we can look at some of the mechanics of humour. I've met people who are really funny who still don't know what a punchline is, that's something that baffles me as these are the tools of their trade and yet they're using them blindly. So here's a quick run down of terms (apologies if you know this already, but I want us to be on the same page):

The Secrets of Set-up Lines

A set-up line is the bit before you get a laugh. It's usually normal and provides information required to make the punchline work. A set-up line is equally important as the punchline is. Without the set-up line the punchline fails.

Consider this joke:

During his annual physical, the elderly man says to his doctor “I may be having a problem with my memory. I keep forgetting to take my medicine. I can’t remember to take out the trash. Sometimes, I can't even remember my own name.” The doctor says, “When did this start happening?” The man looks at the doctor and says, “When did what start happening?”

Everything up until the word “says” is the set-up. It provides the necessary mini story and helps to orientate us.

Ideally, the shorter this part the better. You want to get to the punchline as fast as you can, but without rushing your delivery. You should still be speaking in your own natural rhythm and pace.

If you consider that the average headline stand-up comedian gets 4-6 laughs per minute, an act containing jokes of this nature probably wouldn't achieve that. In order to achieve that there would need to be a punchline every three sentences, or one laugh every 10 seconds.

As you can see I am very serious when it comes to learning how to be humorous.

Joke stories, such as the one of just outlined, tend to be a little long-winded and have only one punchline at the end. That's a lot of time and a lot of faith to have in that one punchline working.

The good thing is we're not about learning how to become a stand-up comedian. These types of jokes could work in a speech or presentation and you should make sure that you speak them out loud a few times to put them into your own words. This will mean that you find yourself editing the joke naturally.

Obviously, when you are delivering a presentation everything you say is not divided into either set-up lines or punchlines. You're not a comedian. You're someone giving a presentation that uses humour to help make your point, so a large proportion of what you say will be focused on your message.

That said, when you get to the humour, you want to get to the laugh as fast as possible, without rushing what you're saying.

The Secrets of Funny Punchlines

Your punchlines should be short and to the point. This is where you get the punch of punchlines. Consider the punchline of the earlier joke and imagine what it would be like if it was like this:

“I'm a little confused about what it is you're saying to me Doctor. When did what start happening?”

I personally fell asleep about half-way through that sentence. The set-up line creates the tension of expectation in the audience. This means that the punchline should be terse enough to release that tension. But if the punchline rambles on like in my above example, then that effect is lost.

Everything that needs to be conveyed for this mini story to work, is found in the final sentence.

Here's another key part for a successful punchline, make sure that the key word is as close to the end of the sentence as possible. This will keep the audience tension right up until the last possible minute.

In the previous example the key word is “what”. It's a direct swap of the previous word used in the same place which was “this”. It's also important, in this example, that the line that the elderly man says is exactly the same as what the doctor said, with just one slight difference.

These tips can not only be applied to the editing of street jokes, but also to most other forms of spoken humour that appear in humorous speeches. If you can apply these tips you can learn how to be humorous and improve the funny you already have.

Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.

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Have you ever known someone who could immediately make friends with anyone? You know they type. They can build instant rapport and it doesn’t matter about race, age, or gender. They can walk into a room and befriend everyone from a priest, a mechanic, and the CEO. Afterward you are scratching your head wondering…how did they do it?

In most cases it is because they have mastered several key skills. Sometimes it is something they learn naturally. For most people they have just spent the time improving their skills.

There are four basic personality styles that vary based on the type and amount of information needed to make a decision. Pragmatics and analyticals base decisions on facts and data while amiables and extroverts make decisions based on emotion and feelings. Pragmatics and Extroverts need just enough information to make a decision (and no more!) while analyticals and amiables just can’t get enough.

You can learn more about personality styles in my article Mastering the four personality styles.

Brandt Smith is a sales, marketing, public speaking, and professional development expert. Learn about achieving wealth and life balance through entrepreneurship at Wealth and Wisdom, where he is cofounder and senior editor. Their advice on wealth building, personal development, and life balance can help take you to the next level. You can also read more of his thoughts on his blog.

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Before we start to do something new, we check our capabilities and up to that start. Even we wouldn’t be succesfull after that checking process, would be happy and satisfied with what we do or did. However if we do what we love, it generally results successfull.
For entrepreneurs, there are loads of skills that should be checked. One of the most important one –for me its the first- is communication skills.
Communication skills are important cause of patnerships, cooperations and to keep on networking. Those processes make startup more worthy. The point is in Internet age, communication ways changed and while they have some advantages, they have also disadvantages. You can reach e-mails easier than phone numbers. But the problem starts here, e-mails do not give the right sense like your phonecalls. It’s harder to realise if they replied positively or negatively. So even it’s more easier to reach who you want via web, it’s harder to call them in your network.
1. Start with formal e-mail
It’s clear that we generally communicate with our friends on msn or facebook and it goes on daily. So while typing an e-mail, dont think its a usual friend chat, so type more proper –sure not “to whom it may concern”- but it should be formal
2. Show that you respect and follow him
To get attention and get the reply, its better to show you respect, but not like you spoil them, use their articles or experience that you liked. It would also show that you really follow him.
3. Introduce yourself
you are not just a fun of him, you also do something worthy. So introduce yourself with the way he would pay attention, show what you can add value to him. Make him to say “sounds, he knows what he wants”
4. Balance and kindness
While you show that u follow, dont spoil him like you admire, you get him as a goddess. if you spoil so much, he wouldn’t pay attention to your e-mail because he is a usual human too, so exagration would seen not so nice. On the other hand while you introduce yourself, don’t exaggrate yourself and don’t act like you compare yourself with him. This time-by doing this he would think that you are so arrogant. So keep your kindness and keep the balance.
5. Be patient
the ones you want to reach dont have so much time, so they may delay to reply you, they may skip, and also they may forget. Keep your patience, wait for 15 days at least. It doesnt mean he/she doesnt care you, even you can use his gratefulness cause of late reply. =)
If he doesnt reply after 20 days, send another e-mail and start something like this; “i can imagine you might be so busy there” and keep in with your mail the previous mail content to make him more pressed.
6. Don’t miss chances
When he replies and tells you that he is really busy and he can arrange an appointment a month later, dont miss this chance and welcome this offer. But while you welcome this offer, ask something more to keep in touch till you get the appointment date.
by the way if he doesnt reply you at all, dont worry, its his own fault for not being able to manage his time =)

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Pulling together a virtual team is vital to the success of any solo professional, but even more important is maintaining regular communication with your team. If you were all sitting together in a office environment, communication wouldn’t be such a big issue - you could just walk over and chat to your assistant. But working virtually you have to set aside that time on a regular basis to talk and update one another.

This is true for all of your team members, not just your virtual assistant, but your web designer, your graphic designer, your bookkeeper, or any other team member you have on board.

My clients are long-term regular clients, who are looking to develop a partnership with their virtual assistant. I maintain that communication by recommending that we have a weekly telephone call. I schedule it in as one of the first jobs I do when we start working together. We have our phone call on the same day/time each week, so it becomes second nature.

Some weeks we may only have a quick two-minute check-in call; other weeks it may last for an hour. The purpose of our call is:

- to get to know one another

- to keep each other up-to-date on work

- to discuss any issues that have arose during the week that need our attention

- to plan future projects

How we conduct our phone calls is just as important as the phone call itself, and to make the best possible use of our time on the call I draw up an agenda. We work through it just as if we were holding an in-person meeting. I type up the notes afterwards and send them to my client. The notes then form the basis for our workload during the week, and are updated to produce the Agenda for next weeks’ call.

Communication is so important in a virtual relationship that you do need a regular communication system in place.

Having used this method of communicating with my clients for several years I've found it to be one of the best ways of staying in touch.

As well as being able to discuss issues relating to their business we can get to know one another too - essential for any virtual team!

By following this simple system not only do my clients get the best possible value of my time, but they are able to grow their businesses too!

Online Business Manager & Virtual Assistant, Tracey Lawton, supports professional speakers, coaches, and authors to operate an efficient, organized, and profitable business. Learn how to create an efficient and organized office in 7 EASY steps, and receive free how-to articles at http://www.OfficeOrganizationSuccess.com.

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There seems to be a lot of information out there at the moment about the benefits of using humor in the workplace. In fact on Google there are about 363,000 results (at the time of writing), so clearly it’s quite a popular subject area. But it’s a topic that concerns me. Gravely concerns me.

Firstly, let me just say that as a humorist I’m into humour (or humor, however you choose to spell it) in a big way. And I mean a BIG way. Apart from being a practitioner (sounds a bit of a heady term for someone who has the ability to make a room full of strangers laugh), I’m big into the history of it both in the theatre and in cinema.

I’m also all for the benefits of humour being able to reduce stress and also help re-frame the serious, sometimes even tragic, moments that life can throw at us. Being able to laugh with a colleague about a angry person you’ve just dealt with on the phone is important I think.

As Steven M. Sultanoff, PhD, licensed psychologist and therapeutic humorist, wrote in an article over at Humor Matters that a “Haft International 1985 survey only 15% of workers are fired because of lack of competence. The remaining 85% are let go because of their inability to get along with fellow employees. When asked about the qualities of an effective employee, senior administrators and human relations personnel check humor as one of the choice attributes of a desired employee”.

I’m not sure what the figures would be like in 2009, but based on that old research alone I think it’s important for work colleagues to be able to get on and communicate effectively. Humour is definitely an important part of that. That’s fine with me.

What I’m against is when people go overboard with the humor in order to make the workplace a really fun place to be. The “you-don’t-have-to-be-crazy-to-work-here-but-it-helps” type of people or the “wacky, cartoon tie” brigade. These people are actually irritating. I see the spirit of trying to make work a much more interesting and fun place to be, but, personally, I don’t want to deal with, or work with, a company like that.

People at work shouldn’t take themselves too seriously, that much I can accept, but not to the extent of playing practical jokes at other people’s expence. For instance, I was working in this one job a few years ago and I was chatting to one of my colleagues and I happened to mentioned that I’d performed stand-up. She instantly said “I’m funny” - immediately a warning sign that she isn’t.

Not “Oh, I do stand-up too”, but “I’m funny”. In my experience this person usually isn’t. Not wanting to criticise what she was telling me I let her explain. I do try to be supportive where I can and just get on with people even on a temporary basis. This is what she told me, without any exaggeration from me:

“Sometimes when I’m at my mother’s I’ll hide from her. Then I’ll leap out and squirt her with a water pistol.” (She laughed, after clearly cracking herself up).

I wanted to stab her in the eye with a Biro…

People who describe themselves as being wacky, usually aren’t. They are deluded and need a “jolly good talking to”, as only the English can muster. Granted the scenario she was describing took place out of the office at home, but the seeds of (what I can only describe by neologizing) Shunny (a portmanteau of the words sh*t and funny) were clearly there.

On another day I happened to catch her crouching behind some cabinets. “Er, hi. What are you doing?” “Oh. I was going to leap out on you and scare you.” She was lucky that piece of shunny failed. If she had I can only imagine that we would’ve reenacted that scene from The Deer Hunterwith her playing the Christopher Walken role, but with a full chamber.

So should we avoid humour in the workplace at all costs then? No, I don’t believe so. Over at Science Daily there’s research on humor in the workplace by professor Chris Robert, at the University of Missouri-Columbia said: “…particularly joking around about things associated with the job – actually has a positive impact in the workplace. Occasional humor among colleagues, he said, enhances creativity, department cohesiveness and overall performance”.

See he says “occasional humor works”. Here are three ideas off the top of my head:

1) Witty Banter- a bit of banter with work colleagues about the workload that you both have, or laughing about a difficult customer. Being naturally funny helps in this situation. Alternatively, re-telling a favourite joke might be useful as along as you’re not offensive.

2) Favourite Comedy Shows- recounting favourite or classic sitcoms or sketch shows. Or discussing the previous evenings TV where you both might have seen the saem show. Quoting from shows or comedians that you both find funny works because you both remember how you laughed originally at the source material. So by repeating it you can often get a laugh of recollection.

3) Cartoon strips - One job I had I had a copy of one of my favourite panels taped to the bottom of my computer screen. Whilst it wasn’t fall of my chair funny, it served to make me smile every now and then when I wasn’t feeling my best. I have seen these photocopied and pinned up on a noticeboard.

Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.

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Here’s something that’s been floating around in the back of my head for a number of months. When you get up and present are you acting? You might think that you’re not. But I’d suggest that if you’re not using acting and theatre techniques when you present, then you’re seriously missing out on taking your presentation skills to the next level.

This has been lingering with me since I entered the International Speech contest back in March 2008. In that speech, a version of which is viewable here, I briefly mention my background as an actor. For some reason this was an issue for some of the Toastmasters who were watching and it has continued to be an issue for Toastmasters who have seen it since.

Some peeps have said they feel that me being an actor is cheating somehow. That somehow, because I have tonnes of stage time earned elsewhere away from Toasties and the speaking platform that I’m somehow unworthy, or I have short-circuited the system because I wasn’t lacking in confidence when I did my Ice Breaker speech. Others have suggested that actors are dishonest and should be bracketed with lawyers and accountants. Nice. Good to know they’re supportive.

Once upon a time actors were branded as being rogues and vagabonds. But that was in the 1660s. These days actors are looked upon a bit better than that… But only a little.

There’s nothing to be afraid of. We don’t bite… often.

The thing is a lot of the really great presenters and speakers tap into the world of acting. They easily harness the techniques and bring in an element of theatricality, whether consciously or unconsciously, when they speak. People like Bill Clinton, Steve Jobs, Darren LaCroix, Barack Obama… and that’s just of the top of my head.

The danger is when speakers think that they’re actors. There is a difference. You can’t just attend some acting classes and call yourself an actor. It’s a whole other outlook entirely. I feel that the best acting involves you pretending to be someone else. Whereas, the best speaking involves you becoming the best version of you.

Here’s what I mean - we don’t want to see the real you. The pauses for thought, the hesitations, the reiterations, the slurred or stumbled word. We want all that edited out. So you’re presenting an edited and slightly heightened version of yourself. You’re performing.

You plus a bunch of people watching you is theatre, no matter how much you want to get away from that. The same as watching a sporting event like football (soccer to my American readers) has an element of ancient Greek Theatre to it.

So how do you embrace theatricality in your next presentation? Well, it depends upon when it is, if you have more time then you can do more. But…

1. A Class. You can take a basic acting or improvisation class in your area. This will get you loosened up and thinking about what you do in a different way. Plus, it will give you another stage time opportunity.

2. The Internet. You can surf YouTube for clips of some of the speakers I mentioned above and make notes of what they do differently to you. Is there anyway that you can incorporate any of those elements?

3. Storytelling. We’re often told that we should muse more stories in our presentations. If you think about it what do we do when we recount a story to a friend? We often act it out don’t we? We take on the persona, or voice or mannerism of one of the characters in the story (boss, partner, etc) and re-enact the joke or incident. So that’s something that we need to think about for our presentations. Those little moments are real and interesting and certainly something that we should bear in mind.

4. Technical. What about other areas such as using a piece of music to open your presentation (making sure that it relates to your topic would be preferable)? Or is there anyway that you might be able to adjust the lighting and add a gel to get a different colour effect in there? Or even just using audience music, that the audience listens to as they come in and take their seats.

Next time you have a presentation to do, have you considered the acting elements?

Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.

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Oh no!!! Not another observational humor monologue!

I realize that few readers have an interest in writing observational humor monologues. And I also realize that because of the You-Had-To-Be-There factor, reading a transcript of a monologue from an event that you did not attend probably doesn’t make you laugh. So why do I publish them?

Writing about creating and using humor can easily result in something that looks and sounds like a lecture. Nothing but theory becomes an exercise in mental gymnastics. It’s not especially interesting and it’s difficult to link the theory to real-life examples. You’ve probably heard the E.B. White quote, “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.”

So the question becomes, “how to teach and learn humor without feeling like you’re in a lecture hall?” I use observational humor monologues as a teaching tool. Hopefully it’s a vehicle which brings humor techniques to life with real-world examples of humor in action.

My improv troupe had a workshop last week. Ten of us met to practice the principles of good improv comedy. Nobody in the group has a dream of becoming a main-stage player at Second City or being discovered by Saturday Night Live. Most people take improv classes because they are fun, because they teach skills which apply to success in life, and because they help people become better public speakers. It’s not about the improv…it’s so much more than that.

Likewise, members of a Toastmasters Club did not join because they intend to become a professional speaker. They join for the fun and to gain some skills that will make them more productive and competitive in the workplace. It’s not primarily about public speaking, it’s about leadership, growth, and personal communication.

Within a Toastmasters Club, members have the opportunity to compete in several contests every year. It’s not about the contests, it’s not about winning. People participate in the contests to improve their skills.

You don’t enter a Cartoon Caption Contest or a Joke Contest with the intent of becoming a professional writer. You most likely do it to sharpen your creative skills. Maybe you do it just to have fun.

People don’t go to the gym to become a body builder. They go to the gym simply to be in a little better shape than they are today.

So it is with studying Observational Humor Monologues. It’s not about creating the monologue. It’s about discovering the Ah-Ha’s which help you make the connections needed to create your own fresh humor. It’s about the possibility of closing a PTA meeting with just one observational humor line. It’s about brightening a staff meeting with just one small quip which you create out of nothing. It’s about relaxing a prospect at a sales presentation because you can react naturally with humor, even if it’s only once. It’s about opening a speech with just one observational humor line. It’s about becoming better at using humor…just a little bit. Studying Observational Humor Monologues, you slowly begin to see how humor connections are made. One step at a time. We grow in baby steps. And the exciting thing is…the better you get…the faster you get better.

So remember, it’s not about the monologue. It’s about something much more important…you and your skills.

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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Avoid the pain

Which would you prefer - root canal dental surgery without an anaesthetic or a bit of public speaking? According to the people who research these things, most of us would prefer the former.

Public speaking is still one of our greatest fears and it turns grown men and women into nervous wrecks. The mere thought of it turns our tongue to cotton wool, causes our internal plumbing to act up and our kneecaps to start knocking lumps out of each other.

The problem is that Public Speaking catches up with many of us at some time both in our business and personal life. You're asked to do a short talk at Fred's "leaving do". The
organisers of your business club want fifteen minutes on why you make "kafuffle" valves. A potential client wants a presentation on why they should give you the contract.

Of course there's always the confident people who think "I'm real good at this, lead me to the podium." The only thing is that some of these people could bore your socks off and do more for insomniacs than the strongest sleeping pills.

Maybe you'll be lucky enough to be sent on a Public Speaking course by your enlightened employer. But more likely, when asked to make a presentation you'll get hold of a book on
speaking, start writing the speech and lose sleep until the event.

Well, there's no need for all of this because help is at hand. All you need to remember are your P's and Q's. Let's start with the P's

Preparation -

When you sit down to write what you're going to say, bear in mind who you'll be speaking to. Will they understand what you're talking about; will they understand the technical stuff and the jargon? If in doubt remember the old saying "Keep It Simple Stupid". To quote Aristotle - "Think as the wise men do, but speak as the common man".

Make sure that what you say has a beginning, a middle and an end. Think of some anecdotes that help reinforce your story.

People think visually so paint verbal pictures for your audience. And always remember, people want to know what's in it for them - so make sure you tell them!

Place -

Have a look at the venue before the event if you can. It's not always possible, however, even if you get there half an hour before, you can check out where you'll be speaking.
Stand at the point where you will deliver from, imagine where the audience will be and check that they can see and hear you. You may even wish to place a glass of water where
you'll be able to find it.

Personal Preparation -

Before any speaking event, think about what you are going to wear; when in doubt dress up rather than down. You can always take things off for a more casual look. Men could remove their jacket and their tie. Women could remove items of jewellery.

Part of your personal preparation should include some mouth and breathing exercises. Practise saying some tongue twisters to give your speaking muscles a good work out. Take
a deep breath and expand your diaphragm. Then breathe out, counting at the same time, try and get up to fifty and not pass out.

As part of your personal preparation, write your own introduction. Write out exactly what you want someone to say about you, large font, double-spaced and ask the person
introducing you to read it. Believe me they won't object and will probably be pleased and impressed.

Poise and Posture -

Whenever you're called to speak, stand up or walk to the front quickly and purposefully. Pull yourself up to your full height, stand tall and look like you own the place. Before you start to speak, pause, look round your audience and smile. You may even have to wait until the applause dies down. Remember, you want the audience to like you, so look likeable. Practise this in front of a mirror or your family; I've heard that children make pretty good critics.

Pretend -

I'm suggesting you pretend you're not nervous because no doubt you will be. Nervousness is vital for speaking in public, it boosts your adrenaline, which makes your mind sharper and gives you energy. It also has the slight side effect of making you lighter through loss of body waste
materials. The trick is to keep your nerves to yourself. On no account tell your audience your nervous, you'll only scare the living daylights out of them if they think you're going to faint. Some of the tricks for dealing with nerves are:

Get lots of oxygen into your system, run on the spot and wave your arms about like a lunatic. It burns off the stress chemicals. Speak to members of your audience as they come in or at some time before you stand up. That tricks your brain into thinking you're talking to some friends. Have a glass of water handy for that dry mouth. Stick cotton wool on your kneecaps so people won't hear them knocking.

One word of warning - do not drink alcohol. It might give you Dutch courage but your audience will end up thinking you're speaking Dutch.

The Presentation -

This is it, the big moment when you tell your audience what a clever person you are and have them leap to their feet in thunderous applause. Okay, let's step back a bit - if you want their applause then you're going to have to work for it. Right from the start your delivery needs to grab their attention.

Don't start by saying - "Good morning, my name is Fred Bloggs and I'm from Bloggs and Company." Even if your name is Bloggs, it's a dead boring way to start a presentation. Far better to start with some interesting facts or an anecdote that is relevant to your presentation.

Look at the audience as individuals; I appreciate that this can be difficult when some of them are downright ugly. However it grabs their attention if they think you're talking to them individually.

Talk louder than you would normally do, it keeps the people in the front row awake and makes sure those at the back get the message. Funnily enough, it's also good for your nerves.

PowerPoint -

And for those of you who haven't heard of it, it's a software programme that's used to design stunning graphics and text for projection onto a screen. As a professional speaker, I'm not that struck on PowerPoint. I feel that too many speakers rely on it and it takes over the presentation. After all, you're the important factor here. If an audience is going to accept what you say then they need to see the whites of your eyes. There needs to be a big focus on you,
not on the technology.

Use PowerPoint if you want but keep it to a minimum and make sure you're not just the person pushing the buttons.

Why not get a bit clever at using the faithful old Flip Chart, lots of professionals do.

Passion -

This is what stops the audience in their tracks. This is what makes them want to employ you; to accept what you're proposing and make them want you to marry their son or daughter. Couple this with some energy, enthusiasm and emotion and you have the makings of a great public speaker.

Just think of our old friend Adolph Hitler, boy could he move an audience to action. It's just too bad he was selling something that wasn't to everyone's liking.

Give your presentation a bit of oomph and don't start telling me - "I'm not that kind of person."

There's no need to go over the top but you're doing a presentation to move people to action, not having a cosy little chat in your front room.

That's the P's finished with so let's look at the Q's.

Questions -

Decide when you're going to take them and tell people at the start. In a short speech it's best to take questions at the end. If you take them as you go then you may get waylaid
and your timing will get knocked out.

Never - never - never finish with questions; far better to ask for questions five or ten minutes before the end. Deal with the questions and then summarise for a strong finish.
Too many presentations finish on questions and the whole thing goes a bit flat.

When you're asked a question, repeat it to the whole audience and thank the questioner. It keeps everyone involved, it gives you time to think and it makes you look so clever and in control.

Quit -

Quit when you're ahead. Stick to the agreed time; if you're asked to speak for twenty minutes, speak for nineteen and the audience will love you for it. Remember, quality is not quantity.

One of the most famous speeches ever - "The Gettysburg Address", by President Lincoln, was just over two minutes long.

Right, that's my cue to quit when I'm ahead. Public Speaking will never be easy for most of us but we can all do it a whole lot better.

Alan Fairweather, 'The Motivation Doctor,' is an International Speaker, Author and Business Development Expert. To receive your free newsletter and free e-books, visit: http://www.themotivationdoctor.com

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Let’s set things straight. There is absolutely NO way you can learn how to swim or cook from just reading a book or attending a seminar unless you are a genius. Yes?

And there’s a reason why there are still a gazillion number of people who are not rich in spite of the number of books on how to get rich. Yes?

If you have realized by now, the fastest and most effective way in mastering a skill is by DOING it. As the saying goes:

"Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skills is knowing how to do it and virtue is doing it."

But Eric, I don’t deliver presentations everyday! No worries, you can still clock stage time if you adopt this insider strategy practiced by many top leaders and speakers in our world.

And here’s the barring truth - champions never turn down stage time. So instead of harping on it, I shall share with you 15 more ways to take the stage and sharpen your public speaking skills. If you have other brilliant ideas, please share them with me under the comments section.

1. Volunteer to emcee at your company’s event or your child’s birthday party
2. Give a toast at your friend’s wedding
3. Ask a question at a conference (during the Q&A session)
4. Join a Toastmasters meeting (speak at the Table Topics segment)
5. Conduct a mini workshop for your friends on a topic that you are an expert on (say cooking)
6. Speak up at your department’s meeting
7. Volunteer to deliver a presentation on behalf of your team in school
8. Attend a business networking event - find opportunities to speak up
9. Say hello to strangers on the way to work or school
10. Volunteer to teach at a non-profit organization
11. Videotaped yourself delivering a speech and then get professional feedback
12. Search for speeches and scripts on youtube and then recreate them.
13. Do a stand up comedy gig (warning: not for the faint hearted)
14. Have a boys or girls night out and take the chance to share some of your juicy stories with them.
15. Attend a public speaking program!

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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Do you remember being told to use the "sandwich" technique when you needed to reprimand someone? Let me give you an example:

"Fred, I'm really pleased with how you've been progressing since you joined us and you're doing a great job. However you're not getting your reports in on time and we're missing
deadlines. I'd like you to tighten up a bit on this. Anyway,thanks for all you've done so far and keep up the good work."

Have you ever said something along these lines when managing your team? You probably needed Fred to sort out his reporting but you didn't want to upset or demoralize him.

The only problem is that Fred may not get the message and the importance of it may be seriously diluted.

He may hear it as, "Fred, you're doing a brilliant job, you just need to sort out the reporting bit but it's not really that important."

What happens then is, Fred continues to fail with his reports.

The "sandwich" technique doesn't work, it lets you off the hook and it's mealy mouthed. Be direct when managing your people and they'll respect you more for it. You are also much more likely to get a change in behavior.

If you're unhappy with some aspect of an employee's performance then you need to tell them so. The skill is in doing it in a way that's effective and doesn't lower the morale of the individual.

Firstly, it's not acceptable to speak to your people just when you're unhappy about something. Tell them the good news as well. As Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson say in their book The One Minute Manager - "Catch people doing something right" and tell them about it.

Some managers and employers still have this strange notion that if people are doing things right then that's what they're paid for and they don't need to be complimented.

Ask almost any employee in Industries throughout the world and they'll tell you that they don't feel appreciated by their manager.

When you notice someone doing something you do like, tell them about it. When you notice them doing something you don't like, tell them about it. Whether it's good news or bad, the same rules apply.

Do it as soon as possible. Acknowledgment of a job well done is not much good six months later. Also, if you don't immediately call someone's attention to something you are not happy about, then they'll assume it's okay. Either that or they'll think you didn't notice or you don't care.

Do it in private. Why is it that some managers still feel it's okay to reprimand someone in front of their colleagues? Even the mildest rebuke can have a negative effect on morale.

When you speak to the person use "I" messages. Say things like "I liked the way you did that" or "I think there is another way to do that." Avoid "You" messages such as "You're doing great." That can come across as patronizing or insincere. "You're doing that all wrong" may cause conflict, lower morale and may not sort the problem.

When your giving feedback, focus on one or two things. You'll only confuse the person if you run off a whole list of attributes or misdemeanors. Be specific about job behavior, focus on what the person did or didn't do, don't make a personal attack.

Allow time for the message to sink in and allow the person to respond. You can then seek agreement as to what will happen in the future. If the person does not agree to take
corrective action then you need to move to another level. When they do agree to take corrective action then make sure that you monitor it and give encouraging feedback.

Being direct with your people is better for you, better for them and better for you business, so save your "sandwiches" for lunchtime.

Alan Fairweather, 'The Motivation Doctor,' is an International Speaker, Author and Business Development Expert. To receive your free newsletter and free e-books, visit: http://www.themotivationdoctor.com

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Today we’re going to talk about something a little more unusual!

No, we won’t be talking about crop circles. However, we are going to talk about a phenomenon that is just as rare but also just as impressive, and most definitely not a hoax:

Female speakers.

Many top public speakers seem to be male – and indeed, they are. If there are any feminists in the audience, hold the rotten eggs – I’m not saying that there aren’t any top female speakers, but it could also be because there are still less women than men in top positions of power or leadership, although the gap is closing.

But never fear: here are a few good examples of good female speakers – a politician, an academic, and a professional speaker. We’ll take a look three main things that each of them got right and what you as speakers (men too!) can emulate.

Hillary Clinton

She was in the running to be the President of the United States. Even now, she’s a potent force in US politics. Here’s a clip from her Texas debate with Obama.

Appearance:
She’s gotten a lot of flak over her appearance – heckled by journalists asking who does her hair, people whining that her pantsuits were too masculine, etc. But that’s because she’s a politician on the campaign trail, and anything is open to fire.

If you aren’t a politician, she’s actually a pretty good role model for how to dress to impress. I like this outfit – a black jacket but with a touch of color at the collar and the hems of her sleeves, which is professional without being too boring or severe.

Also, bling distracts your audience. So if you accessorize, be simple, like that plain gold band around her neck. Large, dangling earrings are the biggest culprits.

Use of anecdote:
Her story about the center for wounded soldiers is definitely a good use of anecdote. It plays to her audience’s nationalist sympathies while demonstrating her humility. Besides that, it gets in a good dig at her opponent when she says that she and McCain were invited as the ‘only two elected officials’.

Emotive language:
Most politicians do it, but I think she managed it particularly well here. Certainly well enough for her audience to give her a standing ovation. Her appeal to the concepts of ‘family and friends’ and her hope that every American person can have that are very personal in her context (‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman’, anyone?) and are brought across without sounding too rehearsed.

Helen Fisher

This lady isn’t quite as well known, so, a quick rundown: she’s an anthropologist who specializes in love: on the study of the sociological and scientific processes of love. An academic at Rutgers University, she is widely considered the leading expert on the topic.

Here, she delivers an intriguing 20-minute lecture on the effects of love on the brain, and weighs in on the social trends of women in the workforce and the aging population. And her public speaking style certainly doesn’t hurt her already interesting topic.

Appearance:
She fits the academic image perfectly. The black-framed glasses give her a scholarly air, and the black turtleneck and pants are relaxed without being too casual. Black adds a degree of seriousness, so while she isn’t intimidating, she doesn’t look intimidated either.

Tone:
Her speaking style suits the presentation well – it’s informative, but her variations in tone keep it from being dry.

She maintains a basic casual air throughout the whole presentation and inserts some droll moments of humor through tone of voice. For instance, she dryly quotes George Bernard Shaw, who said that love was overestimating the difference between one woman and another, garnering a delighted laugh from her audience.

These are examples of humor that is not rip-roaring laughter but is equally effective at keeping your presentation lighthearted and engaging. They are well balanced with moments when she is entirely serious, such as when she describes love not as a series of emotions but as a drive in certain centers of the brain.

Voice:
Women’s voices are naturally pitched higher than men’s are. Which means that if a woman’s speaks fast, it’s more difficult to hear her than if a man speaks faster. Also, higher voices have a higher chance of sounding shrill. So be careful.

Fisher has a good alto speaking voice – well-modulated and pleasant to listen to. Besides this, she keeps it firm and enunciates her words clearly and slowly, which will help a great deal in speech clarity.

Patricia Fripp

As an award-winning, internationally renowned speaker and speech coach, Patricia Fripp has been in the business of public speaking for several decades now. This clip is from her keynote address at Toastmaster’s International.

Energy level:
Fripp starts talking the moment she walks out of the wings, without waiting to get to centerstage. It shows how much enthusiasm she has, and it surprises the audience and energizes them too, because energy is infectious.

Besides that, she moves around when she talks, utilizing the whole stage rather than simply standing in one spot. Movement also ensures that the audience’s eyes are following you rather than fixed on one point, which again helps keep them awake.

Gesture:
Fripp uses a whole range of gestures to punctuate her words and gestures. Throughout the speech, she is never still, but neither is she too theatrical. Rather, simple hand movements (such as the forceful side-to-side movement to emphasize the words ‘do not’) make her point best.

Because she’s constantly on the move, the gestures are natural. If you spend most of your time speaking and only make isolated moves every so often, you risk the gesture look stiff and rehearsed, especially if you’re nervous.

That being said, do not fidget. If you want to be constantly moving, as Fripp does, make sure each movement is intentional.

Structure:
Fripp herself mentions this: structure and content are absolutely essential to public speaking. The lack of a structure means that you’re not sure what you want to say, and if you’re not sure what message you’re sending out, there’s no chance that your audience is going to get it.

Fripp’s structure:
Introduction -> three main points: structure, content, style -> elaborate on each -> conclude

It’s foolproof, and definitely worth sticking to if you’re not sure of yourself.

*

There are plenty of challenges that are specific to women, and even with the general concerns, women may have to interpret some aspects in a very specific manner. If you want more tips specific to women, here’s a possible resource:

The Woman’s Public Speaking Handbook (Paperback), by y Elizabeth J. Natalle (Author), Fritzi R. Bodenheimer (Author)

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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“It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward!” - Rocky Balboa

I have never watched a single Rocky movie even though my room mate and dad are huge fans. However after Monday’s presentation by this phenomenal speaker, I will most likely watch ALL 6 of them. (Read on to find out why)

In the previous article, I shared about four best practices that the speaker adopted which got his audience - including myself - mesmerized and inspired almost immediately.

In this article, I am going to do a spin to five of the life lessons he has shared and show you how they can also be aptly applied to improving your speaking skills.

1. Embrace failure as a wonderful thing

Personally, this advice is new to me. I have heard about how we should always learn from our failures and also the importance of falling forward (thanks Darren!). However, I never hear anyone encouraging me to fail. Not even my parents. Perhaps this is because there is a huge taboo attached to failing. And failure is usually associated as something negative and embarrassing which causes people to avoid vehemently.

However, on second thoughts, the speaker is right. Failure is a very good thing and should be embraced. When you fail, it immediately feedbacks to you what doesn’t work and what works. The same principle applies to self-evaluations.

Admittedly, I learnt the most when I made mistakes. The more serious it is, the more memorable the lesson becomes. For example, how I embarass myself in front of 800 people while delivering a nuclear energy speech at high school. This incident alone has provided me with the impetus to improve in my public speaking skills. And the drive was so great that it gave me the courage to compete internationally. So were the other champions of life, like Rocky.

So my friend, if you have not failed enough in your public speaking, please do so AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. And please do so intelligently. You won’t want to fail at your most critical presentation or in front of your boss, will you?

Hence the best way is to increase your stage time, which gives you more opportunities to take risks. (for eg, trying a new technique or speaking on a unknown topic)

And when you fail, learn and improve. When you succeed, relish your victory and then take another risk. The more chances you give yourself to fail, the more opportunities you give yourself to grow.

For those of you who have failed a lot and are still defeated, I urge you to watch the Rocky video clip above. Failures are expected. Failures are necessary. What counts is not your fall. What counts is you PICKING YOURSELF UP. Remember it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward!

2. Remarkable people do the extremes

This was one of the observations that the speaker made after studying remarkable people for 20 years. Say Tiger Woods, considerably the best golf player in the world. He will practice ONE stroke for 12 to 14 hours! To us, this is crazy. But to him, this is merely a demonstration of his passion for the sport, a demonstration of his commitment to his skill. How many people have such discipline?

Another worthy mention is my mentor Kelvin Lim. He is by far the best coach I have ever met and also one of the best in Asia (FYI, he was awarded Master Certified Coach by the International Coach Federation, the highest recognition you can give to a coach) And yes, he was also one of the authors of The FAQ Book on Public Speaking. Unlike some coaches out there who get qualified just by attending a 4 day coaching program, Kelvin was trained for 12 years before he could even coach a real client. 12 years!

How about you? How can you go to the extreme in your pursuit to becoming a powerful speaker? If you haven’t been speaking regularly, how can you change that? If you haven’t been reading materials on public speaking, how can you change that? For those of you who have been consistent in your public speaking education, how can you take it to the next level?

Remember, true masters go to the extreme and if you want to be as powerful as them, you got to go to the extreme. Instead of spending one hour everyday studying public speaking, can you spare three hours instead? Instead of attending one Toastmasters meeting, can you attend one every week instead? Instead of just reading tips from my blog, can you commit to a coaching program that gives you the opportunity to see results in a shorter span of time? If you have yet to see MASSIVE growth in your speaking ability, chances are you have not walked the extra mile.

3. Kaizen without limits

Kaizen is a Japanese word that represents continuous self improvement. Again, masters make this lesson a daily habit. Tiger Woods, the best golf player in the world, spend hours every day perfecting his swing. James Galway, the flutist superstar, starts his day by playing the scales. Mark Brown, world champion of public speaking of 1995, is re-doing his basic speech manual that all Toastmasters start out with. These masters understand one thing. The only way to stay at the top is to keep working on their skills, even to the extent on training their basics.

There is a saying that if you find a field of interest and study it for a minimum of one hour every day, in five years time, you will become an expert in that given field! So likewise, if you ever want to become a powerful and impactful speaker, you got to start doing CONSISTENT work. One time-tested strategy is through daily damnits. The other is by making a commitment that you will learn at least ONE new thing that will help you improve your speaking skills.

Just one. It could be a inspiring quote you can use in your next speech. It could be an eye contact technique that you saw another speaker use with great success. It could be a success formula you learn here that you can apply in your next presentation. Anything. As long as it helps you move forward. Go the extreme, and kaizen without limits!

4. Don’t set goals!

Instead, set adventures for yourself! Goals vs. adventures. Which is more fun? Which is more exciting? Which is more promising? Adventures of course because of the positive connotation it comes with. So instead of coming up with singular goals like “become more confident in my next presentation”, inject some fun in your next “goal”. Combine a few goals together and design a story around it. What is the kind of impact you want to create for your audience? Describe in full details - what would you SEE, what would you HEAR, what would you audience SAY to you?

Setting an adventure also means that there is no hard and fast rules on how to get there. In fact, there are infinite ways to get there and you should explore as many of them as you can. It’s like how you explore a new city. It becomes boring when you rely on a map because you never get to have random encounters which may prove more meaningful. And while you are at it, enjoy the journey.

5. Always choose the path of least resistance

Human beings are motivated by two things - avoidance of pain and enjoyment of pleasure. One of the reasons why you are reading this blog is because you hate losing face in front of people and you want to get rid of the possible embarrassment. There may be some of you who are passionate about public speaking and hence you like to find out new strategies of approaching public speaking. Either way is fine. However if you are here for the long haul, I suggest you pick the path of least resistance.

This is especially so for people who are fearful of public speaking, for whatever reasons. Instead of getting stuck with these reasons, I suggest you do this - associate something pleasurable to public speaking. If you are someone who loves to grow (pleasure), remind yourself that no matter how bad it turns out, there will always be a lesson to mine and this will keep your nerves in check. If you are someone who loves attention, this is going to motivate you to spend more time sharpening your tongue (even though you hate the long hours involved). If you are someone who aspires to change the world, learning public speaking skills become necessary because words can move the world.

Take note, pain and pleasure are merely two ends of the same spectrum. So instead of getting stuck with all the pain and misery, switch gears and get yourself acclimatized to the possible pleasures of speaking in public. In time to come, you will love the art. I am a living proof.

(There is another version to this lesson, check it out here)

So there you go, FIVE powerful lessons that will ensure you speak at your best. Let me summarize.

1. Embrace failure as a wonderful thing
2. Remarkable people go to the extremes
3. Kaizen to the limit
4. Do not set goals, set adventures instead!
5. Always choose the path of least resistance

Finally, here’s a fun exercise for you to get involved in.

It will only take about 10 mins but chances are, you will enjoy it so much that you will keep going.

Here’s the exercise.

Take a blank piece of paper and start writing down what you want to achieve in the domain of public speaking. You can apply this to other parts of your life too. What would you write down if whatever you write will come true? What would you write down if you can start afresh?

This is your chance to set an adventure for yourself. Tell me in full details and colour, what kind of speaker do you want to become? How do you want your audience to behave before, during and after your presentation? How do you want to feel each time you are up on stage? What do you want to experience when you are up there delivering your speech? What kind of impact you want to crate for your audience? If you get to choose three topics to speak on, what will they be? And if there are particular talents you will like to have as a speaker, what will they be?

WRITE THEM ALL DOWN… with no reservation. Watch your internal conversations. Notice how you sabotage yourself by telling yourself that what you wrote down is pure bulls**t, and they will never come true. Ignore these voices. They don’t serve you. Instead I want you to have fun generating them. This could be YOU if you let it.

Once you are done, read it one more time. Pick three things out of your wish list that you can start working on. Incorporate the five lessons that I just shared with you. Most importantly, TAKE ACTION.

I repeat, TAKE ACTION.

It could just be doing ONE thing everyday. That’s good enough. The rest will take care of itself.

See you at the top!

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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While research shows that most people believe they can’t be sold, the fact is those same people can indeed be persuaded if they don’t recognize that a sales technique is being used.

The trick lies in the different persuasive strategies used then and now. Lets use a car salesman this time since they top the list as the people you absolutely cannot trust in a poll.

Then: They go on downloading information in you, telling you EVERYTHING you need to know AND don’t need to know. Basically, its like taking a shotgun with pellets in it, hoping that one of them will hit the target. This doesn’t work anymore!

The following are strategies for you to adopt as you attempt to persuade your audience, be it one or many.

1. Aiming at the Target

Have you been in a situation where a salesman or saleswoman was trying to sell you something by giving you the 4-1-1 of what he or she is selling while you absolutely couldn’t wait to get away from the guy? That he or she was boring you nuts with all the information?

You felt like running away as soon as he turns his head because he never found out what was IMPORTANT to YOU.

Ask a simple question : “What’s most important to you when you buy a car? ”

“What’s most important to you when you enroll your kids to a programme? ”

“What most important to you when you look for a life partner…( ok you get it by now don’t you? ) ”

This simple question is what gets you the most answers. So for example, if I’m going to go buy a car, what’s important to me is the price.

So if you’re going to sell me a car, you should immediately address my pricing concerns and not go rambling on how energy-efficient and how many awards the car has won. This saves your breath and of course, time spent.

2. Never start your questions with ” WHY? “

Not only is it annoying but you get only excuses.

Lets use an example: If your kid comes back from school with his report card dominated with D’s and E’s and (God Forbid, F’s ), You’ll probably be in a rage and ask ..”WHY did you get D’s and E’s ?? ”

And the answer (or rather, excuse) that you’re going to get is:

“My teacher ate my test paper.”
“My teacher doesn’t really like me.”
“The kids bully me if I get A’s.”

So how can you ask the same question but get solutions instead?

Start your questions with “What” or “How”. These 2 words empowers action in people. You’re still asking the same question, but you shift its mode and then you start to get changes!

3. Use STORIES to convey your message.

Its important to highlight before I continue with how we can use stories that people tend to be too obvious when they use their stories. As a result, they shift back into a sales mode.

Most people cannot come up with a story on the fly. Even Paul suggested practice and fine-tuning our stories to ensure an impactful message and one that really sinks into the human psyche. Remember? Stories, like humour is a process. Your stories are not going to come out fantastic the first time you tell them. Hence, you must be willing to let your stories develop over time.

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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This article is contributed by Karen S. Sieczka

In the business world, it pays to listen and know how to ask the right questions. Miscommunication and misunderstanding can lead to problems… unhappy customers, lost sales, excess inventory, misunderstood instructions, shoddy work, and disgruntled employees … all influencing your company’s bottom line.

Face-to-face communication is still the foundation of many business relationships and good listening skills are an essential part of this communication. Listening skills can open doors and build working relationships. Use verbal cues, eye contact, and positive body language. Draw out information by asking open ended, non-judgmental questions. Reflect what the speaker is saying by restating and reinforcing what is said and asking for clarification if it is not clear. This reassures understanding for both parties. People feel more important when they perceive they are being heard.

A good listener can build trust, empathy, and understanding by practicing and improving listening skills. The ability to listen and actually hear what is being said is becoming rare as we spend more at our computers. Good listening makes for more open communications and prevents many problems before they start.

Here are some simple tips to improve your listening skills:

1. STOP: When someone talks to you, stop and give your full consideration. Focus. When you give your undivided attention, people feel they matter.

2. USE ACTIVE LISTENING: Show you are interested by your body language, using verbal cues, and making eye contact. Make sure your listening to talking ratio is 2:1; listen twice as much as you talk.

3. ASK OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS: Draw out information by asking open ended questions such as: “Why do you think that is?”or ” That’s interesting. Can you tell me more?” Don’t just ask yes or no questions.

4. RESTATE AND REFLECT: Reflect what the speaker is saying by restating what was just said in your own words. Ask for clarification if you are not sure. This reassures understanding for both parties.

5. PRACTICE SKILLS BEFORE PROBLEMS ARISE: The time for improving listening skills is before there are problems. By building a foundation ahead of time, communications flow more freely during times of crisis.

Karen S. Sieczka is a training consultant and founder of Growing Great Ideas.com. Her latest training program is Growing Great Ideas: Unleashing Creativity at Work. The program generates ideas, enthusiasm, and teamwork and can be customized to address particular organizational issues or challenges. She is also writing a book Growing Great Ideas: Unleashing Creativity at Work. The book will be in print in September 2008.

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Here are 7 steps of communication, if applied, will allow you to develop your communication skills that can make you a master communicator. Communication can be likened to a step by step process of checking if you really understand another person from your point of view.

First, you need to listen and observe for the level of importance of this topic to the person you are speaking to and calibrate to that person's level of interest. Calibration is so important when communicating, that if you are unable to calibrate or identify whether or not that person is interested, you might just lose that person straight away.

Second, check congruence in communication. What do I mean by congruence? It means that if he says, "Yes." verbally, he shouldnot be shaking his head, "No." That is incongruence.

Number three is to identify incongruence in communication. We need to clarify meanings and terminologies used. This is for a simple fact that we need to understand what the other person means exactly.

Number four, we need to confirm those meanings. So, if someone said, "Oh! When you look at me, you appear to be extremely angry."What you need to do is to confirm, "Oh! How exactly do I look atyou that mean that I am angry?" The confirmation actually gets you the common understanding that both of you need that will propel your communication to the next level.

Number five, explore alternative meanings. What you are doing hereis eliciting a series of counter examples, to see whether thesemeanings fit in with the person's model of the world.

Number six, offers possibilities. If there are no alternatemeanings, what you might want to do is explore possibilities where one thing could mean something else. This is also known as reframing.

Number seven, summarize your personal experience in communicating with this other person, by starting off and saying, "My experience of you is" and so on. This way, both of you understand each other,and nothing is hidden from each other. It is perfectly honest and direct.

We say that communication is a two way process. This means that communication requires clarity to both parties. Until you understand what I am saying, or until I construct my communicationin a way that makes you understand me, we need to ask questionseven more effectively to reach our win-win outcome. These 7 steps are useful and can be applied anytime we are communicating with another person.

Adam Khoo is an entrepreneur, a best-selling author and a peak performance trainer. A self-made millionaire by the age of 26, he owns and runs several businesses in education, training, event management and advertising, all with a combined annual turnover of $20 million. His best-selling "Patterns of Excellence" is a complete step-by-step system that will literally program you for success in life.

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Our friend at YoungEntrepreneur.com, Evan Carmichael, alerted us to a really insightful post written by Andy Marken for his weekly Entrepreneur University feature. It's about whether or not businesses should start a blog and if you decide to, what are the things to look out for that will help turn your blog into a success. The key learnings points we took away from the article:

1. Blogs are ideal for CEOs because the focus is on a topic you are passionate about. The blog allows the executive to address business issues and concerns, explain them and expand on key industry/company points.

2. Use shorter, more frequent blog entries rather than long white papers or position statements. As you study blogs around the web you will see that the best and most popular sites are a short paragraph or two and sometimes only a sentence. The goal is to show you are knowledgeable about the subject and to make one specific point. Some of the best executive blogs only have a sentence or two with a link directing readers to a relevant article in a respected business, trade or consumer publication.

3. The best business blogs reflect the viewpoint and voice of the executive, not lawyer talk or PR bullet dodging. This can be a tightrope because you want to be as honest and forthright as possible but you also have to write with the understanding that you are creating a very public presence of your information.

Learn more about whether you should start a blog right now at YoungEntrepreneur.com's article: Should You Start A Blog? - Entrepreneur University.

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A creative ad by Mini Cooper placed at the Zurich , Switzerland train station, shows people climbing into or out of the car, when they are actually entering or exiting stairs. That’s persuasion at its best! More examples below.

I just listened to an mp3 interview with Paul Endress, persuasion extraordinaire and found some of his persuasion techniques insightful. He is also the man behind the persuasion article written for The Toastmaster (May 2008 edition). If you want to listen to the full version of the tutorial, click here. If you are in a hurry, you can first check out my notes below.

While research shows that most people believe they can’t be sold, the fact is those same people can indeed be persuaded if they don’t recognize that a sales tecnique is being used.

The trick lies in the different persuasive strategies used then and now. Lets use a car salesman this time since they top the list as the people you absolutely cannot trust in a poll.

Then: They go on downloading information in you, telling you EVERYTHING you need to know AND don’t need to know.
Basically, its like taking a shotgun with pellets in it, hoping that one of them will hit the target. This doesn’t work anymore!

Now: Being subtle.

The following are strategies for you to adopt as you attempt to persuade your audience, be it one or many.

1. Aiming at the Target

Have you been in a situation where a salesman or saleswoman was trying to sell you something by giving you the 4-1-1 of what he or she is selling while you absolutely couldn’t wait to get away from the guy? That he or she was boring you nuts with all the information?

You felt like running away as soon as he turns his head because he never found out what was IMPORTANT to YOU.

Ask a simple question : “What’s most important to you when you buy a car? ”

“What’s most important to you when you enroll your kids to a programme? ”

“What most important to you when you look for a life partn…( ok you get it by now don’t you? ) ”

This simple question is what gets you the most answers. So for example, if I’m going to go buy a car, what’s important to me is the price.

So if you’re going to sell me a car, you should immediately address my pricing concerns and not go rambling on how energy-efficient and how many awards the car has won. This saves your breath and of course, time spent.

2. Never start your questions with ” WHY? “

Not only is it annoying but you get only excuses.

Lets use an example: If your kid comes back from school with his report card dominated with D’s and E’s and (God Forbid, F’s ), You’ll probably be in a rage and ask ..”WHY did you get D’s and E’s ?? ”

And the answer (or rather, excuse) that you’re going to get is:

“My teacher ate my test paper.”
“My teacher doesn’t really like me.”
“The kids bully me if I get A’s.”

So how can you ask the same question but get solutions instead?

Start your questions with “What” or “How”

These 2 words empowers action in people. You’re still asking the same question, but you shift its mode and then you start to get changes!

3. Use STORIES to convey your message.

Its important to highlight before I continue with how we can use stories that people tend to be too obvious when they use their stories. As a result, they shift back into a sales mode.

Most people cannot come up with a story on the fly. Even Paul suggested practice and fine-tuning our stories to ensure an impactful message and one that really sinks into the human psyche. Remember? Stories, like humour is a process. Your stories are not going to come out fantastic the first time you tell them. Hence, you must be willing to let your stories develop over time.

I suspect, if I let my enthusiasm and excitement get the better of me, you’ll never reach the end of this entry…awake.

That’s why I’m leaving you wanting for more (which happens to be another strategy in persuasion that I shall cover in my next entry)

Promise that my next entry will be shorter..by a bit at least *grins*

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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Inspired by Andrew Dlugan’s recent post “Stop Rehearsing! 3 Critical Things to Do Before Your Speech“, I will like to add to his list 7 more things you can do before your speech to take the nervousness out of you.

First, let’s do a quick recap of his three excellent pointers.

1. Study the venue logistics
2. Meet your audience (extra tip: build before rapport)
3. Watch, listen and participate in the event agenda

The rationale for #1 and #2 is straightforward - to reduce uncertainty, which is usually the main cause of a speaker’s nervousness. #3 is an extremely powerful strategy that is used by all professional speakers. And I strongly recommend you to do the same if you want to create impact in your presentation. Check out how Darren La Croix, 2001 World Champion of Public Speaking does it!

OK here’s my other 7.

4. Practice aloud your 30 seconds introduction

The first 30 seconds of any presentation is the most crucial because the audience is the most skeptical, and you the speaker is the most nervous. By making sure you have memorized your introduction, you will be less likely to fumble at the start. It helps to practice aloud too so that you know how you sound like. I will usually incorporate hand gestures too. By getting your entire body involved, your mind will be conditioned to think that you are doing the actual speech. And when you are on stage, you will feel like you have done in umpteen times. This has great effect in boosting your confidence.

5. Listening to music of your choice

Music is therapeutic and has a soothing effect on even the most nervous speaker. Here’s something you can try: create a personal playlist of music that works for you. It could be music that calms your nerves or music that perks you up. For some people, it is jazz. For some, it is loud heavy metal. Well to each its own. For me, instrumental music (especially piano recitals) works best (a.k.a Kevin Kern or SENS). What I usually do is to start listening to the music as I travel down to the speaking venue. And once I am there, I will usually start setting up and if possible, I will even play the playlist using their sound system. If they don’t allow them, you still have your ipod.

6. Do something that gets you in the mood

OK I know.. this sounds vague. Let me give you an example. I always get nervous before a contest. And sometimes it can get really bad. But what calms me down is watching some of my idols do their thing on stage. That includes comedians like Dane Cook and Russell Peters. Their cool demeanor never fails to make me feel relaxed. And I like how they make their audience laugh at cue. And after watching 3 - 5 mins of their gig, I will feel all motivated to also do the same. I suspect the laughing also helps a lot. So yes, watch something light-hearted.

There was once when I delivered a speech on human connection and in order to help me get into the mood, I watched a youtube video titled free hugs, which was what inspired me to deliver the speech in the first place.

So as you can tell, the form doesn’t matter, as long as you do something to get you into the mood.

7. Clear out the trash

This is a phrase I borrowed from this underground cult movie “The Peaceful Warrior”. Trash in this case is the clutter and voices in your head. Usually the black dogs. Here are some familiar ones:

You will never be good enough. You don’t deserve to win. They are going to walk out on me… just like the last time. Aww.. you are trying to do your thing again. Don’t you remember how you failed the last time? Why did I even agree to do this presentation… I am going to screw it up. You are going to get too nervous and muck it all up! I don’t have anything worthwhile to say, I am wasting their valuable time. I am going to forget something important and look like a fool.

Most speakers empower these conversations by listening to them and believing in them. That’s why they look distracted and nervous on stage. The trick is to throw out these trash BEFORE your speech. Let me share with you one very effective way of doing so.

WRITE DOWN EVERY VOICE / CONVERSATION YOU HAVE IN YOUR HEAD.

Yes, it is that simple. All you need to do is just offload. Empty out all the voices in your head so that you can focus on delivering the presentation. What I like to do is to hand write it on a piece of A4 paper. Once I am done, I will crush the paper and dump it into the trashcan. The whole act itself is extremely liberating and really helps to keep you focused.

8. Do voice exercises

When you are nervous, your muscles tense up, including your throat. And if you don’t warm up, you will sound like a strangled frog on stage. Not a beautiful sight.

Voice exercises do not have to be complicated. Singing the scale works. Doing funny faces in private works too. Let me share with you a tried and tested procedure from a book titled “Preparing for Peak Performance”.

i. Massage your face. Loosen the jaw.
ii. Align your body, head, shoulders and spine; get grounded and breathe deeply
iii. Use sounds like “zzzzzzz”, “sssssss”, “haw” and “hoo”. Breathe deeply without lifting your shoulders
iv. Try some tongue twisters
v. Speak some key sentences from your presentation

If you have a microphone, I suggest you do a mike test too. So you know how you sound with a microphone. And of course to get used to holding and speaking from a mic.

9. Anchor yourself in a positive experience

Recall a positive experience where you did an excellent job on stage. Note your environment - what do you see, smell and hear? Be as specific as you can. The important thing is to re-experience the emotions - the excitement, relief, joy, happiness, pride etc. You can even pick a non-speaking experience like clinching a $100K business deal or a successful day out with your family. Any experience/memory that helps you re-experience the positive emotions.

As you are waiting to be called, close your eyes and relive your experience. Soak up all the emotions and then slowly open your eyes. Tell yourself that YOU CAN DO IT AGAIN. And then go do your thing!

10. Breathe deeply

If you recalled my first encounter with public speaking, you will remember how my best friend advised me to take 50 deep breaths to calm my nerves. And by the time I hit 20, I was hyperventilating. (grins)

Breathing deeply does help though… coz it helps your muscles relax. However you don’t have to do it 50 times. Sometimes doing it once is sufficient. The whole point is to help your body relax.

(Bonus) Ask yourself this question…

“Why am I delivering this speech in the first place?”

Remind yourself the value of your speech - how will your audience benefit from listening to you. Why is it so important for them to hear your message. In short, focus on your audience. That will also take the heat off you and allow you to put up a good show, because it is for a “higher purpose”.

Now go break a leg!

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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How do you attract positive attention and draw a sizeable crowd to you?

This is a question I ask myself when I did my first book talk in KL. Unfortunately, I could not find any credible or relevant information that answers this burning question of mine. In times like this, I improvise.

The good news is some work and I will like to share them with you.

Here are the workable ones that have been refined after three book talks.

1. A crowd attracts a bigger crowd… hire groupies if you need to

People are naturally curious. So if they see a crowd (about 5-10) standing, with their full attention on you, they will check it out.

Most of these people will stay for about 30 seconds to assess if your talk is relevant or interesting enough for them to drop their agenda. If you want to play safe, I encourage you to “hire” a crowd. Gather some of your friends and fans. Make sure they report on time. Get them to rally together. Each time someone passes by or stops, have them give a warm smile to the person and invite him/her to join in. This has proven to work wonderfully well!

2. Location, location, location!

Pick a place where you have a lot of open space. This way, you are highly visible.

When we were in KL, the first day turned out was much better than the second day even though the second bookstore was a bigger one. Here’s why. In the picture above, you notice we were right smack in the middle of the bookstore. Judging from the density of the crowd, most of them walks in from the right (of me). I even have a friend who will stop these people and invite them to sit in.

However on the second day, we have this really HUGE waterfall blocking us (to the left of the picture).

Hence we only have a crowd on the far right and we miss about 50% of the people in the bookstore. Plus, the talk was held in the quadrangle which creates an invisible barrier. People who are not in the quadrangle will think it is a scheduled talk and avoid it. This is why the crowd size did not increase significantly compared to the first day.

3. Let ‘em do the talking

Make sure you have a lot of activities that get your audience talking and mingling. Firstly, this creates buzz which attracts people. Secondly, it allows the audience to interact with one another which makes the whole environment friendlier. So what you get is a friendly buzz that naturally draws people in.

Getting my listeners up to talk works like magic. It’s usually normal to see someone in suit talking since people will assume he has been hired. However to see a shopper speak, now that is something you don’t see everyday. So in your talk, find as many opportunities as you can to have pockets of your listeners up on stage or make sure you have a lot of activities where they get to interact with one another.

4. Use the “S” word

The word SECRET and SUCCESS seems to have an effect on the audience. Each time I say something along the line of “Let me tell you a secret…” or “Here are three tips on how to be successful…”, you will hear a pin drop. Everyone will keep really quiet. Even the kids. Passer bys will deliberately slow down so that they can eavesdrop into the million dollar secret that you were about to share.

The lesson is simple - make it exclusive.

5. If need be, pay them to laugh at all your jokes and clap at opportune times

Laughter and applause are your two best weapons in drawing crowds. In a short 60 minutes, I have about 8 stories planted in my talk. And each of them are intentionally funny. Some even require audience participation. For example the analogy about swimming and public speaking.

So if you are going to give a talk to an open crowd, make sure your speech has about 80% stories, 20% tips. Stories are naturally engaging so it becomes your magnet in pulling a crowd. After you finish your story, land them with a power point or a valuable message, that will keep them staying. Repeat the formula and you will have 10 soccer teams eating out of your hands in no time.

Here are other miscellaneous pointers on drawing an attentive crowd.

Don’t just address the crowd. Make sure you talk to passer-bys too. Catch their eye and speak to them as if they are meant to be listening to you. I guarantee you that they will stop and listen, at least until they find you boring or irrelevant to their needs.

Have a whiteboard with big words on it. Mind maps work well too. When passer by walks past, they will be curious enough to check out what you have written and since it is hard to walk and read at the same time, they will linger for a while.

Final note: Even if you have just one listener, hide your disappointment. It’s ok. Really. On the bright side, you won’t be suffering from aerobic effects of public speaking… and if you keep at it, you will start to draw a crowd. Why? Coz’ people are curious. They will be wondering why are you speaking to only one person. Why is that one person so focused on you? Is there something that they are missing out on? And before you know it, you have ten, twenty people clamoring for your attention.

Final final note… I am going to assume here that you have SOLID content that (1) resolves your audience’s top three frustrations or challenges and (2) bring them one step closer to their wants and desires.

Good luck with your next public appearance!

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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“I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.”

If you want your presentation to be memorable even after 90 days, I strongly encourage you to INVOLVE YOUR AUDIENCE…. through DOING. Couple of ideas for you to try out.

1. After teaching a concept, get your audience to split into groups. In their groups, discuss a scenario where they can APPLY the concept. Once that is done, have them send a representative to share what was discussed.

2. Before you wrap up a presentation, get your audience to WRITE down five things that they are doing to different based on what you have shared with them. Even better, get them to do one on the spot.

3. Create handouts for your audience and as you deliver your speech, have them FILL UP the blanks with key points or phrases that you want them to remember.

4. If you are going to show them a video, have them JOT DOWN three things they discover which relates to your speech topic.

5. At the end of your speech, get your audience to buddy up and CRYSTALLIZE five things that they have learnt in your speech that will make a difference to their work or life.

And the list goes on.

Bottomline - get your audience into action.

Now here’s one thing I want you to do:

Think back to your last speech/presentation, what could be ONE action that you can get your audience to participate which will help reinforce your points or message?

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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Eric Feng, one of our Network Experts, together with his two Public Speaking Experts recently appeared on Prime Time Morning (Channel News Asia) to share more about Public Speaking experiences and tips.

Kelvin, Irene and Eric (authors of The FAQ Book on Public Speaking) were invited to share about the book. They ended up dishing tip after tip to the hosts and audience. One of the funnier discussions were about the myth that speakers should imagine their audience naked.

The main rationale behind this myth is to put down your audience so that you feel more powerful than them. There are some who believe that this makeshift power will give them the courage to speak in front of their “naked” audience. However, if you have tried it, you will know how hard it is to imagine your audience naked.

Firstly you will be more distracted. Secondly, it doesn’t serve you. When you intentionally position yourself in power at your audience expense, you are sending out signals to your audience that you disregard them and that doesn’t exactly make you very popular with your audience.

Here's the short video clip and pay attention to the tips:

For those who want to get the hard copy of The FAQ Book on Public Speaking, you can buy it at any major bookstores in your vincinity like Popular, Kino, Borders, Harris, MPH and Page One.

For those of you who are not from Singapore, you can grab the electronic version of The FAQ Book on Public Speaking here. If you really love to have a hardcopy version, you can drop Eric an email: eric@ericfeng.com. Else, grab the ebook first!

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In no particular order….. since all are equally bad…

Blooper #1: Not telling us why we should listen to you

Never assume that just because you have an audience, we are obliged to listen to you. We may love you (that’s why we came in the first place) but never take advantage of the trust we have for you. It is an extreme turn-off when the audience has to do the work i.e. figure out how your presentation is relevant to us. We are a bunch of selfish egomaniacs. We love ourselves so much! And we don’t care about your experiences unless it teaches us something that we can use for ourselves. So here’s a word of advice: If you want to share your experiences, please do. But always include a message, something that will benefit us, your beloved audience!

Blooper #2: Ignoring us throughout your speech

We get bored easily. Period. If you keep talking about you, you, you, you, you… we will switch off. We want to be part of your speech. We really do. Get us involved. It could be as simple as asking us a question. It gives us a chance to hear ourselves talk. It could be as simple as playing a mini game with us. It gets us up on our seat. Please entertain us! Make us love you. We really want to because if you keep ignoring our needs, we will do the same. Lucky for the speaker, he allowed us to ask questions at any point in his presentation and guess what, we did! In my opinion, that was his saving grace!

Blooper #3: Going overtime

No matter how good you are, never ever go over time!!! Unless we paid you thousands of dollars to teach us something and you are about to share with us the ultimate secret to earning another ten million. If you want your audience to love you, end earlier than expected! It tells us that you respect our time. It makes you special because most speakers don’t observe that. And guess what, the next time you give your presentation; we will be there to support you!

Blooper #4: Spelling errors on your slides

Imagine sitting in a formal business presentation with a presentation slide like this:

In the gamming industry…
Microfsoft
Upluft and Profit
Generated an annual revenue of $1.000000 dollars (huh???!!!)
Curent Maket size of 30 billion people

Ok, you get my point. When you have these glaring spelling mistakes in your slides, here’s the image you are portraying to your audience: sloppy and cannot be bothered. Unless that’s what you want the audience to think of you, I suggest you get someone to do a spell check.

Blooper #5: Bad pronunciation of words

It cracks me up when some presenters stumble upon the same word every single time, without any sign of remorse. There was one time I sat through a presentation where the team had to review a company’s product named Morange. And throughout the ten minutes presentation, they came up with oh so many ways to pronounce this word.

Moo-ronge
Ma-range
Ma-rangi
Mo-ran
Moo-rock

And I swear one time I heard Moron. They might as well labelled the product Moronic Morange. That would be… memorable. Some “credit” has to be given to the company who named their product mo-range.

Blooper #6: Reading off the script

Although my preference is to go without a script, sometimes there is a need for it. However more often than not, speakers are too reliant on their script. You see them referring to their script even if it is just reading their name and designation??!! Yes, this is very puzzling. I once came across a book that taught me how to read from a script. Here’s the golden rule. Never ever speak when your eyes are on your script. Instead, you should follow this three-step process: see, stop, say.

First, look down and take a snapshot of your script. Memorize a chunk of words. Bring your head up and then pause for a second. When you are ready, say what you have memorized in your own words. It’s a three-step process: see, stop and say. It is very important that you pause. Yes, it may be weird for you but in reality, the pause helps make your speech conversational. It also creates anticipation, which further deepen the impact.

Blooper #7: Starting your presentation weak

Maybe it is just me but I get really pissed off when a speaker starts off his presentation with “Urm.. I guess I should probably start… ah ok, here goes…”. Or even worse “I am not really prepared for this presentation because (give some lame excuse). But anyway, I will start…” Trust me, giving excuses of why you may not do a good job will hardly win the sympathy of your audience. Instead, you will make us feel that we are unworthy of your time. You will be better off not giving the presentation since no one will be listening anyway.

As the saying goes, you will not get a second chance to make a good first impression. So make full use of your first 30 seconds to impress your audience. Here are a couple of ways you can start a presentation powerfully. You can tell a personal story and relate it back to the message of your presentation. Starting your presentation with a visual stimulating or humorous video clip will also create impact. Or begin with a thought provoking quote or a shocking statistic, which will create the listening for your presentation. All these are far more superior to your usual good morning/afternoon/evening niceties or worse, apologies.

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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We are all experts at playing the role of the audience, thanks to the countless presentations that we have sit through. Quite frankly, we have seen it all! I thought it would be interesting to give you my list of ten things a presenter can do to piss me off. See if this tallies with yours!

Starting from the bottom…

10. Using clip art animation (at times, this makes me laugh… but not in the good way)
9. Starting weak: “I guess I should probably get started…. uh…ok here goes…”
8. Giving us zero eye contact
7. Reading off the slides
6. Having slides with heap full of words (and MORE words!)
5. Having NO message (Variation: Failing to make a point and leaving us confused)
4. Mumbling throughtout the entire speech
3. Apologizing to the audience right at the start:“I’m not exactly sure what I want to say but I will try…”
2. Ending late - it’s obvious you don’t respect our time!

And the number one thing you can do to piss me off the roof is this…

1. Be totally unprepared - it shows how much you value us!

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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Using humor in a speech or presentation can help to add an air of authority to your content because everyone loves to laugh! One of the ways to use humour in a speech is to incorporate a joke that is relevant to your content.

Now, in order for that joke to work you need to edit it down and interpret in your own way. Don't feel that you're not qualified to do this. You are don't worry. As long as you can speak and paraphrase you're going to be fine at editing a joke. I understand that it may be difficult to understand the process of editing a joke, but I'm going to do my best.

The point of this article is not to turn you into a comedian. It's to help you spice up your content with humor so that you can connect with your audience and have them feel confident with your ability as a speaker or presenter.

Firstly, make sure you're on your own. Like... sitting in front of your computer. Okay, take your joke and say it out loud. You will probably stumble over the words because jokes that you find in books or on the internet have extraneous words because they help with the reading of the jokes. But these words aren't necessary for the actual spoken delivery of the line.

Most jokes have a small story element to them and so that's what is included. For example they will contain words like: "One day..." or "...and says". Those are structures that we are used to and that help us when we are reading the joke. But they are not at all helpful when you have to deliver that joke.

So read the joke out loud a few times to familiarize yourself with it. Then put it to one side and repeat it a few more times. Just give yourself a bit of "rehearsal" with it. What will begin to happen slowly is that you'll forget bits of the joke and, as a result, paraphrase the joke into your own words.

You'll naturally make shortcuts. Believe me, this is not a bad thing. This is exactly what you want to happen. As you do this try to cut out the storytelling elements. Try to get straight to the meat of the joke. For instance if the joke begins: "one day a CEO turns to one of his employees and says sternly..." You can edit the joke so that it reads: "A CEO turns to an employee and says..."

You cut the word sternly because you should say what the CEO says to the employee in a stern manner. You don't need to tell your listeners how the CEO is speaking because you pretend to be the CEO. So that's 6 words that have been cut and 1 word that has been added.

It's also better to keep the joke in the present tense. Even if it's happened in the past. You'll say something like "last year..." then the tense will immediately change as if it's happening right now. That street joke has got to unfold in front of your audience like it's happening in the here and now. It makes it more immediate for the listener.

How do you know what will make the joke work? Well, the punchline is pretty damned important. The set-up is important as well, but that can usually do with a bit of trimming. The punchlines are the bit at the end that gets the laugh. Sorry if I'm stating the obvious for some of you, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page.

I'm going to refer to a joke that I'm sure we all know: "why did the chicken cross the road? to get to the other side". The punchline in this case is "to get to the other side" so this is important to keep because that's the line that will generate the laugh.

That said, the set up line is also very important because if you just said the line "to get to the other side" you will get a lot of blank stares. So you need: "why did the chicken cross the road?". But what you have to be careful of is to make sure that all the important details are there. The chicken is important as is what the chicken is doing.

Remember that editing and delivering a joke are fused together at the hip. You need to practice the joke out loud again and again so you are familiar with it and it flows naturally.

You should also make sure that you personalize the joke if you can. Don't make it any CEO if you can safely make it your CEO. But obviously you have to be careful that you don't offend anybody and risk losing your job. The best thing to do is to make yourself the butt of your jokes. By laughing at yourself you are more likely to win the audience over to your side.

So to re-cap: Find a joke that is relevant to your theme or topic in a broad way. If you cannot find jokes specifically about the Human Resources Department, maybe there are jokes on a broader scale. Exactly what point are you making about H.R.? That they're really organized? That they're incompetent?

Then you need to say your joke over and over again out loud so that you become familiar with it. By doing this you will naturally edit bits of the joke out that don't work for you because you will forget bits. Next go through the joke with a fine-toothed comb edit out any story elements. Finally, make the joke personal and in the present tense.



Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.

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If you are able to use humor in a speech or presentation you will automatically be able to make your audience listen to you and assert your authority. Making people laugh is a definite attention-getter.

The thing to be aware of is using humor appropriately in your speech or presentation. There are two ways to use humor: the first is to react to material that you already have written using your own sense of humor. The second way is to add appropriate jokes, quotes and stories that relate to your speech topic.

Whichever method you use you need to run through the following checklist before you speak:

1) Is it funny?

If you find a line genuinely funny then it will make things a lot easier when you come to deliver the humor to your listeners. The thing to be aware of though is that not every line will make you fall down with laughter. If you have trouble in this area it might be worth researching a quip or humorous line from another speaker or comedian and quoting them in your speech. You cannot pass the line off as your own. If you have to give them credit! You could phrase it as follows: "...and as the comedian Jerry Seinfeld said..."

2) Can you say the line comfortably?

If you find a joke that fits in with the material rehearse the line out loud and edit it so that you're comfortable saying the joke. Make elisions if necessary turning "you are" into "you're" and so on. Make sure you don't leave out the punchline though, that bit is crucial.

3) Will you offend anybody?

This following may sound stuffy, but the best thing to do is avoid the following areas because not everybody can appreciate humorous lines in these areas. Avoid jokes on: religion, sex, physical appearance, politics and disabilities. Granted someone who is Jewish can deliver Jewish jokes, but even then not everyone in the audience might be Jewish so you could come across as racist. The best thing to do is poke fun at yourself. If in doubt, leave it out!

4) Will you be understood?

If you're speaking to a room full of unfamiliar faces then you have to make sure that jokes that are specific to your job or company might not go over. In that situation make sure that there are no in-jokes, or lines based in specifics of your job title.

If the humorous lines that you find are able to pass these four checks then you are well on your way to having an engaging and memorable speech!



Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.

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Some pointers to take note as you prepare for a technical presentation.

1. Pictures Tell A Thousand Words

Literally. I casually googled for “social networking” (SN) and found a site that explains quite succintly what SN means. Here goes:

Based on the six degrees of separation concept (the idea that any two people on the planet could make contact through a chain of no more than five intermediaries), social networking establishes interconnected Internet communities (sometimes known as personal networks) that help people make contacts that would be good for them to know, but that they would be unlikely to have met otherwise…[more]

That’s about 1000 words? Even if it is spoken word for word, I bet the audience will not fully understand, especially since it was written for the eye and not for the ear. Like any amateurish presenter, he will attempt to organize the points in bullet points, thinking that it will make it easier for them to understand. All he does is confuse them even more. Not a very smart thing to do.

Not very helpful, isn’t it?

Like the video, the presenter incorporates a lot of visuals which makes it easier for us to comprehend the extensiveness of human network and how we can leverage on them using the social networking sites like Friendster. Similarly in your technical presentation, you want to ensure that you use a generous portion of visuals to explain the process, procedure or product.
It is much easier to walk them through a software rather than attempting to explain the functionalities. It is much easier to show them how information flows in your organization through a flow-chart than a bunch of words. It is much easier to show them the exact product rather than describing the features. By engaging your audience through both the visual and audio channels, you make the learning process effective and effortless.

2. Relate To The Common Experience

I like how the video started by demonstrating how network get things done through common experience. For example, sending a letter, lighting a house or flying a passenger from Chicago to Santa Fe. We immediately get how a network functions. He then brought in another situation - finding a job.

He drew the number of hops you have to go through before finding someone who can offer you the job. And cleverly he slips in the problem - do you know who your friend (Bob) knows? The next one minute was used to explain how social networking sites eliminate the problem. In this case, he makes use of a current problem we have to explain something seemingly complex.

“Like the map for the highway, they (social networking sites) show you the people network that help you get to the next destination faster - a love partner or a great place to live in.”

Likewise in your technical presentation, use everyday examples to explain complicated concepts. I remember evaluating this gentleman’s presentation on “What’s In A Computer?” If not for my technical background, I will not have understand the jargons he used or the way the RAM powers the processing speed of a computer. So you can imagine that if he was presenting to a room full of aunties or non-techies, he will lose them in double quick time.

Instead of stating that the CPU is the central processing unit where all the circuit boards are housed, and is in charge of executing all the commands given by the user, try comparing the CPU with our human brain. The nerve network in our brain is like the circuitry in the CPU. The signals they carry to the brain are similar to the current in the circuit. Both acts as the command center where instructions/commands are executed.

Instead of describing the RAM as a type of data storage used in computers, you can relate to RAM as human memory. Both share properties like capacity and speed of retrieval. A computer with higher RAM can store more information (say 10,000 songs) and retrieve information in a very short amount of time (in a blink of an eye). Again, we understand the examples immediately, which allows us to grasp this once elusive concept call RAM.

In order to apply this technique effectively, you got to first know your product or concept inside out. Pick out the features that you want to explain and then map it to common functionalities that we can all relate to. Earlier in the afternoon, I was asked to answer this question - “What’s coaching?” and here’s how I answered using the technique above.

3. What’s In It For Me?

Unlike your usual presentations, it is critical to start your technical presentation by first answering this question - “What’s in it for me?” or variations like “Why is this presentation important and relevant to me?” Technical presentations are informative in nature. They are dry (and boring) too which means that unless you give them an incentive to listen to you, they won’t bother trying. As such, you got to ensure you capture your audience attention right from the start.

You can highlight how this presentation relates to them or introduce the pressing problem your audience is facing right now and then explain how your product resolves it. Bottom line, you got to make your presentation relevant and important to them. As homework, go study your audience’s needs. Find out who they are, what they do and problems they face daily. Armed with this data, you can then position your presentation to answer their needs or problems. For example, if you are demonstrating a security software for mobile phones, you could start your experience by doing a quick poll - how many of you have lost your phones or PDAs before?
You then move on to talk about the inconvenience and high costs involved in losing phone. By poking at your audience’s pain, you have effectively unbalance them. If you share their pains of losing a phone, your audience would automatically see you as one of them, which means a home run for you!

Studying the audience also allows you to know the level of their expertise. You tell them something too complicated and you lose them. You tell them something too simple, you risk insulting them, and you lose them too. Hence it pays to do a careful analysis of your audience. A good practice is to test out your presentation on a few of your trusted colleagues who share similar level of expertise with your audience. Listen intently for their feedback and then make necessary adjustments.

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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I recently re-read a great book on public speaking and I was reminded of a technique which was one of the first I ever used! I'll give you a brief background on the book, and the technique itself, before I tell you about my experience with it.

The book was called "Just Say A Few Words" and it was by the late British Comedian and After Dinner Speaker Bob Monkhouse. Bob was a great comedian whose style were one-liner jokes similar in style to his hero Bob Hope. According to his book, Monkhouse was at an after dinner event in the 1960s alongside fellow British comedian Tony Hancock.

As the story goes Hancock never really enjoyed public speaking. He was in fact more of a comic actor than a comedian. He had brilliant script writers on his radio and TV shows and was more comfortable speaking the words of others.

According to Monkhouse they were both to speak at a charity function at London's prestigious Savoy Hotel. Speaking before Hancock was a white-haired old priest, who nobody gave a second thought to. Apparently, however, he gave an extremely witty and hilarious speech making the audience roar with laughter.

Then came the deadpan Hancock. After the applause for Hancock had died down he waved his speech notes in his hand and said:

"Just before we came to dinner, Father Terry and I met in the gents and you all know what a lad he is for a joke, my goodness me yes. He said to me, "wouldn't it be funny if we exchanged speeches and I did yours and you did mine?" So we did, and you've just heard mine. This is his and I'm not going to do this load of rubbish - good evening!"

Therefore, Hancock managed to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation whereby he felt his speech might not have been able to top that and be funnier than an unknown priest.

I used this technique myself the second time I ever performed stand-up comedy. I was a 19 year old open-mike new comedian at the time and, for reasons beyond me, I was put on after an extremely experienced feature comic who regularly played all the big London clubs and got paid for the privilege. I sat there in the audience in horror as he made the audience scream with laughter. I was terrified because I knew I had to follow him.

I bounded onto the stage trying to be confident in my own abilities that I could follow such a pro. My world was suddenly blown apart as punchline after punchline failed; I was being heckled ruthlessly and I headed rapidly towards "comedy death".

It was then I heard the words no dying young comedian wants to hear from a heckler: "got any material?" My heart sank. I'd been slaving over that script and those jokes for months. I'd rehearsed again and again and knew my carefully crafted material backwards. And here I was being asked by a drunken heckler if I actually had any material.

But, from the depths of my being, I managed to pull out a version of The Hancock Manoeuvre before I had even realised what I was saying. My immediate response was: "actually yeah. I spoke to comic who was just on before the show and we agreed to swap material. He did my act and was hilarious and I'm doing his and it's a load of rubbish. Thank you very much, good night!"

I left the stage to a round of applause. More so than just a polite clap. I also received a huge compliment from the comic who had gone on before me.

So next time you are in a tight spot and the speaker before you does an absolutely amazing job, have a think to yourself "can I equal if not better his speech? or shall I invoke The Hancock Manoeuvre?" But remember this technique should only be used as a last resort.



Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.

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I got your attention, didn't I? You must be wondering.. what is it I need to know, more than anything else. And the more I digress, the more you want to know. You may be thinking right now whether I am dangling a carrot right in front of you. Yes, you are absolutely right. Question is, why are you still reading this since there’s every possibility I may just be playing a fool with you. Well, let’s just say that you have no choice. You have come thus far and you seriously need to know what is that something that now, more than ever, you need to know. Give you a clue. It is a secret that a lot of top-notch speakers adopt to have their audience eating from their hands. It is a persuasion technique that has been subtlely added in the sales pitch, without you knowing. It is a formula that once you understand will serve you well.

In James C. Hume’s bestseller “Speak Like Churchchill, Stand Like Lincoln”, he termed this secret, technique and formula as the Power Button.

In an essay, you can easily draw attention to phrases or words by highlighting it, increasing its font size or italicizing it. But how do you do that in a speech? Well, you can raise your voice or switch the tone of your voice. However, I have seen skilful speakers adopting the Power Button Strategy to have you eating from their hands. It preps you up for the line to follow, usually an important line that the speaker wants you to remember.

For example, LET ME AGAIN SAY WHAT I ALWAYS TELL THOSE CRITICS OF AMERICA [pause]… we will…

Or THE SECRET OF HOTEL MANAGEMENT IS SIMPLE. IT CAN BE SUMMED UP THIS WAY [pause]… our customers must always come first.

The line in caplocks is the power button. Once you hit the power button, you effectively get the attention of your audience. They are going to pay attention to what you have to say next. However, a power button only works when the proceeding sentence is an important one. It could be your message or key idea. The zinger line that you want to use to burn a hole in your listeners’ ears.

You can think of the power button as a preamble to what’s important. It can be as simple as “WhAT I AM GOING TO SHARE WITH YOU NEXT IS GOING TO WORTH ALL YOUR TIME SITTING HERE…” Remember to insert a pause before you tell them the zinger line.

That’s right. The power button preps your audience for something impactful or important to come. The pause creates the suspense. And of course the zinger line blows your audience away.

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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A post that I wrote earlier on “250 Things You Wish You Know That Will Guarantee Your Speaking Success” has created quite a buzz on the blogsphere. It started with Andrew Dlugin at Six Minutes who wrote a fairly long post challenging many points that I have raised. And then yesterday, Life Hacker picked up the article (thanks Kevin!) and bang! Traffic at The Public Speaking Blog quadrupled overnight with 829 new visitors (hello!) and the “250 speaking tips” entry was posted on 14 other blogs.

Understandably, not everyone agrees with my list of 250. Some like it and call them “gems” or “speech-prep zen”, others hate it and call them “hasty and forceful”. Well to each his own.

What I am really happy about is the conversations that were created out of this contentious list. At the very least, it makes people aware about how they can raise their speaking standards by a few notches if they pay attention to the tips.

To make the list palatable for you, I have filtered it down from 250 to 50. Yes, it’s Pareto Principle at work here. Focus on the 20% that delivers 80% of the results. Prepare your forks and knives… let’s dig in.

1. Audience always comes first, ask yourself “How can they benefit from listening to me?”
2. Most people seek validation and not education - don’t be like most people.
3. Tell a story, make a point.
4. Create a story bank. Each time something interesting happens - big or small - write it down. You never know where you can use it.
5. Follow the 80/20 rule - 80% prepared. 20% impromptu. Being prepared is extremely important but when you are too prepared, you take the fun out of a speech. The 20% spontaneity allows you to milk any situations that arises while you deliver your speech.
6. A powerful speech is one that can help solve your audience’s problems.
7. The best way to learn is to teach somebody else. Find opportunities to do that. Offer pointers. Offer coaching. Offer suggestions. Remember, you can’t give away what you don’t have. Once you teach somebody else what you learned, it reinforces and improves your speaking skills.
8. Don’t try to impress. Instead try to, share, help, inspire, teach, inform, guide, persuade, motivate… or make the world a little bit better.
9. Stay present in the moment. Forget about the conversations running in your head. Be with your audience. Enjoy the time you have with them.
10. Keep your presentation simple. One message, three points and a kick-ass call for action.
11. Remember, the greatest enemy of speakers is same-ness. (Thanks Patricia Fripp for the tip!)
12. Don’t memorize your entire speech. Internalize. (Thanks David Brooks for the tip!)
13. Never, ever go overtime.
14. Avoid abstractions. Always relate to a common experience.
15. A fail-safe question to answer in your speech - What’s in it for me (the audience)?
16. No pain, no action. If you want to get your audience into action, you need to first understand where their pains are. Once you have identified that particular pain, poke at it. Recreate the scenario so that they can re-experience the pain, both physically and emotionally. When you have successfully brought your audience to that state, they will be begging you to offer them a remedy or a quick solution to rid them of the pain.
17. The key to grabbing attention is surprise. The key to keeping attention is interest.
18. Smile. Smile when you are walking up to the stage. Smile when you make a mistake. Smile when your audience laugh at your story. Smile when you are delivering your message. Smile when you conclude. Smile when you leave the stage. Smile.
19. Videotaping yourself speak can be very confronting but necessary, especially if you want to improve.
20. Take extra effort to remove all your pause fillers from your speech. Common culprits include “urm”, “ah”, “so”, “you know”, “hmm” etc. They are known to reduce your credibility ten folds.
21. One way of overcoming them is to get used to the silence.
22. Stop asking WHY. (Why am I so sucky in speaking? Why did the audience look so bored?) Try asking HOW. (How can I be less sucky? How can I make the audience interested in what I have to say?) Why gets you defensive and stuck. How gets you moving forward.
23. Remember some of your audience’s names and use them in your speech. They will love you for it!
24. The best speeches are not written, they are rewritten.
25. The next time you prepare a speech, do some imagination. If your speech is a piece of music, what music will it be? If your speech is a colour, what colour will it be? If you speech is a dish, what dish will it be? The secret is to cross and merge different senses so that your speech becomes richer and more real to the audience.
26. Have “flesh” time with your audience before you get up on stage to speak.
27. Plan-Pause-Scan: Plan where you want to stand. Pause and get yourself composed. Scan at the audience. And then begin your memorized introduction.
28. Once in a while, take a risk in your speech.
29. Each time you think of something safe to do for your speech, reverse it!
30. Find things that are “just not done” in the speaking industry and go do it (for the fun of it!)
31. Ask “Why not?” Almost everything you don’t do has no good reason for it. It is usually the result of fear and assumption. So why not?
32. Treat your next speech like a game! Have loads of fun with it!
33. I learned this from Seth Godin: One message per slide. Part of the less is more rule.
34. Be really interested in your audience. It shows.
35. Ask and you shall receive. Never be afraid to ask for feedback. Do it for yourself.
36. Always write your speech because what is written can be edited to be more colorful, concise, powerful and precise.
37. Read ONE public speaking article a day. Try The Public Speaking Blog.
38. You are only as good as your last speech.
39. The two main arsenal of a speaker is his stories and analogies. The better his stories and analogies, the more he get paid. (Thanks Darren La Croix for the tip!)
40. Pay attention to stories and things that happen to us. (funny stuff does happen)
41. Audience laughed when they are successfully tricked. That’s the mechanic behind humor.
42. Be knowledgeable – know your stuff. Present 70% of what you prepared. Keep the rest for emergency purposes for eg. during Q&A or when you need to show off.
43. You get creative ideas at all time. Carry around a digital recorder or notebook everywhere you go. Whenever a creative idea strikes you, record or write it. You only have 37 secs of window time to capture the idea. Don’t wait till you are booked for speech before you think of what to say.
44. 95% growth happens when you are out there with your audience. Yes, it’s another way of telling you to get stage time!
45. Don’t be afraid to say this to your audience - “RIP ME APART!” Repeat after me, “RIP ME APART!”
46. 10 “You” for Every “I” in your speech! Remember, keep your speech audience-centric.
47. 台上十分钟，台下十年功 (realized this when I was competing in Macau in 2006). Here the direct translation: “Ten minutes on stage is equivalent to ten years of training offstage”.
48. It’s ok to fail or bomb on stage. What is more important is the lesson behind it. Learn it well and make sure you don’t forget.
49. Be willing to fall & fall forward.
50. Persistence is key. And I think you have it if you have read from point 1 all the way to point

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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I recently received a very interesting question and I would like to take some time to answer it here.

“Can you share with me on… how to make small talks with people of higher authority? (for eg, after attending a talk, there’re many people worth saying hi to…how to do tt without feeling out of place? what to say? how to start? )”

There are two parts to the question:
1. How do I make small talks
2. How do I make small talks with people of higher authority?

To answer both questions, I would first like to introduce you to a concept call SCHMOOZING. Schmoozing is more than small talk. And I would like to borrow the definition from a very insightful book titled Vault Guide to Schmoozing.

Schmoozing is noticing people, connecting with them, keeping in touch with them — and benefiting from relationships with them.

Schmoozing is about connecting with people in a mutually productive and pleasurable way — a skill that has taken on new importance in our fragmented, harried, fiber-optic-laced world.

Schmoozing is the development of a support system, a web of people you know who you can call, and who can call you, for your mutual benefit and enjoyment.

Schmoozing is the art of semi-purposeful conversation: half chatter, half exploration.

Schmoozing is neither project nor process. It’s a way of life.

Now that you have an idea of what schmoozing is, allow me to share with you three principles of schmoozing that will answer the above two questions.

1. SMILE!

You can’t go wrong with that. Smile and the whole world smiles back at you. Nothing is as powerful as a sincere smile. It cost nothing yet it means so much. The next time you attend any function, just smile at people around you. You will be surprised how easy it is to make the first connection!

2. Be REALLY interested in whoever you are talking to

If you are out there to get something out of everyone, it will show. Instead, try this. Go out and make a friend. Keep a “I want to know you better” mentality and creating small talks will be a piece of cake. In fact you will find yourself going beyond small talks and start enjoying every conversation you made.

3. Find a common ground

You smiled and made the first connection. You are really interested to know the other person. Now what? Simple. Find a common ground. You would never want to start a converation with a “So how old are you really?” or “I sell insurance, do you want to buy from me?” or “Are you Christian?” This is extreme but you get my point. So what are some topics you can talk about? If you are in a seminar, you can start with “What made you attend this seminar?” or “Who do know here?”. If you are in a party, you can start with “How do you know the birthday boy?” or “How do you find the food?” Notice that these questions are open-ended. Avoid asking the “Do you …” questions which often lead to a yes, no or maybe. Hardly a great way to start a conversation!

4. Listen!!!

Now that you have got the person talking. What do you do? SHUT UP and listen! Listen to what your new acquaintance has to say and paraphrase. Say he told you that he knew the birthday boy at another school party. You can continue by first paraphrasing “Oh so you went to that party with him…” and then proceed with “What party was that?” And make sure that you pay attention and really listen. Let him talk and you will have a chance to locate any common interests. Say “Oh yeah.. it was a party for my scuba diving club…” and if you like scuba diving, you can now delve deeper. “Really? I love to scuba dive! Where was the last place you went….” Got it?

5. Follow up

You have a wonderful time with the new acquaintance. And you both bid farewell. Ask for his number or business card. And when you get back home, send him an email or give him a phone call. Thank him for being so much fun. And you can proceed from there. We call that a follow up. And this is also the part where most people forget. In my opinion, it doesn’t make sense. You spend so much time and energy to turn a stranger into an acquaintance. Surely you won’t want to stop there. Besides you never know when you will need the person’s help or the person’s friend’s help. So always be gracious and remember to follow up!

The above five tips apply to schmoozing with higher authorities as well. But I know what most people will say: “He is a big shot… what if he gives me a cold shoulder?” From my experience, very seldom! In fact they love it when you take the proactive approach to get to know them. One thing that worked really well for me is this:

BONUS: DO YOUR HOMEWORK!

Before the big event, find out which big shots will be attending. You can usually find out via the event website or by asking the event organizer. Google for the big shot and very often you will find some information about him. Read it and memorize one important fact about him. For example, he recently organized a large technology conference in China. When you see him, ask him about it. This would be your “common ground” and he will be fairly impressed!

And I would like to emphasize this: ALWAYS FOLLOW UP! At the end of the conversation, thank the person and ask for his business card. They will usually not decline unless they run out of cards. Here’s one tactic I use all the time. “John, if the next time I have any questions on this topic, can I ask you?” They cannot say no. And even if they say no, they will usually refer you to someone else.

Once you collect his business card, send him a thank you email (at the very least) at the end of the day or the next morning. Thank him for sharing with you x, y and z. (You gotta remember what he shared!!!). And if you have any more clarification/questions, now would be the best time to ask. Without knowing, you have found yourself a mentor without really finding one!

There is really more to it so if you have any more questions, let me know.

Here’s another book that I would strongly recommend: How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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Surely by now you know how important it is to start strong but how exactly do we start our presentation with a bang? Here’s 7 sure-fire ways to start your presentation that will guarantee to knock the socks off your audience.

1. Open with a humorous/emotional story that leads to your key message

I have seen that been done a lot of times - especially by speech champions - with almost guaranteed success. We love stories, especially those that makes us laugh and have valuable lessons to teach. So when you start with one, we immediately get drawn into it like moth to the flame. Your personal anecdote gives us the opportunity to know you at a deeper level and it adds memorability to your message. Even weeks after your presentation, we will still remember your message because of the story you share.

A variation to this is to tell half a story and then proceed with your points. Once you are done, end off with the other half of your story, which by now will make a lot more sense.

2. Ask a question that gets us thinking

Why is it that some speakers can command the entire floor with ease while others struggle to keep their audience awake?

If this has been a speech opener, it will have set you thinking. You will be curious yourself. The question will trigger some memories and the next thing you know, you will be looking at the speaker for some answers. Such a rhetorical question allows your audience to play an active role in your speech - you get them involved. It keeps them engaged in your speech too as they seek to resolve the gap you have created by the question you ask.

3. Do a demonstration that leads to your message

A demonstration for the sake of doing one is meaningless. However if executed properly, it proves a point which increases your credibility as a speaker and also sets up your presentation for success.

At one of my speeches some time ago, I handed a can of sweets to one of the students in the first row. I instructed him to take one and pass. As planned, there were only enough sweets for the first row, which got the rest of the students sulking. Some of them even complained, loud enough for me to hear, which prompted my first line:

“Many of us wait for things to land on our laps. As a result, we end up get nothing.”

They quickly got embarassed and became quiet. As expected, this statement also had the first row of students laughing, which prompted by second line.

“Many of us also choose within what we are given. You (referring to the students in the first row) could have ask for this box of Godiva chocolates…”

And then I whipped out the box from my jacket and the whole room went silent. The students were all visibly embarassed and were grinning sheepishly as I proceeded my speech. I had no problem engaging them after that since I have effectively proven to them that THEY commit such mistakes all the time.

So the next time you want to prove a point, do a demonstration. Trick them if you need to, but more importantly, show them point blank why this presentation is so important to them.

4. Shock ‘em with facts and numbers

Tell us something that we don’t know and you immediately get our attention. This is why shocking facts and numbers are effective at grabbing your audience attention. A “do you know…” statement works extremely well.

For example, do you know that in New York, if you commit a crime, you have less than one chance in a hundred that you will ever be executed for it? Or in our local context, you may have seen an advertisement that starts off with “Do you know that a thin film of clean standing water of the size of a 20-cent coin is all an Aedes mosquito needs for its eggs to survive?”

So the next time you give a presentation, research for shocking facts or numbers about that particular topic. Go to your trusted google search page and type “[topic] + do you know?” or “[topic] + shocking facts” and viola, you have a winning introduction!

5. Start off with a cartoon or video, funny is optional

A short video clip adds colour to your presentation in more ways than one. It creates visual connection. It engages all five senses. It commands attention. However make sure that the video is not too long, it should not take up more than 10% of your presentation since it is more like a preview. Also remember to pick a video that effectively sets up what you are going to talk about.

In one of the upcoming seminars, the organizers are going to show a clip from “The Truman Show” starring Jim Carey. Recall the part where he discovered that his life was part of a script? He was so adamant about living his own life that he decided to leave. He sailed out to the “sea” hoping to get away, only to hit a white screen. The turning point came when he bravely opened the white door and walked out of the stage set up.

This scene was extremely apt for the seminar since it was themed “Your First Step” and the objective is to encourage all the participants to courageously step out and live their mark. Not only does the video lead to the key message, it creates a memorable anchor, one that will not be easily forgotten by the audience.

6. Pause…

That’s right. Inaction could be one of your most powerful tools as a speaker. Most speakers rush to start either due to their nervousness or lack of experience. However if you observe powerful speakers, especially politicians, they take their time. Every second of silence equates to a pound more authority. As James C Hume commented, “Men, as well, as women, whether tall or short, can gain stature through strategic silence.”

So the next time you give a speech, take your time to walk up the stage. Find the center point and make your strategic pause. Don’t be afraid to look into the eyes of your audience. Smile at them. Once you have ALL their attention, begin with your first line.

7. Do something different (or crazy)!

Like my friend Darren Fleming who turned his back against his audience as he speaks. That sure make his audience love him even more. What counts is the novelty BUT make sure that you can relate it back to the objective of your speech. Click here to understand why Darren did what he did.

Or Darren La Croix, 2001 World Champion of Public Speaking who literally fell on his face to prove his point - failing is no big deal! In fact, one of the reasons why he won was because of his outrageous act. And then there is another speaker in the 80s who stood on stage without speaking for a whole one minute! It was clear that he was suffering from stage fright and performance anxiety. The contest chairperson was forced to come up on stage to escort him down. And just at that moment, the speaker blurted his first line, “When you are in the midst of a battle, do you have friends who continue to cheer you on or do they give up on you within a minute?” (referring to the contest chairperson). Now that was a powerful and poignant point!

And the list goes on. There is no boundaries to your creativity. My challenge to you is to work your creative juices and come up with an act that no one has done before. Even if it fails, at least you had fun!

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

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