Think about the situation. Your boss at work has just asked you to do a presentation at next week’s meeting about a key milestone the company has just achieved. At this stage most people will do one of two things: Instantly open up PowerPoint and start dumping information onto slides Write out a script on paper […]
A couple of weeks ago I called to University College Dublin for a chat with Barry Brophy. Barry has nearly two decades of experience helping people make presentations in both the private sector and as a college lecturer. He has developed specialist Masters Courses at UCD that run across all disciplines. Barry is also the author […]
Let’s picture the scene. You are sitting in an audience waiting for the next presentation to begin. For the past hour your time has been consumed by data, bullets and lots of technical information. Now imagine the next speaker takes to the stage and launches into a PowerPoint presentation full of complex text and cluttered […]
In today’s world, technical people including scientists, engineers, and programmers are being challenged more and more frequently to give presentations to others. And not just to other techies. Often they are speaking to people with little or no technical expertise. Nothing will bore an audience faster than if you jump into a jargon-filled and overly-technical speech. So […]
A powerful way to help you remember the content of any presentation you’re making is to provide a meaningful structure for your content. In fact research has shown that people retain structured information up to 40% more reliably and accurately than information that is presented in a more freeform manner. There are many presentation structures on which you […]
Whether you are giving a presentation for colleagues at work or at a national conference, teaching in front of a group of students, or giving a public lecture or talk, public speaking is a critical skill to master. Yes despite it being so important, public speaking consistently ranks as one of people’s top phobias. Many […]
Making presentations has always been a part of business life. But for many years the idea of a good business presentation was to simply read the content of your slides aloud to an audience. If someone had a presentation due tomorrow the tendency was to just start dumping information onto slides and then wing the talk-to-people part. The resulting presentation had no theme, no core message, and no memorable […]
An ‘impromptu speech’ is a little different from the traditional speech or presentation I have been writing about in recent posts. It’s a speech that you have to make when you haven’t been given notice time to allow you to prepare. The goal of an impromptu speech is not, nor should it be, to guide you into making […]
Donald Trump has developed a reputation as the most controversial and divisive US president America has ever seen. The former businessman and Apprentice host has shown the world how to make more headlines than practically anybody else. In this post I present four communication lessons you can learn from “The Donald”. Sure he’s not as gifted a speaker as his […]
Watching his performances in later years, it’s easy to forget that former US president Bill Clinton was almost booed off the stage early in his speaking career. At the Democratic Convention of 1988 the relatively unknown Clinton was scheduled to speak for 15 minutes, but droned on for over a half-hour. His biggest applause line came at […]