Category: Proposals
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What we HATE, we DO
This sounds weird. But, with communication: WHAT WE HATE, WE DO In other words, what we HATE people doing to us when they communicate with us – for example when they: Use wordy slides Write boring agendas (or don’t even have one) Invite us to meetings we didn’t benefit from attending Don’t prep for…
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The Presentation Secret = “Dog Cat Fish”
Imagine that you’re making a presentation, and that your next slide has three words on it – “dog”, “cat” and “fish”… How would your audience want you to present alongside that slide? Would they want you to: All at once: Show all three words on the slide upfront. That way, they’d then listen to you…
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PowerPoint’s Second Best Feature?
Last week’s Tip was one of our most popular ever. It explained PowerPoint’s best feature – namely, that: When you want to blank the screen – so your audience looks at you, and not at your slide… … Press the ‘B’ (or ‘W’) keys on the keyboard, to Black (or White) your slides I know…
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PowerPoint’s best feature?
You know when you’re presenting, and people start looking at your slides, and not at you? To stop them – just press the B or W key on your keyboard. ‘B’ turns your screen to plain black. So there’s nothing for them to look at. Except give you their undivided attention. ‘W’ is the same…
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Want to look smooth? Master your Baton Changes
When athletes run a relay race, the riskiest time is the Baton Change. The handover. When they transition from Runner A to Runner B. Similarly, when we communicate, one risky time is the Baton Change. The handover. When we transition from Topic/Speaker A to Topic/Speaker B. Because, when we don’t do it well, it isn’t…
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Always practice your START. For everything.
First impressions are critical. So, we always want to make a good first impression. And for certain things, we pay lots of attention to this all-important first impression. Things like: job interviews, payrise discussions, first dates … But for everything else? How often do we prepare our first impression for our regular 121s with our…
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Too long. Too irrelevant. Too dull. DON’T BE!!
The most common descriptions of corporate comms I hear are: Too long Too irrelevant Too dull This applies to all of them – meetings, emails, presentations, documents… everything. Clearly, I get a skewed view of the world: after all, if a company’s comms were short, relevant and fascinating, they wouldn’t contact me! But I’m going…
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Five easy steps to epic presentations (ABCDE)
Most presentations are boring. So, here’s how to ensure your next one is epic! It’s as easy as ABCDE… Ask questions. Everyone prefers interactivity. It turns one-way presentations into two-way conversations. So when preparing your presenter notes, always include questions to ask your audience. That way, you’ll ask questions! And, that way, they’ll answer them.…
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Presentations – grab attention instantly
Presentations need a good start. When your audience loves you immediately, they’ll probably keep loving you. But if they start by hating you… well, that’s not good. Which is why, when you prepare your presentations, I advise you… … spend at least 20% of your prep time on the first 2% of your presentation…
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Confidence when presenting (part II)
Here’s our second Tip on how to build your confidence when presenting. A quick reminder of last week’s three techniques: Agree content upfront Their #1 benefit on your slide #1 Practise the start. A lot. And here are my other two faves: Interactive Early Many presentations are one-way downloads of info. The presenter speaks and…