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How long do you plan for Q&A? 20 Aug 2013 | 09:01 pm
Q&A — questions and answers — is my favorite part of any business or training presentation. I’m curious. I like hearing what’s going on in the heads of the audience. I like learning from the audience ...
OK, so never start a sentence with these 10 words… 24 Jul 2013 | 08:55 pm
No offense, but I recently had to leave a lecture because the speaker began every other sentence with either “So…” or “Alright, so…” His information may have been spectacular, but after a half hour, ...
Who else remembers a world before PowerPoint? 9 Jul 2013 | 09:01 pm
Who can remember the first presentation they ever gave using PowerPoint? Can you remember with any specificity, or is PowerPoint so ubiquitous that you can’t really remember? For those of use who are...
Doing Nothing is the New Doing Something 2 Jul 2013 | 05:18 pm
Recently, I noticed this absurd trend of gallantly and heroically doing nothing. About 19 months ago, I accidentally left my cell phone home and traveled out of town on business. When I arrived at th...
Why do you need a building to get an education? 25 Jun 2013 | 10:58 pm
A few weeks ago, I went to tour the new Seidman Business School Building on the downtown GVSU campus. Reports say the new building cost around $40 million. Wow. All that money for a business school b...
Where were you when the tech went out? 21 Jun 2013 | 03:41 pm
Well, it happened again. The event coordinator gave me a firm 50 minutes to speak — no wiggle room! — and a nifty state-of-the-art presentation system. I love walking into a building with shiny new eq...
How is emotional manipulation a bad thing? 13 Jun 2013 | 10:31 pm
For a public speaking exercise, I ask students to tell a 2-3 minute story in front of the class. I also hand out a stack of simple evaluation sheets to the class — students anonymously rate the speake...
How I followed the Tampon Guy… 1 Apr 2013 | 04:36 pm
At the start of a corporate training session, our leader initiated an icebreaker. Nobody in the room knew each other, so the leader asked us to get up and “share something about yourself that no one w...
Which two little words can kill your confidence? 20 Mar 2013 | 10:34 pm
When I act as an editor for an opinion piece, I frequently strike the phrase “I think.” I remove those two little words because they can actually kill a speaker’s confidence! Let’s take a look at an e...
Overcoming the Gross Out Factor 14 Mar 2013 | 07:19 pm
“I really hate public speaking,” said a student who stood up in front of class to deliver her first oral report. That’s not the most impressive opening line, but I hear it from a new student at least ...
