Are you listening?

Want to speak? Be prepared to listen. Really skilled communicators, really dynamic and engaging speakers  actively and intimately listen to and observe their audience.  By giving his audience his full attention, a speaker is able to figure out what the audience needs to perceive, needs to feel, needs to hear in order to adopt the…

Resolutions, resolutions

Note: This is a longer post than usual, but it will give you a jump start on making your 2016 “Become a better speaker” resolution reality!    Whether you love or hate New Year’s Resolutions, they have most certainly filtered past your field of awareness at least once over the past few weeks. And most…

Quality of voice

There’s been a lot of flap in gender politics over the quality of voices.  Many have vehemently said that we shouldn’t judge someone based on how they sound. I agree with this.  We shouldn’t.  But expecting people to not make these judgements is about as unrealistic as the old cliche about not judging a book by…

Are you listening?

Here are some questions you need to ask yourself when working with an audience: Do you listen?  I mean it – do you really listen to what your audience is telling you? Have you turned of the internal chatter? Are you taking in what they are telling you, or are you trying to think of…