What is a Good Icebreaker for my talk / workshop?

Icebreakers: those awkward exercises at the start of a workshop that are supposed to help participants warm up to one another but in reality just annoy everyone in attendance. Sometimes, however, they are necessary. But how does one go about giving an icebreaker that doesn’t make the audience want to throw their notebooks at you?…

Read more

How to Create Better Graphs and Charts For Your Presentation

Ready to level up your business presentation and public speaking skills? Check out Business Presentation Mastery to get started!   Are you stuffing your presentation slide deck with dreadful graphs and charts?   Few things can induce information overwhelm and Death by PowerPoint faster than a bad graph. Unfortunately, most business presenters have some pretty…

Read more

Communication, presence, and other insights for women in leadership

Are you a woman in leadership or aspiring to leadership? Communication is a cornerstone in your journey up the corporate ladder. Marie Dzanis, CEO at Northern Trust Global Investments & EVP, has exceptional insight into the bar women in leadership need to reach in terms of their communication, presence, and interpersonal skills. In this interview,…

Read more

Your Speaker Scripts Are Holding You Back!

Are you in the habit of bringing up elaborate speaking notes or scripts when you give a presentation? If so, you are likely causing more harm than good! Extensive notes and scripts can actually make it harder to present and to recover from those inevitable mistakes and slip-ups all speakers make. But that doesn’t mean…

Read more

Can’t Answer a Presentation Question? 2 Minute Tip

If you give presentations, it happens to you: you get a question and you have no idea how to answer it!  This is a simple fact of presenting, and if if hasn’t happened to you, it’s only a matter of time before it does. But there’s no need to let your audience see you sweat and stammer. …

Read more

How to Master Cross-Cultural Business Communication

Cross cultural communication skills are important for anyone working with international businesses. While some points of communication etiquette are so ingrained as to be subconscious, we can’t take for granted that what is polite to us is polite to someone from a different culture. Communication signals such as eye contact, gestures, turns of phrases, who…

Read more

Diversity & Inclusion: Decolonizing Every Day Language In Our Workplaces

Diversity and inclusion has (rightfully) been a hot topic in workplaces. Unfortunately, language habits can often get in the way of proper everyday inclusiveness. This is especially true for colonial expressions and manners of speaking, which are deeply embedded and often unconsciously (or perhaps unthinkingly) used. Decolonizing our language, however, requires thoughtfulness, deliberate engagement, and for…

Read more