“Fearless,” “bold,” “brave,” and other variations are descriptions lots of people assign to professional speakers. People have called me those things, and I’ve heard lots of other speakers described that way. I’ve just come off the rush of the most incredible conference I’ve ever attended, the annual Canadian Association of Professional Speakers convention. I…
Haters. They come in all shapes and sizes, with vocabularies that range from the grunting of cave-dwellers to the bombastic spewing of wanna-be intelligentsia. No matter what form they take, dealing with them can be frustrating and demoralizing. And no matter what you do, what you create, or where you work, they are…
There it is, glowering at you from your desktop. If a slip of paper could sneer, this one would be sneering. If a web form could roll its eyes, this one would be rolling. Yes, you’ve received nasty feedback. One ugly, trivial snipe among the pile of other people’s helpful or complimentary comments. But that…
Who doesn’t love a good infographic? Alas, my knowledge of illustration software is nil. Happily, Lydia Bailey from Masterprogramsguide.com reached out to me with this fantastic infographic, which I am now sharing with you as today’s guest blog post! Author Bio : – Ms. Lydia Bailey has come up with this infographic. She is a…
If you are trying to get yourself out there and get noticed, you need to give people something to see. It doesn’t matter if the thing you craft is code, art, words, or something else. People need to see what you are doing if they are going to respond. This is especially true if…
Among our many hang-ups with public speaking is that we make value judgments about the feelings and energy we experience when we give or think about giving a speech. When we think of speaking, many of us assign words like ‘bad’, ‘scared’, ‘crappy’, or ‘terrible’ to ourselves as individuals instead of to the negative…
Have you heard the advice that you should only picture a positive outcome for your talk? That you should only visualize a successful speech in which everything goes according to plan, you breeze through your material, and the audience is lavish in their praise and applause? I have. I’ve heard this bit of advice come…
Many people have a funny habit of apologizing and downplaying their thoughts and opinions the moment they begin to voice them. I first noticed this trend a few years ago while sitting in a meeting, and I have become acutely aware of it ever since. It is highly likely that you do this without even…
I am an early riser. Or rather, I pretend to be an early riser. My alarm goes off at 5:05 a.m. I start drag myself out of bed with varying degrees of success. This morning I assiduously avoided hitting the snooze button, immediately hauled myself up, and staggered straight into the wall on the…
Don’t be intimidated by the level of prestige of your audience members. Just because a room is filled with C-level execs doesn’t mean they are collectively CEO of Everything. Speaking to a crowd of academics and researchers? Don’t cower before their gigantic brains. I’ve met plenty of PhDs that couldn’t find their backsides with both…
